Topic: Ripple is not a scam - and you may be making yourself vulnerable to actual scams (Read 10274 times)

Ripple is not crypto money - scam from bankers and government.
Ripple - is not open source;
Ripple - Each Ripple node is controlled by a private commercial company. It is centralized as a bank or PayPal. Not a decentralized currency.
Ripple - totally 100% with the pre-release issued by Ripple Labs, 65% were left to themselves and 35% sold;
Ripple - not anonymous;
Ripple - emission is possible in unlimited quantities;
Ripple - created by the richest states and banks of the world on the money of monopoly oligarchs, with one purpose to destroy and devalue in the public eye the world of crypto-currencies.
 It is very difficult to destroy bitokoyn, because it is decentralized. Everyone who manages the bitcoins client is peer and conducts transactions around, and everyone who picks up votes with their hashing. Bitcomoin group of kernel developers could be arrested, but new developers will just get the better.
 Take a look at all Bitcoin services that were hacked. MtGox. Bitcoinica. MyBitcoin. InstaWallet. You might lose bitkoyny, which you deposited there - debt - but if you kept the real bitkoy in their purse, they were safe. When a Ripple gateway or currency issuer is hacked, because you can only hold BTC and, for example, debt, you lose them.
   But with Ripple, all that's required is a raid-like what happened to Liberty Dollar-to kill the entire network because of its centralization. The update can be ejected to destroy all XRP and transactions - and this will work, because one object has 51% of the attack on the network. This simply can not be done with Bitcoin, if only with an international attack on mine pool operators, and when this happens, people will simply switch to solo development.
  Ripple supporters (for example, OpenCoin Inc employees who speak their own views) point to small default values that have not been disconnected from the network. Of course, this will not happen. But a sufficiently large default from the lock will lead to a crash - there is a critical mass
 States are afraid of crypto-currencies and criticize them. Ripple is not criticized by the authorities, states, politicians and bankers! You will not hear anything bad about Ripple from them.
 For several years Ripple will eat all the main crypto-currencies - this is the black hole of the crypto-currency market, launched by states and banks. The total capitalization of the crypto-currency market will remain insignificant, and the Ripple capitalization will grow due to the exhaustion of money from other crypto-currencies. When banks artificially depreciate the world's major crypto-currencies, with the help of Ripple, there will then be an unrestricted release of the Ripple (because of its centralization) and the owners' funds will also be depreciated with the help of huge inflation, and subsequently unlimited emissions Ripple will be completely destroyed by banks and their governments.
This will allow states to declare crypto money outlawed and never allow to return to private money and crypt.

 I’m an early adopter of Ripple – having used it before it was publicly announced – but I need to point out what the inherit flaws are, and why Ripple is arguably a scam.
I could have taken my free XRPs and posted propaganda in support of Ripple, but that’s not the kind of person I am. I want to expose the world to the fraud of Ripple and OpenCoin Inc – what you will never see on the homepage.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2358207

The Bitcoin bridge is operated by Bitstamp, get in contact with them and/or read the sample code (on github) on how to code bridges and the documentation (on the wiki) on which APIs to use.

https://ripple.com/wiki/Services_API#Outbound_bridges and articles about the Federation API.

I didn't truly think it was really RippleLabs that built bridges but that perhaps it promoted such activity and collaborated with people who do it, just as with gateways.  The Bitcoin bridge I'm aware of is completely free to use (according to how I understand it anyway, though I haven't tried it because I don't hold on to significant bitcoins for long) and so its purpose presumably is to promote Ripple (or less likely, because less needed, Bitcoin).  Similarly, a Peercoin bridge would help promote both Ripple and Peercoin, but then again maybe RippleLabs is primarily interested in promoting xrp. 

Gateways are only needed in the near term. In the big picture...long term...they are merely transition mechanisms.

Expand your vision just a tad ... If all of the financial systems are federated under one umbrella (the eventuality of the Ripple protocol), why would you ever pull your money out of the system? For cash?...OK I use that sometimes, but that's less than 1% of ALL of my annual expenditures. (and it's getting less and less each year) Can you give me one reason why your Chinese farmer would want his money COMPLETE off the financial grid when Ripple wallets are as ubiquitous as email addresses?

I mean, think about it. EVERYONE having a free wallet ... just as everyone has free email. Your employer pays you directly. Your iPhone app pays for meals at McDonald's instantly. Businesses like Western Union and Money Gram will go the way of Blockbuster and Borders Bookstore. Banks will have to shift their revenue stream focus to mortgages and loans and away from inefficient payment systems like checks, money orders and credit cards. 

