The concept of RipplePay seems to require people accepting significant default risk from many people, for no compensation. The size of the risk accepted and the carrying capacity of the network are proportional, such that making it useful requires making the default risks large. The proponents suggest setting up lines of credit with your friends, but this seems like courting disaster; not only would I be risking both money and friendships, I'd have to pay for expensive due diligence, I'd have to occasionally offend people by signaling mistrust, and I'd be setting things up so that if I did go bankrupt (perhaps because I lent too much money to someone who defaulted), my social network would transform into angry creditors.
In exchange for all this risk, I gain nothing: I'm still using an inflating currency, I can't move large balances quickly or secretly, and I gain a constant chore of settling books with people. And after all that, I still need a traditional bank for value storage (since RipplePay is only attempting to solve the transfer). No thanks. RipplePay will never be anything more than a novelty used for tiny dollar amounts.
The idea is that you accept default risk only from people to whom you can apply social arm-twisting. This includes them arm-twisting you not to overextend credit or take risky debt.
Less Wrong used to like Bitcoin before it was cool. Monthly threads popped up around the same time a pricing bubble brought mainstream attention last year. When the bubble popped, and price continued to deflate, discussion on this site stopped entirely. Was there a change of sign in the social status of the topic, is the topic fully explored, or has there simply happened nothing of interest over the last year?
If you are not familiar with Bitcoin, here is one intro I happen to like.
Kaj Sotala lists a number of previous threads on the topic:
Less Wrong seems like a good place to discuss recent developments, if one does not want to suffer the inanity of the officially unofficial forum. If you are not longer interested in Bitcoin, perhaps send your remaining balance to the Singularity Institute?