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Topic: Ripple vs Bitcoin - page 5. (Read 13331 times)

member
Activity: 102
Merit: 10
April 08, 2014, 10:47:29 AM
what is good about ripple? why would i use it? Huh

Depends on where you're coming from. If you're a bitcoin user, its main benefit is as a distributed fiat / crypto exchange system. In the future, given enough adoption, it can also function as a Bitpay + reverse Bitpay system.

Exactly. Its not a competitor to bitcoin. Ripple is different in many ways and plays a different role. Ripple is currency agnostic, what means that you can use it to trade whatever you want. For bitcoiners, for example, where many tx right now happens off-blockchain, based on trust relationships with exchanges and payment processors, ripple is a good option because is puts sellers and buyers from different exchanges in the same place. Bitstamp is a ripple gateway, so you can withdraw BTC or USD to your ripple wallet and from there, place orders to buy from other entities (individuals or companies), like Justcoin or Kraken.
If you don't like cryptos, you can use ripple to trade FIAT currencies, Gold, dymes, Forever Stamps, etc.

Ripple brings a decentralised discovering and trading system for whatever people think has value, no reason to hate it.

People who might hate ripple are entrepreneurs who are over committed to a "there must be only one" philosophy, very similar to actual bankers philosophy.
legendary
Activity: 1232
Merit: 1001
mining is so 2012-2013
April 08, 2014, 08:47:54 AM

1) Ripple predates bitcoin
2) *Ripple Labs* is trying to get the big business and banks behind it -- bu tremember Ripple Labs is approximately 0% of the network.  Some of the rest of the network have given up on it.  Some of the rest of the network is working to get big business and banks behind it.  Some of the network is trying to make things work in house, between friends or in other situations that have nothing to do with big business.   And guess what?  The latter two categories outweigh ripple labs' efforts by several orders of magnitude.   Like Bitcoin, Ripple is not a business.  It's a collection of communities and businesses.  It's basically a very small economy.  That's like saying "Guatemala is trying to get big business and banks to invest"....sure it's probably true, that the government of Guatamala does these things but this ignores the vast majority of effort and projects undergone in that economy.  "A major mover with the right backing" cannot outmove a billion chinese people realizing that Ripple is useful to them in organizing their lives without government.  That's where we're trying to go.

3) Stop calling them 2.0 platforms.  Bitcoin 1.0 isn't released, and there will, someday be a Bitcoin 2.0, and these platforms are not that.  This is abuse of version numbers for political reasons.
 

1. Some distant relative of Ripple that absolutely doesn't resemble Ripple of today was around before.  But the architect of the modern Ripple "Jed McCaleb" didn't start writing code until 2011, long after bitcoin started and he has stated himself that he wanted Ripple to be what Bitcoin wasn't.  From Wikipedia, "This led to the development of a new Ripple system in 2011 by Jed McCaleb. It was designed to eliminate Bitcoin's reliance on centralized exchanges, use less electricity than Bitcoin, and perform transactions much more quickly than Bitcoin."  So yes, Ripple as we know it came after Bitcoin and was a response to it. 

2. Without the work that Ripple Labs has done, there would be 0 Ripple!  Oh yeah, and by the way, who owns most of the Ripple?  That is a pretty big deal.  Usually if somebody owns more than half of the money, they also hold the keys.  I am sure Ripple Labs is doing more.  I am just guessing they are monitoring the network and trying to secure it.  I am also just guessing to they are working and testing new versions of code that will later be released with their stamp of approval.   

3.  Bitcoin was the first generation cryptocurrency using the blockchain.  There are lots of other first generation coins.  The 1.0 and 2.0 doesn't refer to version release numbers, it refers to generations of technology.  Since Ripple was not a clone of Bitcoin but was redesigned from the ground up to be a completely different platform (yes, it is a platform) that is more robust, handles more processes, and is quicker and easier, it represents a generational shift in between the first generation platforms.  So, yes it is a second generation platform but instead of writing "second generational platform", it is much easier to say "2.0".  There are many others including CounterParty, MasterCoin, Bitshares, and NXT.  Ethereum will at least be a 2.0 and maybe even a 3.0 depending on how a person looks at it.  By the way, "3.0" symbolizes for "third generation platform". 
legendary
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1004
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
April 07, 2014, 08:55:42 PM
so far, NO ONE can explain even one benefit of Ripple.  is this a joke?