I don't know how old you are, but do you remember how fast email spread? or the world wide web? or the use of search engines? or instant messaging? or Facebook? Ripple is free, open source, and has massive utilitarian value. It will go like wildfire after Beta testing is finished.

That is not the job of RippleLabs and that is the reason why Ripple is built as distributed ledger system instead of merely running centralized like PayPal: You can build this bridge yourself, proof to others that they can trust you and then operate the bridge and gateway on your own.

It is not RippleLabs business model to build every conceivable currency and storage facility there is out there, Ripple is a building block and protocol, not a company. RL doesn't operate gateways, they don't earn fees and they don't charge anything for their software.

That's the idea, but there would be other fees, because gateways can charge fees for letting IOUs change hands. Competition would be needed to ensure reasonable prices.

Maybe Ripple Labs should set up a Bridge for Peercoin, my favorite currency  .

Also, I suppose if Ripple really takes off and proves to be very secure, then the exchanged money could just stay in the network, much as I almost never handle cash these days, and my money just stays in the "banking network" of credit card and bank accounts. Then the entry/exit fee is less objectionable.  I know it is trivial in your 100 euro transfer example, but if the Ripple network becomes a frequent mechanism of exchange, then that fee would add up to be significant. Less than what merchants pay for credit card use but not by an enormous lot.

Okay, that makes sense.  It would be a nice system for people who work in a foreign country for only a short time and don't want to set up a local bank account, which can be a hassle and confusing especially if one doesn't speak the language well. Or for students, etc.  The bank account also usually comes with fees.  In any case I never had the impression that Ripple was a scam, and I hope it ends up being successful and useful.

I'm talking with my neighbour, who is a Turkish entrepreneur, about setting up something like that. Since bank accounts are free for private citizens in the Netherlands everybody has one, so that's not the problem.


Opening a small shop to handle cash transactions wouldn't be a problem. The shop could then deal with the gateway, or maybe directly buy BTC.


Withdrawing from a gateway to the Turkish banking system is possible, but then you still incur wire transfer fees. That's not prohibitive for large amounts, but then you lose the advantage of using a crypto intermediary.


In the long term the most convenient thing would be to issue EUR IOUs and TRY IOUs (or to use those issued by some reputable third party) and to use the distributed exchange that's built into Ripple, but that will take a lot of work to deal with compliance.

That's true, and I became interested in bitcoin in part because I wanted to transfer small amounts internationally and the wire transfer fees seemed excessive. So either Ripple or the bitcoin+exchange method is much better than wire transfer, but Ripple isn't better than simply using Bitcoin as intermediate, unless the migrant doesn't have a bank account in the Netherlands and wants to transfer his cash euros to Turkey, and a local Ripple gateway accepted his cash.  But there are not very many gateways at the moment even for bank transfers; haven't researched how many accept cash for entry into the ripple network though I assume eventually they will.  And if he is using a Gateway via a bank account in the EU (I think a legal migrant could get an account easily), then it would be better to use the exchanges I think, for a free or cheap SEPA transfer.  Maybe depends on whether the folks back home can retrieve currency from an exchange more readily than from a Gateway.  Also, I like being in charge of the crypto intermediate, when I buy it and when I sell it.  I don't think that's the point at which Ripple Labs profits (don't understand enough to know for sure, but my understanding is it automatically uses the market rates) but it is leaving it up to luck more so than if I have control of the timing.  I suppose that's less of an issue when/if crypto values become less volatile, as will likely be the case.

I'm very much a "penny pincher" and pay lots of attention to fees, but my guess is, so would a Turkish migrant shipping that 100 euros home.

The two main use cases I see at the moment are remittances and buying / selling Bitcoin. A Turkish migrant in the Netherlands who wants to wire 100 euros home is faced with a minimum fee of 15 euros. By contrast, sending 10,000 euros costs 20 euros, but few people send such large amounts.

If this takes off, I expect economies of scale and competition to drive down prices considerably.

