Topic: http://ripplescam.org/ - page 5. (Read 6492 times)

Great, you will be doing the world a considerable favor if you address this issue.

IMO, there are two major issues with all cryptocurrencies as of today:
1. replacement by a better newer cryptocurrency - there must be a formalized cutover mechanism that allows upgrades, this will allow continual improvement and avoid volatility associated with expectations of being killed by a younger sexier currency.
2. supply must allow inflation - deflationary spiral will doom any transactional economy, any cryptocurrency must either have a perpetual built in inflation mechanism, or banks need to spring up to lend the cryptocurrency

FATAL ERROR! I didn't mean to slander Liberty Reserve. I meant to reference Liberty Dollar! I'm changing this post now... Changed. My apologies to everyone at Liberty Reserve.



Yes, I am 100% convinced, 1) they will release the source code, 2) they will not be able to *manipulate* the rules once they have done so. The rules will always be changeable (as they are with bitcoin). But it will require near 100% community approval (as with bitcoin).

The main reason I'm so certain (i.e. the Satoshi reason) is because the less the formal control Ripple has over the rules of the system, the better the chances they don't get prosecuted for forgery like the Liberty Dollar guy.


That is the beauty of their plan. They don't need to manipulate the network ever. I'm going to answer this concisely in this post and I'll give an extended answer in my next...

Owning all the XRP (as they do now) implies that they can manipulate the market price of XRP at will. I presumed that they would do so in order to preserve a SteadyCoin like value for XRP. I just had no idea of what steady target value they saw as their StableTarget.

To me it seemed "intuitively obvious" their goal was to be able to have *external* USD/XRP exchanges, along with euro/XRP yen/XRP rupee/XRP ... etc.  People would physically give or electronically transfer USD to their preferred gateway and that gateway would exchange it for XRP that you would hold in your Ripple address (a la bitcoin). Then when you would send the XRP to another address (a la bitcoin). Then the person you send it to could convert it to euro, yen, rupee... etc. using their preferred gateway.

Duh! Right?

To make that system work pretty much REQUIRES keeping the value of XRP stable (SteadyCoin). Otherwise, people wouldn't be able to PERCEIVE their XRP as being EQUAL to USD. Again, Duh! Right? The *evil brilliance* of that plan is that maintaining the perceived stability of the system REQUIRES them to sell their boundless stash of XRP as necessary to compensate for increased demand for XRP as Ripple user base increases. Right? Brilliant! Right?

Wrong. It turns out thats how morons like me and Liberty Dollar would implement the system. They have a name for that in the USA. We call it FORGERY. The government has secret agents to put a stop to that. They're called "The Secret Service". Ask the Liberty Dollar guy.

No. What a truly F...ing, genius level, Satoshi level, BRILLIANCE would do.... would be... wait for it...

Convert from USD/XRP at market rates *and* XRP/euro, yen, rupee...etc. at market rates... wait for it...

INSTANTANEOUSLY! All in one, F...ing, single transaction. Holy Shit! as they say. It's Madness and I'm One Step Behind! That way Ripple (the company) doesn't have to give a flying F... about what the market rate for XRP is.

Better still, Ripple owners holding so much XRP give the perceptions that they can manipulate the market price at will (They can). Thereby reducing most people's urge to speculate in XRP (a la bitcoin). The fewer people who perceive XRP as equivalent to the USD the better for Ripple (the company) and its founders. The last place they want to be standing is next to the Liberty Dollar guy. The more people who perceive XRP as inflationary the better as well. Being guaranteed inflationary means that selling XRP can't possibly be perceived as an investment scam (except on this web site) nor as a Ponzi scheme.

There! How's that for CONCISE.


They don't. They don't have to care. To Ripple BTC is just yet another externally issued currency. Inside Ripple you can have as many of those as you want. I could be a Cheese Burgers gateway in Ripple if I saw a market. Someone in Russia could send 500 rubles to me in Cheese Burgers and I could take delivery in the USA.

Ripple changes F...ing everything.

