It looks like it's basically Bitcoin but without the mining. An interesting concept for sure.<p>If I understand it correctly:
By paying a gateway, you get "ripples" in the form of an IOU (The gateway owes you). This IOU can be exchanged at any other gateway back to money. Meanwhile, your money is inside the system and you can send it to other people in the system.<p>There's no inherent value to ripples, there's no money being created or lost. It's just a means to transfer money around.<p>Am I right that gateways need to be trusted though? Can they accept e.g. $1000 dollar, give out gateway IOU's, and never return the money to anyone?