The whole concept of cryptocurrencies came about due an experiment in exchanging value called Bitcoin. The idea was to create a decentralized model for exchanging value based upon scarcity and invested work. An assumed reason for doing this was to allow value creation not to be exploited by governments and especially central banks that essentially do legalized counterfeiting on a regular basis.

People are now associating philosophical central bank opposition with a business service, Ripple, that creates a set number of coins and provides well defined clearing and settlement through a blockchain simply because they are also selling this solution to banks. This is equivalent to saying that anyone that sells their solutions to banks must be "evil banker scum" too. This is frankly preposterous. If I produce furniture and sell it as well to banks, am I also an "evil" banker because I sell them furniture?

Let me add another point to this. Remember that Steemit is also a business. It's not just some benevolent community running it all. This is why the owners are taking massive profits on Steem's rise and their whale friends are also taking huge profits on their articles (like Jeff Berwick with his $15,000 first article). Steem is centrally created within the Steemit platform (run by this business) and they can produce unlimited numbers of Steem (as far as I can tell). This is a far worse model than Ripple because they can inflate it as much as they want. This inflation is the problem with central banking everybody hates. I don't hear anyone protesting the Steemit business and the Steem inflation potential, but it's their business model like it or not.