Topic: [POLL] What do you think Ripple is? (Read 822 times)

I highlighted the portion above because one of the things that has struck me as I've experimented with Ripple over the past week is it cuts down drastically on the sort of currency exchange scams rampant on the bitcointalk.org forum. You never have to trust another person to make a Ripple transaction (aside from the gateway). Trades like BTC for XRP or USD for BTC happen quickly and efficiently.

Most importantly, there's no information asymmetry as there is when exchanging currency on this forum. You can see the going rate and the best exchange rate at the moment is easily attained without trusting someone you just met on the boards.

What do you mean, you can't sue them? And if you don't like their product, don't use it. If it is an inferior product,  market forces will take care of that. It's certainly not obviously inferior to most cryptocurrencies,  and it has some clear technical advantages.  But even if it were, that doesn't make it a scam, and it is outrageous to suggest it does. If you think it will help Bitcoin, as I do, use it. If you don't like it, don't use it. If you think you can do better, compete with it. Open Transactions + Bitcoin could be a strong competitor to Ripple, and I would like to see that happen. Who knows, I might even write code for it, and / or  contribute financially.

Ripple may not be a scam, but it is very open to scamming, and is almost a scam-enabling technology by design.  It appears highly vulnerable to social engineering.  Also, it may actually be a scam, but I haven't seen convincing evidence of that.  Yet.  It's open to the people who run it going rogue and turning it into a scam, even if it isn't yet.  Or getting raided and shut down, whereupon all its resources become worthless.  Or any number of vulnerabilities inherent in systems with a single point of failure (Opencoin itself).

Ok, Coca Cola comparison:

Let's say Coca Cola (=for-profit company like Opencoin) makes bottles of Coke (=XRP), but without disclosing the ingredients (not opensource). Also, you cannot sue them when drinking their product (=using Opencoin's Ripple, which makes XRP mandatory) gives you problems (no law to prevent misconduct by Opencoin with their system). Nobody would buy that stuff when better alternatives are available (=most cryptocurrencies out there). So Coca Cola hands out a few of their crates of Coke (=the 100% of all XRP which Opencoin "produced" for themselves) to some people, hoping that they will convince others to buy that stuff off of them and to make the beverage more popular.

I am not going to drink that Coke. I would suggest you do not drink it either.

Fair competition is something very different than being scammy. To suggest otherwise is outrageous. Coke will of course say that they're better than Pepsi and vice versa, but to suggest that one is a scam is beyond the pale. Having competition is great for consumers, and the same is true for cryptocurrencies.

The Ida of the System itself is IMO awesome. A Decentralized open source IOU System could have plenty of uses and in time service would develop that deal with the such a system has. I really would love it.

But there are 2 major downsides on the current implementation:

1. Not open source / decentralized:

A closed source centralized system can have Security through obscurity meaning there can be weak points in the system nobody knows about and because the System is closed it's hard to find them. In the case of ripple maybe that enable you adding trust from people without their agreement or issuing IOUs of other persons etc.
But in a closed source centralized system the central authority has to take responsibility for damages that may happen to users because of such weaknesses.

In an open source and decentralized system the creator can distant himself form this and the user is responsible them self for all damages that may result from such weaknesses but he has to open himself up for competition because it can be easily copied / tweaked ect.

Open coin currently tries to have the advantages of both types and none of the disadvantages.

As long as its not open sourced + decentralized (therefore weaknesses can be explored)  or opencoin admits that it's centralized and they take responsibility for financial damage through unknown weaknesses, I would advise against using it for anything besides "play money".

There is (almost) nothing wrong with a closed source centralized system, but you can't have it both ways.

2. Ripples:

The completely unnecessary currency ripples with it's central Bank Opencoin.

To have a currency, that acts as countermeasure against spam actually makes sense, but the way it was done with ripples seems incredibly scammy. This could have easily been done with using Bitcoin or creating a truly decentralizes currency. In addition, by doing so, thei would have been sure to get massive support from the Bitcoin community.

I can only think of 3 reasons why they created their own currency.

