BTW, while the Ripple network supports the ability to establish trust lines (also known as IOUs) between users, the cryptocurrency (XRP) is separate from that.
In fact, XRP is the only currency on the Ripple network that does't have counter-party risk and doesn't require a trust relationship to transact in.
For those interested, I (Ethereum founder) will be writing a "DAOs/self-enforcing-whatevers are not scary" series on Bitcoin Magazine and the Ethereum blog over the next little while talking about these kinds of issues in detail.