Topic: Ripple (Read 2234 times)

I accept the OpenCoin business model as THEIR business model, which the world has the option to accept or reject.  It's not being forced on us the way the USD business model is.

Grondilu is right: it's the same business model of Bitcoin, any stock, your grandma's antique collection, and so on.

My point is that reasonable people can disagree on the initial currency distribution method, and whether or not it should involve more mining that you propose. OpenCoin leads made their decision.

If you recall to the time around the 611 crash, there were all kinds of self-proclaimed luminaries coming to this forum with ideas about the way Bitcoin should be fundamentally changed, and the blockchain reset to zero, just to make B fair, remove its shortcomings, etc. Since they had the option to implement their grand visions and didn't, i am glad the B dev team ignored them.

If the luminaries had implemented their brainstorms, Bitcoin would have been forced to change to compete. You had, have, and will have the option to compete with the OpenCoin Ripple business model. You'll have a chance to get the source of a project you proclaimed a "scam", and capitalize on their work to make it an implementation of your vision. I look forward to that, and will welcome it along with everyone else, IF its better.

So, rather than try to smear and shape the OpenCoin business model from the peanut gallery, my suggestion is that you begin organizing like-minded devs into the MrBig ripple fork team, take the Ripple source ball when available, and run with it personally to make the world a better place! I wish you well with that. 

If that is their entire model, they're likely to fail. However, they might not fail if
"The OpenCoin business model is to sell XRP to stimulate the growth of and smooth functioning of Ripple, and to give away XRP to Bitcoiners as one of several ways of marketing the system."

Isn't that the business model for any commercial activity?  You make something and you hope people will want to buy it?

No kidding. As soon as we all figure out ripple, 'quantum physics coin' will be unveiled.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement:

"The OpenCoin business model is to hold XRP and hope they gain value."

It's hard to believe that i find myself debating in jed's defense.  You keep saying "premine" as an intentional falsehood, because you know that Ripple is not based on mining, but you wish to present it as one of the B clones that did premine.

In fact, if we look back, we see that jed's intention was to completely eliminate mining from his project.

Ripple is not a new idea, and long predates Bitcoin. Merging it with B in various ways has been discussed here many times. You seem to be an accomplished developer, and a MisterBig at that! 

You and any other mister big had plenty of time to contact Ryan Fugger, who also had input on how p2p Ripple would be implemented, and do a mining-based Ripple, or join jed's effort and try to shape it.

Once the ripplers release their code, you will be free to be the first ripple clone to fork it, and let the masses decide what's better.

Instead, you decided to arm-chair quarterback jed's project and try to shape it after the release by trying to smear it for real reasons that only you know for sure, which i think is "infinitely more distasteful."

It's not a "scam". There are some legitimate, potentially serious criticisms of the way the project has been managed so far, but anyone calling it a scam is being hyperbolic to the point of being deceptive. It may turn out to be one in the future, but so far they have been nothing but forthcoming about details of the project and have given (debatable) justifications for virtually every one of those details. Whether this is a project the Bitcoin community wants to support is an open question, however.

i heard its a scam but idk

That's not what the Continuum Hypothesis says.

Much the way that the magnitude of the quantity of integers differs from the magnitude of the quantity of real numbers (Continuum Hypothesis), the distribution of Ripple through OpenCoin's centralized authority is uncountably infinitely many more times distasteful than Bitcoin's countably infinite, but decentralized distribution through hashing power.

tl;dr (for math challenged): Ripple's premine of 100b XRP is infinitely more distasteful.

-1 A shill is in the eye of the beholder. If you had showed up in the B world 2 years earlier, you would have seen a handful of "miners" worldwide, "hoarding" Bitcoin by mining it on CPU's, at practically zero difficulty. That hoard they are now selling to the likes of you at 1000's % profit. 

"They" were and still are "systematically bribing" merchants and institutions into accepting Bitcoin through unsolicited donations and 10000Btc-pizza stunts. 

