Topic: Felix Salmon - Reuters - "The Promise of Ripple" (Read 1384 times)

This is about the original founder of Mt. Gox, who sold it 2 years ago, not the current owner.

I'm not so sure... Mt. Gox kind of just accidentally all of its success.

Ripple is being run by guys from Prosper and Mt. Gox.  It will be a success.

The idea of the company starting out with most of the stock is the same as a publicly-traded company and they have big time silicon valley investors.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/11/idUSnMKW5973a+e0+MKW20130411

WOW, lowest bid is at 22k XRP per BTC (an eight-fold increase in value in a week or so). Liquidity is much higher too.

Being part of the giveaway incentivized me to learn a lot about Ripple, which has led to me becoming a serious aficionadoman.

Nice to see those people who sold out of Ripple immediately feel the sting a little bit to the benefit of the first believers.

I don't know what an XRP should be worth, or if we should even be concerned about the value yet, but it's pretty obvious that Ripple is a powerful thing ppl! 

The XRP/BTC rate has been exploding lately on Ripple (bitstamp BTC IOU anyway)

I suspect this is related.

Is the ultimate intended value of OpenCoin 30B XRP? Or is that naive? Will they just churn out profits forever selling their services and the 50B XRP they intend to "give away and sell".
I haven't seen a lot of documentation supporting the claim that OC will distribute 50B of its 80B XRP, and I've seen nothing indicating any sort of strategy or timeline.

Here's another article about Ripple that I came across today -

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/513606/big-name-investors-back-effort-to-build-a-better-bitcoin/

"When the Ripple network was created, 100 billion XRP was created. The founders gave 80 billion XRP to the OpenCoin Inc. OpenCoin Inc. will develop the Ripple software, promote the Ripple payment system, give away XRP, and sell XRP." - Ripple wiki (https://ripple.com/wiki/Ripple_credits

But I take your point. There should be more public details outlining the plans for the remaining 99.9% of XRP.

20% is held by the founders, 79.9% is in the hands of OpenCoin, and 0.1% has been given away to bitcoiners (if I'm not mistaken, this is just my estimate). I see it as somewhere in between a currency and stock right now.

Ripple is aiming to reshape payment processing globally. It's huge. XRP facilitates everything, and should be a great way for companies and early adopters to profit along the way. I think the people who build and support world changing stuff should be entitled to profit. This is why I hold a few extra XRP today, because fuck it, I think it's amazing.

Ripple reminds me of when the Conquistador's flooded Eurasian markets with silver in the 16th century (see 'pieces of eight' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar). The Spanish may have been plunderers, but that capital infusion really got the wheels in motion in the earliest days of international trade. I'm sure the Spanish and Portuguese elite had a ridiculous amount of coins at that time in history. Who cares? The innovation and mastery of craft of the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods was paid for in silver.

XRP isn't aiming to be a one world currency, it's a tool to facilitate trading. Imagine paypal with no fees, no losses due to conversion, and unlimited gateways to trade in unlimited currencies and commodities. If you have any experience buying and selling online you'll know what I'm talking about when I say that the current state of payment processing is abysmal compared to our current level of technology.

Well since they have big investors like ycombinator you could look at it as a "money making enterprise" instead of a scam.  They aren't going to steal back the ripples we have each accumulated.

80% of the value is held by ripple founders.

This is equivalent to a coin with 80% premined blocks.  Explain to me how this is not a scam again?

I disagree. Ripple will be helpful. Bitcoin alone doesn't solve every problem. We need to overhaul the whole financial system!

as far as i know, no. no source code release, and there is no decentralization. ripple is 100% centralized and basically by using it you trust "Opencoin, inc" not to completely and absolutely fuck you over.

Ripple is a nice concept at least for decentralized trading, but the source code has not been released yet, has it?  Also, the method for decentralization has not been exactly proven yet, IIRC.

ripple is not a crypto currency - atleast not as defined by bitcoin. i'm sure it has it's target audience and some of it might overlap with that of proper cryptocurrencies but probably the majority of people who like bitcoin & altcoins for the "right" reasons dont want anything to do with ripple.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/04/11/the-promise-of-ripple/

BIG media article.

Start accumulating XRP, kids.