There are other interesting advantages. In the case of distributed exchanges, the chronology can determine market winners and losers. How do we decide who gets to bid on trades? What if we wanted an auction? who decides who wins the auction if it depends on TIMING? This also solves this problem for the users so long as they feel properly represented in the order of authorities. If we tried to do this with PoW, then the miners might compete to put the chain in a favorable order. In my system we make this negotiation explicit.
this order can be defined in many ways. For instance you could have one singular FIAT authority who rules all, very easy to manage, but not very easy to sell to the public. You could have a TRIUMVIRATE- or three equal authorities- which is fairly easy to coordinate and also non-biased. You could extend this principle geometrically to five or more authorities. You can also have different weight ratios for instance 1 primary authority but a school of smaller authorities that can outweigh it if unanimous(called KING AND COURT in my terminology).
I still miss the point.
You talk about exchanges, but at some point there must be one entity which accepts a valuable (fiat, gold, whatever) and emits a corresponding digital IOU.
Which is exactly like Ripple.
Basically, every money system BUT Bitcoin has this notion of IOUs. This includes the US dollar, that at one point was an IOU for gold, but now is a more complex debt instrument. This is a common response to my statements for people who are only familiar with Bitcoin and Ripple. Ripple did not invent the concept of a digital IOU. It's the things that exist apart from IOUs that are what makes Ripple what it is. How this part works is really quite mysterious, certainly not open source, the result of capital investment, and other things that make it questionable. There are claims about Ripple, and characteristics of this digital asset XRPs which to me don't appear to add up. With Confidence Chains, no carrier currency is required- and code I write will certainly be open source FROM THE START. I think that alone makes it more attractive than Ripple. I think the question of Ripple's success will be in the sheer numbers of people who simply want basic usability features(transfers, etc.) over principle and long term qualities. There is no doubt that Ripple will appeal to many users who are not involved seriously in digital currencies. It will be easy to use, provide some security of transfer and possibly exchange, but as of now doesn't offer the open source or even p2p/decentralization that bitcoin does. For instance there was a user named geekmom who was recently complaining on here about how sketchy bitcoin was(she was 'out of here'). Ripple will no doubt capture users like her, but you have to ask- is Ripple really revolutionary though? are we back to where we started?
Bitcoin is unique in that there is demand for it, but there is no real world backing. Some believe this is a temporary state of affairs, others believe that Bitcoin is a new kind of currency and PoW is analogous to Gold. I leave that up to time to determine, suffices to say though that IOUs are required to preform this function of exchanging. Other platforms have also arrived this inevitable conclusion, thus it has this in common with Ripple- but to say it's 'just like Ripple' is totally inaccurate.
Re. Ripple, specifically how this idea differs from whatever Ripple is at the moment is anyone's guess. They have no released their source code. At this point I dont think they can drift significantly from the core concepts, and I do know that those concepts work quite differently than what I have. Confidence Chains is very familiar to Bitcoin developers. ASMOF, you can use the transactions AS IS, in the system- which is very convenient for Bitcoin users and developers.
I know that Ripple claims to be open but it isn't, and this is bad.
But what aims to do is known, and your project can't be "like Ripple, but open", because on paper Ripple itself "would" be open, while in practice Ripple isn't open, but your system
doesn't exists at all, so...
TRUE. At this point it's an idea- and it's not *my* system per se, it's just a proposal and if anyone has any legitimate arguments against this proposal, let's hear them. If we don't hear any, one can assume this system is valid- thus software built using the idea is also valid. Unfortunately, due to my various encounters on here I need to re-establish these basic laws of collaboration and engineering because some projects on here did not go through this process. Im not an amateur developer and I do things right.
Ripple might deliver something attractive to the community, I'm sure they will deliver something. They are in business after all. The question is as to WHAT they are delivering.
Ripple might have been able to hire every expert in the field, but keep in mind- those experts cost money. So no matter how much resources they have to spend on brainpower- they will inevitably come up with something designed to offer them a return on that investment. Bitcoin emerged in a much different way, from the world of open source. There have been *many* commercially produced digital currencies before and they all failed. So Ripple isn't Bitcoin 2.0, it's a commercial software no matter what kind of licensing they offer. Do you believe the investors behind OpenCoin are doing charity? If the software itself is free, then the system would be designed in order to get a return on these XRP credits. But a PR budget goes a long way, especially in the scenario where there is a lot of uneducated interest in a field of activity- which is what is going on with Bitcoin today.