I asked you a question so I could address your concerns - the fact that you're ignoring me and just postulating the lack of benefits of Ripple suggests you have an agenda.

I didn't see the question , what is the question
donator
Activity: 1736
Merit: 1006
Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.
April 07, 2014, 08:55:06 PM
Well, Satoshi for one. Cryptocurrency developers are growing geometrically. Who knows who will be the next coding superstar? Privacy is an important subject to many of them.
Satoshi is gone for over 3 years now
OMG! How did he die? Or maybe you mean they are using their own names now and are working atomically on Bitcoin and its derivatives. Parallel projects don't hurt Bitcoin. Their failures make Bitcoin look stronger. Many of their new ideas can still be incorporated into Bitcoin.
donator
Activity: 1736
Merit: 1006
Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.
April 07, 2014, 08:48:23 PM
Why did Ripple Labs choose to create XRP rather than use Bitcoin to secure their transactions?
Some reasons I can think of (I do not work for or am affiliated with Ripple Labs by the way, so these are just what I think their reasons are):

BTC are very slow (orders of magnitude slower) to confirm compared to Ripple's ledgers.

Ripple has a very low transaction rate at the moment and very few gateways and validators compared to Bitcoin. It's too soon to tell which would be faster on equal footing. Normal purchases are reasonably assured with zero confirmations.

Jed said from the beginning he doesn't like the idea of burning electricity to secure the network.
Electrophobia?

Ripple validators would need to track the ledger _and_ the Bitcoin block chain.

That depends on what you are using Bitcoin for. Coordinating an attack on the ledger and on Stratum would be very difficult, so you wouldn't need a blockchain to scrub.

Bitcoin scales poorly, if transactions on Ripple were done on Bitcoin, transaction volume would go through the roof (reminds me that I have to collect stats about transaction volume), already now Ripple likely has a higher transaction volume than Bitcoin, which is currently hard capped at less than 10 TX/s (imagine being able to only do 10 trades globally per second!)

That's not stopping Colored Coin, Mastercoin, and Counterparty from developing layers over Bitcoin. Bitcoin is growing organically. A baby cheetah does not run 60 mph. Bitcoin is capable of outprocessing every other centralized payment system when the block size limit is increased.

Bitcoin transactions are crazy expensive (https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/5044482 estimates one typical transaction to cost about 0.8 mBTC).

Bitcoin doesn't need to replace every face to face transaction, but even if it did, compared to other payment systems, it is cheap. Typical transaction fees tend to be 0.1 to 0.3 mBTC. It's possible for such an exception as 0.8 mBTC, but wallet management with coin control will mitigate these costs when smarter wallets are created.


Marketing reasons probably too, also even though it is improving, BTC don't have the best rep out there.

They said the same thing about the internet in the mid '90s. There is no such thing as bad publicity.

It would be kinda hard to get banks to buy BTC first to transact something on Ripple, a fact that Mastercoin, Counterparty et.al. are going to find out soon enough.

Credit unions take care of their community and care about their members. They will adapt to what best servos their membership. But I presume you mean central banks and investment banks. Their services will no longer be required. Crowd funding is the future. There are plenty of jobs for bank employees in the food service industry.

Of course also the possibility to make/earn money from the system while being able to go fully open source with it asap (they do not earn money by providing the infrastructure or software, they earn money by people using their product and they hope for the network effect to kick in so there is no fork emerging that is more popular than their network)
Motivating development is a double edge sword. Financial incentives create observational bias due to the strong emotional nature of those invested. That's why I advocate a focus on Bitcoin in order to share resources and gain from the greater adoption rather than early adoption speculation. Bitcoin has been growing exponentially and with each year it gains more momentum.

