RE: FCK/YOU Money: The Rise and Fall of XRP
Welcome to crypto!
What makes Bitcoin so special is you can download some code and independently verify all the transactions on the network. You do not need to trust anyone else in the network to provide you with the current ledger, you can form and validate it yourself.
XRP is centeralized in supply - you don't have to trust anyone to send it securely but you do have to trust Ripple regarding the supply of the coin. I.e. that they won't make any more than the 100billion they said.
I would advise looking into the history of a project and look at how well it is decenteralized. Is there only one cartel mining with > 50% mining power? Are all the nodes run by a single entity? These are some of the trust assumptions you must be comfortable with when you are being your own bank.
Be sure to follow up here with more questions: there are probably more answers than you know what to do with.
I guess I don't really see "I don't want to trust anyone" as a viable position. XRP's structures (at present) makes it very clear who you're trusting -- Ripple. Bitcoin's structure plays a game of hiding the ball. You don't have to trust anyone it says, but the reality is you do. As has been pointed out, you're trusting large scale miners to not collude. You're trusting the Chinese government (where most large scale miners reside) to not exert undue influence. In short, you're trusting a system that obfuscates the parties on whom your trust relies.
I disagree entirely.
The whole point is that the trust is decentralized. The design of Bitcoin means that it does not matter if the miners are Chinese or North Korean. You are not trusting the Chinese government. It is observablee if miners collude. The trust is not obstrufucated.
With Bitcoin, you place your trust in the code you run - only the code you run.
"I don't want to trust anyone" is absolutely a viable position.