Ripple is a fascinating monetary system lurking heavily around the world of decentralized currencies.
Here, is a screen cast on how Ripple works.
A well documented subject, I reached out to the founder of Ripple which is an open-community project founded in 2004.
Ryan Fugger: Founder of Ripple
Ben: Can Ripple and Bitcoin integrate?
Ryan: Sure, they can integrate in lots of ways. For example:
http://ripple-project.org/Protocol/BlockChainCommitMethod
There’s a discussion on the Bitcoin forums about Ripple being a good way to implement instant Bitcoin transactions.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3557.0
Ben: What plans do you have for Ripple over the next few years?
Ryan: I don’t know… I’d like to have a working distributed server implementation. Beyond that, I hope the idea catches on further and more people starting building systems like this.
Ben: Any thoughts on Decentralized currencies and networks growing in India?
Ryan: Ripple would be a great way to build a Hawala network:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
You can look at Ripple as Hawala with automated routing.
There is no API to Ripplepay yet and Ripple still has a few problems to solve. It has the strong potential to be a monetary system to work alongside Bitcoin. Similarities can be found in the PayPal exchange website Bitcoinary.com.
Links & Sources
Atomic Exchanges of Chain Coins
Ripple Project – Google Groups
Benson's Blog 