They can and they certainly will. Just like Bitcoin spawned a dozen alt coins.

We will have the first mover advantage, just like Bitcoin has over all the alt coins.

You're not irrational. You just think we have a fear of competition. If we are not better than our competitors, we deserve to lose. We will be, just as Bitcoin is better than its competitors.

I agree with you that this might be a concern in the future. I have no idea how to solve it though. If it ever appears actually likely to occur, we'll be in a better position to figure out the right solution because we'll know the actual circumstance we're in. Perhaps people might agree to inflating the currency supply.

I didn't do so because I don't have any nominal BTC or XRP.  The reason why I am raising this as an issue is because it undermines the probability of success for ALL CRYPTOCURRENCIES including XRP.


The future endgame in my mind is this generic process:  

1) cryptocurrency 1 takes the market lead,
2) the masses buy cc 1 and feel happy to have this great advancement
3) cc 2 appears which is WAY better than cc1, the masses are seduced
4) the masses sell cc1 and buy cc2
5) in the process volatility for cc1 spikes
6) cc1 gets a bad name, and the reputation of all cryptocurrencies get incrementally undermined
7) go to #1

Furthermore, expectation of the above creates inherent volatility.

The excitement that I have with a formal replacement mechanism is that it prevents the above cycle and expectations of such.  To your point, I don't think proof of burn answers all of the questions on achieving this but the point is:

We need a mechanism to upgrade BTC is a way that kills volatility caused by the competitive cryptocurrency issue.

I could care less if Ripple or pipple or litecoin is BTC2.0 but don't do your conversion by relying on an exchange.

I feel like your responses are just based on rhetorics (if that is a word).  Can you please openly tell me why Bitcoin community cannot copy your open source code right after you flip your magic switch?  That is all I am asking you.  Theoretically, if they do, you will have no competitive advantage to Bitcoin and a smaller user base in an instant.

I know I sound irrational to you but I am sincerely looking for a clear response to make me understand why I am irrational.

I think it's a double-edged sword. On the one hand competition is good, on the other hand you also need critical mass. The ability to make payments in IOUs using Ripple looks like a killer feature that may allow XRP to establish critical mass very quickly.

You're definitely right that this is conceivable. I'm not so sure it's likely though. If anything like this ever happened, it would be way off in the future. We we designed Ripple, our primary goal was to make a system that was as useful as possible so that it had the best possible chance of widespread adoption. Thinking through a solution to some possible distant future Bitcoin/Ripple endgame was not part of the equation. And I don't think any of us can imagine what such a scenario will look like such that we could design for it now.

If you believe Ripple will inevitably destroy Bitcoin because it's so much better, then I would argue that it should do so and it's irrational to oppose it because Bitcoin somehow "deserves to win" despite being inferior.

I don't think anyone can predict what some Bitcoin/Ripple future endgame would look like or even if there will ever be one. If you genuinely think this is likely, sell all your BTC today and buy XRP. (I bet you didn't. Why? Because you don't think it's likely. I don't either.)

I don't care about BTC valuation, most of my wealth is in equities.  I do care about virtual currencies "making it" because it is revolutionary which I know you agree with.  When you have more than one cryptocurrency this undermines the probability of success for the market leader.

ripple has a huge disadvantage because of its public association with OpenCoin, a for-profit organization, which you are a part of.

I will even concede that Bitcoin probably started out as a for-profit scheme, but I don't care because it has the vast market share right now which is why I will only use Bitcoin for now.

Having a controlled exchange mechanism (via proof of burn) from BTC to ripple is advantageous because it allows organized and controlled transition of currency 1 to currency 2.  Doing this via trading is undesirable because it does not address the volatility issue caused by the competition for alternate cryptocurrencies.

When you standardize the conversion from X to Y in a controlled decentralized environment this addresses the volatility issue inherent to ALL cryptocurrencies which need to always be on the watch for its future replacement.

Concisely, if people sell BTC to buy ripple, BTC goes to 0 and ripple goes up.  This creates inherent instability in BTC valuation.