Ripple is interesting but it seems too expensive to be the best crypto system for international transfers, which seems to be its primary purpose.  I can transfer money (fiat or crypto) to/from the exchanges that I like to use either for free or very low fee.  But it seems the cost of putting money in and getting it back out of the ripple network totals ~2%.  Still probably lower than the old fashioned mechanisms of currency exchange or transfer, but I think it is too high, especially for larger amounts.  If I factor in the commission at exchanges, the cost doing currency exchange or international transfer using bitcoin instead of Ripple is about half that or even less, depending on volume exchanged.  Except the cost may even be negative if one times it (lucks it) such that one makes a little money via increase in btc value when converting back to fiat.  So, I think the gateway entry/exit fee needs to be much lower.  But of course the Ripple system primarily makes money on that fee (and I think that's why Ripple Labs partners with the Gateways....). Eventually (after the giveaway period) it will make some money selling xrp, but really the entry/exit fee is where the profit is and why there was so much interest in investment from Silicon Valley -- or why else, am I misunderstanding the system and what motivated it? So my guess is using exchanges will remain cheaper (and easier to understand).  Some of the exchanges I use have made a very good impression on me, and I think these will have long-term success and good reliability. As for more routine payment uses (that is, not currency exchange or international transfer), like buying that cheeseburger at McDonalds, why would anyone want to incur a ~2% expense (well, ~1% for customer, ~1% for merchant)? The cost of the "great convenience" and "simplicity" of paying via the ripple network?  But I can see it as being an early beta for something that will transition into a cheaper and simpler system.

Well, dealing with stuff that is not designed to be digital (e.g. most currencies on that planet) makes it really hard to apply the same measures as Bitcoin. After all, that's probably one of the reasons Bitcoin was invented in the first place.

Ripple definitely improves dealing with arbitrary assets, imho as much as possible - maybe in the future even more might be possible (BitShares for example tries to do something that goes potentially beyond IOUs), for the moment it seems to be one of the best and most developed solutions out there.


Ripple can be MUCH easier explained and understood (how it works + the use cases) if you compare it to BitPay, not Bitcoin.

Some potential use case of Bitcoin seems to be for some people to act somehow like XRP in the global financial system (e.g. you buy BTC for USD, send them back home to Egypt and sell them for your local currency there), maybe that's why they don't see the use case for Ripple itself too or feel that it threatens BTC by making XRP more useful than BTC on their system.

I have the sentiment that I wish the problems I point out with Ripple didn't exist and that it is just my imagination / overskepticism / whatever.  I sincerely hope someone proves me wrong.  I believe that the problem Ripple sets out to solve is really one worth solving, I'm just not convinced Ripple fits.

I suppose a lot of people say the same thing about Bitcoin, and relative to the same argument, I'm on the other side of the camp.  (though wouldn't be opposed to a better bitcoin with some new breakthrough as groundbreaking as the block chain)

For me the killer use case was and is as a distributed exchange for buying / selling Bitcoin. I learned about it just after I had learned of Bitcoin, some time in April I think. It may have been in this article: Ripple, a Peer-to-Peer Financing Network, Could Make Bitcoin Great (Or Destroy It)

Another very promising one is remittance payments by migrant workers.

I like it. I am mining on it. I invest a little now becose is cheap.

You can find some Ripple papers and videos here:

• https://ripple.com/wiki/Press_and_announcements

You're absolutely wrong, in general. I read the Bitcoin paper a few years ago and I largely understood it. I read what I could find about Ripple a year or so ago, and I didn't really understand it, at least not in a big picture "How will I use this?" and "How does this entire system work?" sense. Granted I understand Bitcoin much better now than I did after reading the paper, but in terms of relative level of understanding after reading through what I was provided by the designer, it was simply night and day. That is a fact.

There was no particular difference between the two in terms of relative lack of interest, lack of time,  denial, or massive cognitive dissonance, nor am I being dishonest.

EDIT: I will clarify this a bit. I believe that I could possibly understand Ripple if I put in the effort to study it and work through the details. The problem is that I have no particular reason do to so. Giving me a few thousand free Ripples isn't enough incentive for me to care about this one out of many apparently-similar competing solutions. The difference with Bitcoin was: a) it was clear that it did something fundamentally new (as opposed to one-of-many or arguably-better), and b) I didn't need to put in that effort, because it was just easier to understand.

Anyone who can understand Bitcoin and doesn't understand Ripple isn't really trying. Could be lack of interest, lack of time, could be denial or massive cognitive dissonance, could be dishonesty.

No, that's the huge difference people are explaining, and you keep ignoring. It does not "take time" for someone to understand Bitcoin to a reasonable extent. Someone with a basic understanding of cryptography and computers can read the original Bitcoin paper from five years ago (as I did 3 years ago) and understand it pretty well. There is no such 8-page Ripple paper.