Topic: Ripple starts to conquer the world from China - page 4. (Read 10091 times)

A few points that people seems to be confused about.  To be clear from start, I consider Opencoin more or less a scam, not because the tech or design of the system, but because their questionable marketing, and dubious claims.

Opencoin is parasiting on Bitcoin fame. It is foolish to believe their Ripple will help Bitcoin in any way as the much quoted benefits are based on faulty conclusions,
- an automatic distributed currency exchange is complete vaporware. It will require a lot more than technology to work, e.g. like liquidity.
- debt valuation depends on the debtor, just compare mtgox and bitstamp USD credits now and you understand how this must be handled inside a Ripple scheme. If you were to exchange currency you trade credits with one debtor with credits for another debtor. Here is the econ theoretic argument - any tuple of debtors in such a transaction creates its on market, so the credits are not fungible. Liquidity will be very thin.

Ripple is clearly a Bitcoin competitor. Saying it isn't does not change the fact that XRP is another currency, so by any definition it is a competitor. Saying it is not, is sneaky marketing crap.

Ripple is going to make profit by liquidating the XRP they "printed". In effect, if they are pre-printed or not does not matter as they are not in circulation, at this time. Very few XRP are released so Opencoin is in effect a central bank, regulating XRP. This is the whole point of XRP, printing money for Opencoin.

Ripple addresses are extremely easy to use to uncover users identity as you will not have many more than one. In fact, all your credit lines are associated to a single address so it is impossibly impractical to use many addresses to get more privacy. Also, David Schwartz is an old NSA guy. I would never trust anyone who worked there except for Mr. Snowden. Opencoin is funded by VCs and they would likely see their scheme get good traction help by NSA or DHS while bitcoins get outlawed. Opencoins Ripple would actually be The Perfect Surveillance Tool via the public ledger.

To conclude, XRP is superfluous for a ripple like scheme, you could as well use some recognized USD credits, or why not Bitcoin credits, as fees. Also, a public ledger is not ok when you have few-to-one address -> user. The database has to be distributed amoung the creditors and debtors. It should not be global. I really think the bitcoin community could design a better ripple scheme like this, using the some consensus validation which I think is a good design.

Just imagine the future situation when all those AML verifications on BTC Exchange Websites become pay the btc taxes buddy (in my opinion  those will be pretty unfair big %) or you're going to jail because you are money launderer By that time, every household will have a copy of open-sourced Rippled server, like all the people have the copy of Bitcoin client right now. THEN you will see, what I was talking about and why it's important to have exchange INSIDE p2p network.

Nice!

You need a fraction of  $ worth of XRP to run a ripple wallet. Suckers may buy whatever they want, even bitcoins.

Um that would assume each user only buy $1 worth of Ripple?  How about sell $100 to 100,000 users?  or $1,000 to 10,000 users? or $10,000 to 1,000 suckers?

To make tens of millions of dollars they need to attract tens of millions of users. This will not be so easy.

Profitable for whom?  OpenCoin still owns 90%+ of all the coins created.   Even with modest success they stand to make tens of millions of dollars.

DeathAndTaxes is "right on the money" here.

OpenCoin has tried to be "very clever" but they have been *anything but* open.

I think there are too many ripples to be ever profitable

Only in theory. Bitcoin is damn cool and damn useless without currency exchange. By MtGox I mean any centralized exchange.

https://ripple.com/wiki/Rippled#Rippled


You can talk to people who have rippled source code on ripple forum.

I don't have to use MtGox to use Bitcoin.  I have to use the proprietary closed source ripple network to use Ripple.
See the difference?

No they don't.  The ripple server (rippled) is released as binary only.  Nobody has a copy of the source code except OpenCoin, Inc.   Even if someone did it would be no different than stealing source code from Microsoft.  It continues to remain the property of the owner and that owner could seek legal action against those who fraudulently use, modify, or distribute it.  If OpenCoin went bankrupt before releasing the source code under an open source license the assets of OpenCoin could be bought by another company say PayPal for the sole purpose of killing the project.

Which the server IS otherwise it would include a copy of the source code and a open license.

You do understand that in contract law there is the concept of default provisions.  Unless otherwise licensed the code and any resulting binaries are the property of OpenCoin, Inc.   

Likewise lets say Microsoft's servers got hacked and someone released a complete copy of the windows source code.  It wouldn't be open source.  The source code would still belong to Microsoft, they would have the legal authority to go after those who distribute and modify it.  Now people could (and likely would) make unauthorized copies but unless the source code is licensed using an open license it remains the property of the owner.  The source code remains the property of OpenCoin, the haven't licensed it.  The server is a closed source, and proprietary.

Hundred different groups have rippled sources. What is a problem with bugfixes, improvements and enhancements?

MtGox
Closed Source, Not Beta

MWHAHAHAHA!

With no bugfixes, improvements, enhancements ever?  No the network wouldn't insta-die but imagine Satoshi had kept Bitcoin closed source and then disapeared.  Do you think Bitcoin would have flourished?

What will stop those who are running servers now continue to do it?

I've been watching what is going on in OpenCoin lately and they are constantly hiring new developers, designers... They started to communicate on their forum, 5 days ago they got their new Director of Communication, new videos are appearing, website is redesigned, I have an impression that they are in a hurry. I think they are in a hurry because they are preparing something for Money2020:

http://www.money2020.com/
https://ripple.com/blog/win-free-tickets-to-the-exclusive-money2020-ripple-developer-conference-and-50000-xrp/

They have a long list of speakers:
Welcome and Introduction – Chris Larsen, CEO
Ripple Technical Overview – Stefan Thomas, CTO
Integrating with Ripple for Merchants and Gateways – Bob Way, Integration Engineer and Brian Keller-Heikkila, CTO of ZipZap, Inc.
Ripple Architecture and Advanced Uses – David Schwartz, Chief Cryptographer and Denis Kiselev, Founder and CEO of SnapSwap, Inc.
and at the last day a Ripple Dev Con will occur.

Dont juggle mister. Closed source software is one which is released under closed license.