Agreed wholeheartedly, what Bitcoin needs now is stability, not a higher exchange rate.


That need not be the only effect. It could also make transition from BTC to XRP less painful, which could decrease enthusiasm for a Bitcoin-based rival to Ripple. The end result could then be a single, more stable currency, namely XRP.

I don't think that really makes sense. Bitcoin is what it is. There's really no way Bitcoin could copy us without being something other than Bitcoin and people would still want the old Bitcoin.

Like Satoshi did for Bitcoin, right? No, wait, he didn't. You think he would have been richer if he had? Was Satoshi a fool?

Trying to adjust your behavior to overcome irrational objections from people who don't even care about the issues they're objecting to and who will just make new equally invalid objections when you overcome the ones they did made is a fool's errand. Ripple has a significant chance of complete failure and being able to give away XRP to drive adoption is strategically critical. And that's only one of a long list of reasons.

If you don't believe us, even when we say we're going to do what's in our own best interest, then so be it. Wait and see.

2 q's:
1) If Bitcoin copies you completely, you will go bankrupt.  Is this not true?  I would expect OpenCoin to try to protect themselves somehow by inserting some hook into the system to protect their intellectual property.

2) Why don't you just take the issue off the table entirely then by removing ripple altogether?

I know a lot of people in this forum want lots of currency speculators to drive up the price of BTC. But that's, IMO, foolish short term thinking. That's what causes crashes. And crashes cause risk. And risk drives away adoption of a currency as a means of exchange.

Long term, the real win is getting your currency used as a means of exchange. Price instability works against that. Such a scheme, if it moved at any kind of volume, would reduce the supply of one currency and increase the other, making both prices less stable and making both currencies less suitable as a means of exchange. It would only make sense if both currencies functioned as a unit already, like when a currency is reissued, because everyone already understands that all existing old currency adds to the supply of new currency because people will exchange it.

Maybe it would help acceptance by those holding BTC, plus it could help you supplant BTC if that's what you wanted. In general, I think that offering an upgrade path from other currencies could be a good business move for new cryptocurrencies, at least in some circumstances. But I'm not advocating this, just wondering if you had considered it.

Why advantage would that have over just trading BTC for XRP? If it ever cranked into high gear, it would reduce the supply of BTC and increase the supply of XRP, making both currencies less useful and means of exchange.

@JoelKatz:

Have you guys considered a proof-of-burn transition from BTC to XRP?

We have no desire to retain control, that's the whole point of decentralizing. It is vital that we not have control over the network for all kinds of reasons. That's why we designed the system not to require central authorities.

We don't. We've even suggested some things we do that could be particularly helpful to Bitcoin. We don't see ourselves competing with Bitcoin any time in the near future, if ever.

Do you think if Satoshi had kept control over Bitcoin or tried to stop alt coins from forming his Bitcoins would be worth more today? We learned this lesson.

That's really f***ing clever! At least to my sleepy brain.

I guess my point is that once the code base is released we'll see whether or not OpenCoin has any hooks in there to manipulate the system.  Their employees state that once the cat is out of the bag you can't put her back in, which I take as, "trust me once it's open it will be obvious we can't manipulate it."

Also, I'm interested in seeing a concise answer to this question: how does OpenCoin plan on proving their inability to manipulate the ripple network while being able to retain corporate control over the payment system?  Conversely, how does OpenCoin prevent Bitcoin from copying all of its features?  RED do you already have thoughts on this question with your research?  I almost feel like there is a contradiction there.

The nice thing is that no one would be forced to switch, you could continue to use the old blockchain as long as it had sufficient non-evil hashing power behind it. Any number of potential replacements would then enter free competition with each other and with the original BTC. It's possible more than one would survive.

And to get this back to Ripple, I believe Ripple will happily find paths that convert currencies along the way, which should help lower barriers to entry for new currencies.

That is interesting and exciting.  It's like a formal upgrade mechanism in our decentralized environment.  Kind of like how European countries worked hard to cutover all their fiats into Euro.

People need to further flush this out.