I criticized jed back then for the way he ran MtGox, and the POS it was then. However, i respect him for seeing that mining was wasteful, exclusive and ultimately centralizing, because fewer and fewer people in the world have the capital necessary to "hoard" B by running mining operations...

Perhaps, it's by coincidence, but i think it was also insightful of him to unload MtG as a vestige of the old, centralized, wall-street xchange model, and begin working on ACTUALLY implementing a p2p, minerless, unified platform, which we had often discussed here as "the future", but no one had enough ass to make reality.

No initial currency distribution method would have been acceptable to everyone. However, before you start flaming with the above, you should read at least some of the history recorded in this forum about sub-50-cent Bitcoin days, and reflect on the fact that no one forced you into Bitcoin, and no one is forcing you into Ripple, and that both will stand or fall on their own merit regardless of what their proponents do.   

I'm finally getting my head wrapped around this entire Bitcoin thing, and along comes Ripple. Hmmmmm . . . More to learn. I can't stop.

Can you add a voting choice that "Ripple is MTGOX and I ain't about to get Ripple Goxxxed". 

Yes, my understanding is that developing XRP into a more or less functional currency is a monetization strategy of OpenCoin founders. They have very little choice in this respect, some sort of "pre-mining" is the only viable monetization strategy for distributed platform such as Bitcoin or (potentially) distributed platform such as Ripple.

Bitcoin-based premined altcoins tried this strategy and failed, but they did not bring any essential value to cryptocurrency ecosystem to justify pre-mined bonanza for their founders.

Ripple, on the other hand, has the promise of creating fully decentralized exchange ecosystem as well as decentralized instant payment framework. Thus solving two main problems of Bitcoin community: dependency on fiat exchanges and blockchain bloat. So, they may yet succeed where others utterly failed.

>> (XRP is) meant to pay for service fees. It's not supposed to replace other currencies, or Bitcoin, as the denomination of a Ripple IOU.

Yet they are hording it for themselves and systematically bribing community members on this forum. 

prime example of a shill below:

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2013/02/vpn-accepts-ripple-the-first-true-bitcoin-competitor/



 

It's not a currency because it's not current money - it's a commodity or at best a futures instrument for paying for Ripple fees. And that's what gives it more value than a Bitcoin - XRP actually gives you a Ripple account and some transactions. Think of it akin to Diablo 3 gold or ISK - it gives you play time in a system.
I'm fine with the founders having XRP to spread around to facilitate the growth of the system, as long as they do it for the benefit of the system as a whole. In other words they have a responsibility to set monetary policy.

I would not be fine with it if they were claiming that they deserved that hoard for owning graphics cards that could waste electricity to do needless busywork, and that they'd only part with it if you gave them millions of dollars for it.

Besides, XRP is just - as I said above - meant to pay for service fees. It's not supposed to replace other currencies, or Bitcoin, as the denomination of a Ripple IOU.

To fulfill the role they are meant for, XRP must be a bond rather than a currency!

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1557671

Not only do XRPs function as a currency but they are superior to Bitcoins in some ways. Have a look at the BitStamp order book. XRPs trade against Bitcoins and fiat. How is this not a currency?


Right, and Ripple was designed from the ground up to give the founders a hoard of 100 billion XRP.

Ripple is not really a currency on its own. It's a system to transmit money and debts, denominated in other currencies. And it could involve force, since IOUs can be enforced through social pressure. Ripple IOUs are backed by fiat and friendship, while XRP are valued because they're required for transaction fees. Bitcoin are backed by their own scarcity, but have no utility; unless you distributed BTC to every person on Earth equally in the beginning, there will always be some who have nothing to gain by joining the Bitcoin economy, and this 99.999999% of the world probably never will accept a Bitcoin payment because any technical benefit would be negated by the hoarding.

Everyone knows somebody though, so even native tribes without currency could use Ripple if one of them has the Internet and a way to recharge his phone.

If XRP hoarding is allowed to take place, it would kill Ripple.

Voted "this poll sucks" for this reason.