1. Nobody in Opencoin thought of using Bitcoin or another truly decentralizes currency
2. There are by Opencoin undisclosed weaknesses in the Bitcoin concept that made it impossible to use BTC.
3. It's their investment model, meaning the complete Ripple System is only there to "justify" the existents of ripples and enable them to cash out of them. --> Scam

Occam's razor

Also the practice of this "giveaways" and the first one here on bitcointalk seems like trying to getting people on board, in the onlycommunity (I know of) that has already succeeded in pushing a new once worthless currency to an incredible worth.

Also as long as it is not open source, there is now way to tell, if all the informations about ripples are even true.

Are they really destroyed on use, or do the go back to Opencoin?
Does Opencoin have the ability to create more of them as it pleases them?

What is the difference?

I am not saying that Opencoin's Ripple is a scam, but it could potentially be a big one. They say they will distribute their XRP fairly, but nothing is forcing them to do that. I think they say right now that they are still holding on to 99% of the XRP at the moment. They could give these to themselves and claim that they were freely distributed (like they promised to do) - who can then proof that this is really the case?

Also, they could use their massive amount of XRP to conduct extreme pump-and-dumping, by restricting the outflow of XRP to the point where demand is much higher than supply, which is basically happening right now - how else could the increase in price from 1BTC per 100,000XRP to 1BTC per 5,000XRP within a few weeks be explained if demand doesn't massively outnumber the supply. If they use that opportunity to sell off parts of their XRP holdings they would make huge profit. Then restrict the supply again, rinse and repeat. There is nothing stopping them from doing that.

What if Opencoin gets wind of a raid by authorities, and they sell off all their XRP quickly, which will then be worthless once Opencoin is shut down? What if a rogue employee gets access to Opencoin's XRP stash and conducts shenanigans with them? What if Opencoin uses their central control of the system to shut down accounts on Ripple that hold the most XRP, thereby making their own XRP much more valuable - the sourcecode isn't open, after all? This is a virtual currency, I think there is no law and no judge that could condemn them for any misconduct. The situation reminds me of "Bitcoin Savings And Trust" (pirateat40 ponzi scam), where many were warned not to put their trust into a single entity who could easily scam them out of their money without any potential juristic consequences for the perpetrator.

This is all just speculation, and I may be completely wrong with everything I suspect. But Opencoin is a for-profit company, they are per definition most likely interested in creating profit. I am not going to give them the trust that they will not abuse their system, in which they hold so much power. I have no reason to.

Also, I want to mention that I am not opposed to altcoins in general. I made the "Name your TOP 3 altcoins!" thread a while ago, and I will stick to my statement there that I love all the altcoins, with the exception of Solidcoin and now the in my opinion even more flawed XRP. I won't support these in any way, and I urge everyone to be very cautious about Opencoin and their XRP. Maybe look into Open Transactions for a version of Ripple that does not make the use of XRP mandatory.

many have been confused by xrp and ripple network.

xrp may be scam
but ripple network is valuable

I'm not sure why people keep callling Ripple a scam. I can understand people not liking it but what about it is a scam.

I think a scam is when you pay for something and don't get what you were offered. Ripple is just a medium of exchange and it does what it's supposed to do. You can use it or not but they're straightforward about what you're getting.

Do you mean Ripple in general, or Opencoin's version of Ripple?

What I think Ripple should be is "a non-centralized non-privately owned debt/IOU network." And this sounds like an interesting idea to me. Unlike many others in this forum, I am not generally opposed to trying out such a system, seems like an interesting experiment.

But Opencoin's version of Ripple is different, I think. It is centralized, privately-owned, non-opensource, with a single point of failure (Opencoin dead=Ripple dead). It seems to me that Opencoin turned Ripple into a potential scam by connecting it to the XRP currency, which has been 100% "premined" by Opencoin. A 100% premined, centrally controlled, non-opensource currency should not be supported, in my opinion.

Jus' sayin'.

+1

Bad list of options for the poll.  There is no option for "a really bad idea."  I'm not convinced it's actually a scam, but I could easily see people losing a lot of money using it.

A centralized scam. 

^^^^^^^^

SCAM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_monetary_system

Starting point for those that said they didn't know what it was.

Curious to know how much people actually know about Ripple.