They messed up a few things too by the way, calling XRP "ripples" is what bugs me most. Instead of calling the smallest unit (1 µXRP) "drop", they should have jsut called the whole currency "droplets", "waves" or something else. Especially their first target market (this forum) did simply treat it as another altcoin and by having the same name, it messed up a lot imho. (It's like a large bitcoin exchange calling itself "Bitcoin" - just see the confusion with The Block Chain and blockchain.info already)

Naming conventions tend to be organic. In my opinion, the most significant quantity of bitcoins is the minimal dust unit of 5300 Satoshis (plus transaction fee) which should be the base unit for now. They will probably be the base units of Colored Coins.
hero member
Activity: 672
Merit: 500
April 07, 2014, 08:17:40 PM
I see Ripple also tried their own quasi-mining attempt with the Computing for Good project.  But like everything else they do, it fails before it even gets off the ground.

What are you talking about? It has been off the ground for months, it only got temporarily halted because a) the distribution was not fair b) IBM revamped the website which messed with RippleLab's code

We've got ourselves another Bitcoin retard!

Quote
Team,

We’re writing to you with the sad news that we have decided to phase out the Computing for Good giveaway--in its current form--over the next month. This decision was not easy.

Quote
We’re winding down the giveaway during April 2014, and will first shut off new user registration, and then slowly decrease the amount of daily distributed XRP.

https://ripple.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6343

I see nothing temporary about this.  Show me where the project is going to continue.
legendary
Activity: 2618
Merit: 1006
April 07, 2014, 06:48:45 PM
Well, Satoshi for one. Cryptocurrency developers are growing geometrically. Who knows who will be the next coding superstar? Privacy is an important subject to many of them.
Satoshi is gone for over 3 years now (he was one of the very few anonymous core devs) and developer numbers seem to grow horizontally (everyone is creating their own forks left and right), not so much vertically (developing "deeper" into the system) unfortunately. This is a bit off-topic though...
donator
Activity: 1736
Merit: 1006
Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.
April 07, 2014, 06:32:51 PM
How will Ripple Labs comply with government sanctions?
Similar to "sanctioning" the Bitcoin foundation there is not a lot to "sanction" at Ripple Labs to begin with... the network can and will go on, no matter what RL does.

I guess they would just follow whatever sanction hits them, though I don't see it having any effect on Ripple itself.
So if Ripple Labs is shut down, the network will go on just fine and all transactions will be accounted for in the ledger?

How will Ripple Labs comply with government sanctions?

How do any core bitcoin developers left in the US intend to comply with government sanctions?
It doesn't matter where Bitcoin core developers are if they stay anonymous.

Yeah but the bitcoin core developers do not seem to be mostly anonymous.
Well, Satoshi for one. Cryptocurrency developers are growing geometrically. Who knows who will be the next coding superstar? Privacy is an important subject to many of them.
NWO
sr. member
Activity: 392
Merit: 250
April 07, 2014, 06:30:02 PM
Ripple is centralized....

Bitcoin is not centralized....

Bitcoin is 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000^100000000000 times better than Ripple.

Actually you're an alt account noob.

Mining has become increasingly centralized and exchanges are centralized.
sr. member
Activity: 252
Merit: 250
April 07, 2014, 06:21:54 PM
How will Ripple Labs comply with government sanctions?
Similar to "sanctioning" the Bitcoin foundation there is not a lot to "sanction" at Ripple Labs to begin with... the network can and will go on, no matter what RL does.

I guess they would just follow whatever sanction hits them, though I don't see it having any effect on Ripple itself.
So if Ripple Labs is shut down, the network will go on just fine and all transactions will be accounted for in the ledger?

How will Ripple Labs comply with government sanctions?

How do any core bitcoin developers left in the US intend to comply with government sanctions?
It doesn't matter where Bitcoin core developers are if they stay anonymous.

Yeah but the bitcoin core developers do not seem to be mostly anonymous.
sr. member
Activity: 252
Merit: 250
April 07, 2014, 06:20:33 PM
...
So who "controls" the ripple protocol. You talk about nodes. Bitcoin is controlled by a democracy of hash power. Who can implement/control the ripple protocol?

