Oh, and Ripple is very different from eGold since it's peer-to-peer and open source. Most importantly, Ripple allows payments to "ripple" through people until they reach the end target. All this is very different from eGold, a centralized, closed-source payment processor.
Ripple themselves doesn't hold any currency except for the base XRP (Ripple) unit of account, which they require for opening an account, transactions, and various other actions.
I agree that RippleLabs has poorly distributed this XRP they created as their system's base currency. This has left them open to accusations of scam(not really) and greed(totally), which is too bad given the incredible technology Ripple offers. RippleLabs has also done a pretty poor job marketing their increasingly advanced technology.
In the end, Ripple can happily co-exist with Bitcoin, and offers solutions to many of the problems Bitcoin will soon face (such as transaction load). But I don't see this happening unless the cryptocurrency community decides to approach Ripple with an open mind, and unless RippleLabs puts down the arrogance and actively communicate with the community.
Signed,
A dedicated Bitcoiner since winter 2010/2011
Ripple provides a market exchange methodology, among other things. Bitcoin can't do that natively due to the lack of looping in its scripts.
Also, check out Ethereum. If they pull it off, it'll twist your noodle with the possibilities.
Both of these projects are very alpha, so anyone checking them out should only use money you can afford to lose until they're out of beta (and the devs of both projects are pretty responsible about this, I believe).
I'm a little skeptical of Ethereum. It's notoriously difficult to build sandboxed virtual systems for browsers, much less for payment/asset exchange systems. And the money they raised with no working prototype is somewhat obscene (I think the typical HN start-up would have a conniption fit if they learned how much they raised, and still maintained ownership). But it is an incredibly cool idea. We'll see.