Ripple is interesting but I think they made a major mistake with XRP. (Other than not open sourcing right away). XRP was intended not as a currency but as a spam preventative measure. Too many people saw XRP as an investment like Bitcoin and that should have been made more clear from the beginning that it is not a currency but a way of entering the ripple ecosystem. Now we have XRP over valued and the creator has TONS of them left and a lot of influence on future price. They control the market. What they should have done is made a clear "goal price" for XRP. And by controlling the flow of how they unload their massive amount of XRP they can maintain a "goal price". They should have given themselves a huge amount of XRP and given/sold XRP out one at a time. 1 XRP = 1 USD for example as a "best price". Perhaps a company that does it differently would be more successful but with a different name? Or would that even work?
You can't just say that something is or isn't a currency and have it be so. Bitcoin isn't money because Satoshi called it that. It's money because we choose, based on its properties, to use it that way. XRPs have real value on the ripple network:
1. There is a finite supply of them.
2. Every wallet requires a few XRPs for its initial funding.
3. Every transaction destroys a small fraction of an XRP, thereby adding to the value of all remaining units.
How much should an XRP be worth? That's like asking how much a bitcoin should be worth. If the network takes off, then it'll probably be a lot higher than it is today. Of course, Opencoin could decide to flood the market with all of their XRPs and crash the price, but Satoshi could do the same with bitcoin. At least we know what opencoin's intentions are. They hope the ripple network will grow and that their XRPs will gain in value. What's Satoshi planning on doing with his 1M+ bitcoins?
