<p>You can't get money on the Ripple network unless you trust someone to owe it to you. To have $100 in the Ripple network, someone must owe you that $100. If you haven't chosen to trust anyone to owe you money, nobody can owe you $100 and thus you can't have any money.</p>

<p>So when you give money to a gateway, you must allow them to pay you in IOUs. And if someone is expecting you to pay them money, they must allow someone to owe them that money or it's impossible for you to pay them. Now if you've both chosen to trust the same gateway, it's simple -- you just hand them the IOUs you just bought.</p>

<p>If you trust different gateways, then a path between those two gateways must be found. With luck, there will be someone who holds IOUs from both gateways and doesn't particularly care which IOUs they hold. So you can use them to "move" your IOUs from one gateway to another.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-09-11T13:06:17.897Z
If Alice wanted to send Bob USD in Ripple, but there existed no trust path between the two, would the network consider USD->XRP->USD?
Murch
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-09-13T21:52:53.227Z
@Murch: Yes. We just recently deployed a new pathfinding algorithm that's much more sophisticated. It will definitely consider XRP "bridging" even if the currencies are the same.
David Schwartz
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-02-13T14:07:18.813Z
2013-02-13T14:07:18.813Z
David Schwartz
<p>If my understanding is correct the WoT is not necessary in this case.</p>

<p>However, it is necessary that the parties have a common set of validators that will record the transaction in their ledger.</p>

<p>Strictly speaking, if the parties are not trusting anyone in the network it won't work, because you'd still need to trust your set of validators not to collude. So one form of trust is necessary, but there does not need to be a credit path between the two parties.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-03-04T11:54:47.697Z
Downvoted on account of being false AFAIK. For any currency other than XRP, you can't even hold it without assigning credit to someone, and you can't transfer it without a credit path.
Meni Rosenfeld
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-02-13T11:08:21.227Z
2013-02-13T11:08:21.227Z
David
<p>Say we have two people - first one puts some money into their Ripple address through a use of a gateway. They are not trusting anyone on the network, but need to send their money to a second party that may or may not be in a similar situation. How would Ripple transfer the money from the first individual to the other?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-02-13T11:47:09.433Z
Why the vote to close?
ripper234
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-02-13T14:08:48.530Z
Likely they're not aware that there's an [emerging consenus](http://meta.bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/335/should-this-se-also-cover-questions-about-ripple) that Ripple questions are on-topic. See [this post](http://meta.bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/346/adjusting-the-faq-to-make-clear-ripple-is-on-topic) about changing the FAQ.
David Schwartz
<transactions><payment><ripple><trust><wot>
Does sending non-ripple-money through Ripple require two people to be connected through a web of trust?
ThePiachu
# Does sending non-ripple-money through Ripple require two people to be connected through a web of trust?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2013-02-13)

Say we have two people - first one puts some money into their Ripple address through a use of a gateway. They are not trusting anyone on the network, but need to send their money to a second party that may or may not be in a similar situation. How would Ripple transfer the money from the first individual to the other?

**Tags:** transactions, payment, ripple, trust, wot

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Why the vote to close?  
> **username_2**: Likely they're not aware that there's an [emerging consenus](http://meta.bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/335/should-this-se-also-cover-questions-about-ripple) that Ripple questions are on-topic. See [this post](http://meta.bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/346/adjusting-the-faq-to-make-clear-ripple-is-on-topic) about changing the FAQ.  

---

## 2 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2013-02-13. Score: 8

You can't get money on the Ripple network unless you trust someone to owe it to you. To have $100 in the Ripple network, someone must owe you that $100. If you haven't chosen to trust anyone to owe you money, nobody can owe you $100 and thus you can't have any money.

So when you give money to a gateway, you must allow them to pay you in IOUs. And if someone is expecting you to pay them money, they must allow someone to owe them that money or it's impossible for you to pay them. Now if you've both chosen to trust the same gateway, it's simple -- you just hand them the IOUs you just bought.

If you trust different gateways, then a path between those two gateways must be found. With luck, there will be someone who holds IOUs from both gateways and doesn't particularly care which IOUs they hold. So you can use them to "move" your IOUs from one gateway to another.

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: If Alice wanted to send Bob USD in Ripple, but there existed no trust path between the two, would the network consider USD->XRP->USD?  
> **username_2**: @username_3: Yes. We just recently deployed a new pathfinding algorithm that's much more sophisticated. It will definitely consider XRP "bridging" even if the currencies are the same.  

---

### Answer by username_4 on 2013-02-13. Score: -3

If my understanding is correct the WoT is not necessary in this case.

However, it is necessary that the parties have a common set of validators that will record the transaction in their ledger.

Strictly speaking, if the parties are not trusting anyone in the network it won't work, because you'd still need to trust your set of validators not to collude. So one form of trust is necessary, but there does not need to be a credit path between the two parties.

> **Comments:**
> **username_5**: Downvoted on account of being false AFAIK. For any currency other than XRP, you can't even hold it without assigning credit to someone, and you can't transfer it without a credit path.  

---

