Ripple is not a scam - and you may be making yourself vulnerable to actual scams

[mmeijeri]

That's the idea, but there would be other fees, because gateways can charge fees for letting IOUs change hands. Competition would be needed to ensure reasonable prices.

[Sukrim]

Maybe Ripple Labs should set up a Bridge for Peercoin, my favorite currency  .

That is not the job of RippleLabs and that is the reason why Ripple is built as distributed ledger system instead of merely running centralized like PayPal: You can build this bridge yourself, proof to others that they can trust you and then operate the bridge and gateway on your own.

It is not RippleLabs business model to build every conceivable currency and storage facility there is out there, Ripple is a building block and protocol, not a company. RL doesn't operate gateways, they don't earn fees and they don't charge anything for their software.

[PirateButtercup]

Instantly means in negligible time. The 10 to 30 minutes needed for BTC transactions is not 'negligible'. Put it in a real world application and imagine McDonald's accepted BTC. LOL...I used to get bent at the little old lady writing out checks....now I've got to wait on you and the superior BTC payment network.

As you've clearly changed the meaning of next to no time (instantly) to mean 10 to 30 minutes. By 'Ripple offers zero value in the payment system' do you mean it offers 10 to 30 times the value of the existing system?

As I said...it's impossible for zealots to grasp. When confronted with the shortcomings of BTC, they'll use every logic fallacy known....change definitions of words, set up straw men, ad hominem attacks, etc.

I didn't know that I could send you Litecoin and you get Bitcoin....let alone USD, EUR, etc. ...and no, you don't have to use the banking system to move money within the Ripple network either. For example, you can put cash in via ZipZap.

Learn the facts first, then feel free to distort them however you choose.

Stop being dumb.   Ripple doesn't enable instant payment either. Whatever your send via Ripple is useless until the recipient gets what he really wants.

If a vendor wants to receive 10 BTC for his product/service, getting an instant IOU in Ripple is pointless.   He will still need to wait for 10 to 30 mins for that BTC from Ripple to come into his real wallet.

If a vendor wants to receive $10,000 for his product/service, and he is located in a small town in China, getting an instant IOU in Ripple is pointless.  He will still need to wait for whatever amount of time needed for the money to be wired into his bank account.

Gateways are only needed in the near term. In the big picture...long term...they are merely transition mechanisms.

Expand your vision just a tad ... If all of the financial systems are federated under one umbrella (the eventuality of the Ripple protocol), why would you ever pull your money out of the system? For cash?...OK I use that sometimes, but that's less than 1% of ALL of my annual expenditures. (and it's getting less and less each year) Can you give me one reason why your Chinese farmer would want his money COMPLETE off the financial grid when Ripple wallets are as ubiquitous as email addresses?

I mean, think about it. EVERYONE having a free wallet ... just as everyone has free email. Your employer pays you directly. Your iPhone app pays for meals at McDonald's instantly. Businesses like Western Union and Money Gram will go the way of Blockbuster and Borders Bookstore. Banks will have to shift their revenue stream focus to mortgages and loans and away from inefficient payment systems like checks, money orders and credit cards. 

I don't know how old you are, but do you remember how fast email spread? or the world wide web? or the use of search engines? or instant messaging? or Facebook? Ripple is free, open source, and has massive utilitarian value. It will go like wildfire after Beta testing is finished.

[Dini]

Maybe Ripple Labs should set up a Bridge for Peercoin, my favorite currency  .

That is not the job of RippleLabs and that is the reason why Ripple is built as distributed ledger system instead of merely running centralized like PayPal: You can build this bridge yourself, proof to others that they can trust you and then operate the bridge and gateway on your own.

It is not RippleLabs business model to build every conceivable currency and storage facility there is out there, Ripple is a building block and protocol, not a company. RL doesn't operate gateways, they don't earn fees and they don't charge anything for their software.

I didn't truly think it was really RippleLabs that built bridges but that perhaps it promoted such activity and collaborated with people who do it, just as with gateways.  The Bitcoin bridge I'm aware of is completely free to use (according to how I understand it anyway, though I haven't tried it because I don't hold on to significant bitcoins for long) and so its purpose presumably is to promote Ripple (or less likely, because less needed, Bitcoin).  Similarly, a Peercoin bridge would help promote both Ripple and Peercoin, but then again maybe RippleLabs is primarily interested in promoting xrp. 

[Sukrim]

The Bitcoin bridge is operated by Bitstamp, get in contact with them and/or read the sample code (on github) on how to code bridges and the documentation (on the wiki) on which APIs to use.

https://ripple.com/wiki/Services_API#Outbound_bridges and articles about the Federation API.

[Litvin]

Ripple is not crypto money - scam from bankers and government.
Ripple - is not open source;
Ripple - Each Ripple node is controlled by a private commercial company. It is centralized as a bank or PayPal. Not a decentralized currency.
Ripple - totally 100% with the pre-release issued by Ripple Labs, 65% were left to themselves and 35% sold;
Ripple - not anonymous;
Ripple - emission is possible in unlimited quantities;
Ripple - created by the richest states and banks of the world on the money of monopoly oligarchs, with one purpose to destroy and devalue in the public eye the world of crypto-currencies.
 It is very difficult to destroy bitokoyn, because it is decentralized. Everyone who manages the bitcoins client is peer and conducts transactions around, and everyone who picks up votes with their hashing. Bitcomoin group of kernel developers could be arrested, but new developers will just get the better.
 Take a look at all Bitcoin services that were hacked. MtGox. Bitcoinica. MyBitcoin. InstaWallet. You might lose bitkoyny, which you deposited there - debt - but if you kept the real bitkoy in their purse, they were safe. When a Ripple gateway or currency issuer is hacked, because you can only hold BTC and, for example, debt, you lose them.
   But with Ripple, all that's required is a raid-like what happened to Liberty Dollar-to kill the entire network because of its centralization. The update can be ejected to destroy all XRP and transactions - and this will work, because one object has 51% of the attack on the network. This simply can not be done with Bitcoin, if only with an international attack on mine pool operators, and when this happens, people will simply switch to solo development.
  Ripple supporters (for example, OpenCoin Inc employees who speak their own views) point to small default values that have not been disconnected from the network. Of course, this will not happen. But a sufficiently large default from the lock will lead to a crash - there is a critical mass
 States are afraid of crypto-currencies and criticize them. Ripple is not criticized by the authorities, states, politicians and bankers! You will not hear anything bad about Ripple from them.
 For several years Ripple will eat all the main crypto-currencies - this is the black hole of the crypto-currency market, launched by states and banks. The total capitalization of the crypto-currency market will remain insignificant, and the Ripple capitalization will grow due to the exhaustion of money from other crypto-currencies. When banks artificially depreciate the world's major crypto-currencies, with the help of Ripple, there will then be an unrestricted release of the Ripple (because of its centralization) and the owners' funds will also be depreciated with the help of huge inflation, and subsequently unlimited emissions Ripple will be completely destroyed by banks and their governments.
This will allow states to declare crypto money outlawed and never allow to return to private money and crypt.

 I’m an early adopter of Ripple – having used it before it was publicly announced – but I need to point out what the inherit flaws are, and why Ripple is arguably a scam.
I could have taken my free XRPs and posted propaganda in support of Ripple, but that’s not the kind of person I am. I want to expose the world to the fraud of Ripple and OpenCoin Inc – what you will never see on the homepage.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=224365.msg2358207#msg2358207