Topic: Ripple or Bitcoin - page 52. (Read 34131 times)

If Ripple makes it big, then it's good for Bitcoin as it's quite prominently placed in their list of currencies.

However, Chris Larsen does poke at Bitcoin and does see XRPs as Crypto 2.0:

https://ripple.com/blog/interview-with-chris-larsen-co-founder-and-ceo-of-opencoin-inc/

And the "intrinsic value" of Bitcoin does largely come from its usability as a global borderless non-bureaucratic medium of value transfer, so XRPs potentially do eat a lot of market share of that.

The only thing that Bitcoin has that XRP doesn't is the decentralized issuance model via proof-of-work, and that it enables much more anonymity and privacy. Everything in a Ripple account is quite public. But I bet most regular users out there, be it granny having "nothing to hide", or those who send everything of themselves to Apple, Google and Facebook anyway, just couldn't care less.

It really depends on whether you see having a currency that can't be devalued as a benefit or whether you would really prefer to trade in fiat. If you'd prefer to trade in fiat but want fast, irreversible transfers across the globe, then Ripple is probably the better choice. Of course, you may have to pay transfer fees and you have to trust someone to hold your fiat for you. That's the cost of using fiat, and maybe when people see that, it will help make the case for Bitcoin to them.

Well, you don't really have to. If they take fiat on Ripple, you'll be able to pay them with Bitcoins anyway. Seamless Bitcoin gatewaying in both directions is high on our priority list. Of course, if they'd prefer to receive Bitcoins, then Bitcoin (or Bitcoin over Ripple) may be the better choice from them.

I'm not sure what you mean. I think you're viewing Ripple and Bitcoin through an unreasonably competitive lens. Ripple and Bitcoin are not going to be like Coke and Pepsi any time soon, where every victory for one necessarily comes at the expense of the other. Unless one or the other fails, Ripple and Bitcoin will strengthen each other for a long time to come.

Is your point something like, "Ripple is so much better than Bitcoin that it will destroy Bitcoin". If so, thanks! But it will probably be a very long time before either's success will come at the expense of the other, if ever. Ripple and Bitcoin are both going after a huge group of people who don't know or care much about either and every person either system gets interested in crypto-currencies and decentralized payments will help the other too.

If it allows near free transfer of fiat to anyone, anywhere, anytime, then doesn't that remove one of the primary advantages of bitcoin?

What gorunds would we have to sell merchants on bitcoin?

This seems to outweigh any benefit brought by ripple

Actually...if you pick through the Ripple wiki you will see that there will always be use-cases for dedicated exchanges that provide services or pricing models that are simply not possible under Ripple. For example, extremely high transaction volume, millisecond trade times, or flat monthly rates. Rather than shun Ripple, I would expect that traditional institutions embrace it for the added liquidity it provides.

If Ripple really works as advertised, it would be even more revolutionary than Bitcoin.

Not everybody agrees on what money should be.  But everybody agrees on how an exchange works, what an IOU is, and I'm pretty sure everybody would be happy if all this could be done on a unique decentralized infrastructure.   Everybody except for the brokers of the Forex, the New York Stock exchange and stuff like that, of course.

I'm not officially associated with OpenCoin or Ripple, just a fan of the technology. Ripple attempts to solve a number of important problems in a way that Bitcoin never can. Ripple enhances and complements Bitcoin as well. The amount of resources being poured into Ripple / OpenCoin is staggering. It is like a tsunami of work and money that will wash over the entire crypto-currency ecosystem.

Do you have some kind of affiliation or connection Ripple? Just asking because I see a lot of your posts are about Ripple...

Here's the thing: XRP will only have real value if Ripple is successful. As in, enough people need XRPs that they'll be willing to buy XRP, or that their gateways buy XRPs for them behind the scenes. OpenCoin can't just sit on their XRP, they have to work at it.

It's just like pre-paid phone minutes from TMobile won't be worth anything unless TMobile actually provides a working service, at a service level that is competitive.
The point of XRP would be to reward the developers of Ripple, and the guys who run peers that actually perform transactions. The sort of "proof of work" you mention would just reward those who wastes the most electricity, and not those who actually make transactions happen.

Why don't we instead discuss what incentive people would have to run their own Ripple nodes? Perhaps those who buy Ripples from Opencoin and from people who got free Ripple handouts would be the people who have an economical incentive to run their own Ripple nodes? By contributing to the success of Ripple, their hoard of cheap XRP becomes worth more, and they can sell those XRPs to cover the cost of running Ripple nodes. This sounds good at first, but it wouldn't provide an incentive for latecomers to run their own Ripple nodes?

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/how-the-ripple-payment-network-and-xrp-are-different-from-bitcoin-148278

Heh, and OpenCoin hold all XPR and plan to give avay 50%, and keep other 50% to itself.
Imagine Satoshi putting 10 500 000 BTC in coinbase transaction of genesis block.

Here's a "get rick quick scheme" for you, enjoy

See: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/how-the-ripple-payment-network-and-xrp-are-different-from-bitcoin-148278

Investing in a business is not a get rick quick scheme. Venture capitalists don't just pour money into crazy schemes.

JoelKatz, can you give us estimate when ripple server will be opensourced?

Yea adoption, not get rich quick schemes...

 So what? Many people here hold some BTC in the hope it will be very valuable one day. And the stash of XRP allows them to run a business and to stabilise the exchange rate, both of which are great for adoption. And adoption is the number one problem.

Right.  The title of this thread should really be Ripple and Bitcoin.  It's not altogether clear that XRP will catch on as a currency at all.  I see Bitcoin and Ripple as very complementary, and people should focus on making them work together rather than dividing into separate camps.  Ripple does nothing to prevent governments around the world from debasing their currencies (and does nothing to prevent OpenCoin from debasing XRP), so anyone concerned about this will hold Bitcoin.  It can be the digital gold that backs up the Ripple network.  At the same time, we all know how stressed at the seams Bitcoin has become serving as a micro-transaction system.  Let Satoshi Dice and others move their small transactions over to Ripple and let Bitcoin be a store of value.

Giving gateways XRP to give to customers as a way of getting their existing customers interested in Ripple and their new customers Ripple accounts is definitely on our list of possible giveaways.

Except that Ripple serves TWO functions (not just one, like Bitcoin). You can create a Ripple wallet, deposit money into your preferred gateway, send and receive payments in a cryptographically secure way, and redeem money at your preferred gateway, all without ever using XRP as a currency or holding a position in XRP.

People from Bitcoinlandia tend to view other crypto-currency systems with in a myopic way. XRP are there only if you want them. They can be pretty useful to provide liquidity between U.S. dollar denominated IOUs from different gateways (and with the liquidity provider / arbitrageur making a small profit on the trade). Regular users won't see these behind the scenes activities, they will just enjoy the benefits of highly liquid markets and the network effects that Ripple allows.


Right. And as I said you don't have to use XRP as a currency if you don't want to.

Except it seems they have a chicken/egg problem. The whole idea of using a crypto-currency is to avoid counterparty risk to the extreme (along with the speed/portability of digital media). That is the principle that most bitcoiners want in their currency. Here, we have Ripple/OpenCoin saying, hey look, theoretically we would have no incentive to dump our coins, stay closed source & centralized, harm other forks, comply with onerous government demands. However, the counterparty risk still currently exists. I don't care if they say, "We won't do that!". I want to know that they can't do that.

And for all the talk of a limited supply of coins, there is an argument to be made that any holder of a large enough % of total currency can act essentially as a central bank, albeit with an absolute cap. Would I feel better about the Federal Reserve's or Bank of Japan's policy if they had a hard limit on their currency of 100 quintillion dollars/yen? No, because the cap imposes no real limit on the immediate or mid-term future. I feel very uncomfortable using a currency where one entity effectively controls 99.99% of all currency units.

Yep, you're in stage 2 of the 3 stages of Ripple emotion:

1. Denial: "This can't work, and it's closed source!"
2. Anger: "Cool system but, they gave themselves all the money!"
3. Acceptance: "Ripple is going to be huge despite the pre-mine."