Who 'controls' TCP/IP?  Protocols are not 'controlled'.  If you speak the protocol to a node on the network, the network will listen to you, and you become part of it.  Ripple is not really that democratic, it is more consensus-based.  This might be a little hard to wrap your head around, but it can work.
sr. member
Activity: 787
Merit: 250
April 07, 2014, 05:47:45 PM
sr. member
Activity: 294
Merit: 250
April 07, 2014, 02:34:23 PM
Ripple is centralized....

Bitcoin is not centralized....

Bitcoin is 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000^100000000000 times better than Ripple.
legendary
Activity: 2618
Merit: 1006
April 07, 2014, 02:14:28 PM
How will Ripple Labs comply with government sanctions?
Similar to "sanctioning" the Bitcoin foundation there is not a lot to "sanction" at Ripple Labs to begin with... the network can and will go on, no matter what RL does.

I guess they would just follow whatever sanction hits them, though I don't see it having any effect on Ripple itself.
So if Ripple Labs is shut down, the network will go on just fine and all transactions will be accounted for in the ledger?
Yes, anyone can run rippled and be a validator. There might be some stirup because currently a lot of people by default have their validators in their config files and probably didn't change that, but that's all. It's like freenet going down back in the day when Bitcoin was bootstrapped via IRC - you'd have to add IPs manally to connect to the swarm again, then it works again. All mining pools in the US going down at once would probably cause a longer outage on Bitcoin than RL disappearing from Ripple.
donator
Activity: 1736
Merit: 1006
Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.
April 07, 2014, 02:04:21 PM
How will Ripple Labs comply with government sanctions?
Similar to "sanctioning" the Bitcoin foundation there is not a lot to "sanction" at Ripple Labs to begin with... the network can and will go on, no matter what RL does.

I guess they would just follow whatever sanction hits them, though I don't see it having any effect on Ripple itself.
So if Ripple Labs is shut down, the network will go on just fine and all transactions will be accounted for in the ledger?

How will Ripple Labs comply with government sanctions?

How do any core bitcoin developers left in the US intend to comply with government sanctions?
It doesn't matter where Bitcoin core developers are if they stay anonymous.
sr. member
Activity: 252
Merit: 250
April 07, 2014, 01:57:06 PM
How will Ripple Labs comply with government sanctions?

How do any core bitcoin developers left in the US intend to comply with government sanctions?
legendary
Activity: 2618
Merit: 1006
April 07, 2014, 01:55:29 PM
How will Ripple Labs comply with government sanctions?
Similar to "sanctioning" the Bitcoin foundation there is not a lot to "sanction" at Ripple Labs to begin with... the network can and will go on, no matter what RL does.

I guess they would just follow whatever sanction hits them, though I don't see it having any effect on Ripple itself.
sr. member
Activity: 252
Merit: 250
April 07, 2014, 01:53:32 PM
Why did Ripple Labs choose to create XRP rather than use Bitcoin to secure their transactions?

1) They can make Millions/Billions of $$$ by creating XRP
2) Some XRP gets destroyed with every transaction.

3) They can make XRP worthless and distribute it to every human being on earth once the short term gains from XRP have been realized to them.  You can't do that with bitcoin.
sr. member
Activity: 252
Merit: 250
April 07, 2014, 01:50:17 PM
Right now as a system, bitcoin is better because it is accepted by more merchants and has been around longer and despite its flaws is trusted better.

Ripple has been designed with a lot more reflection on what bitcoin could have been.  It is not perfect and right now isn't all that userful, but it is a far more robust and clean platform.  Ripple is trying to get big business and major banks behind it.  If it does this, it will very quickly over take bitcoin because at that point it will do everything bitcoin does and more and will people will be able to use bitcoin within the Ripple system.  This is all IF IF IF Ripple can get its support of major institutions and banks.  It seems to me that they have something to gain, once many other banks are on board, but nobody wants to be first to something like this.  It is only valuable with many players.  It is a good ole catch 22.  It will only work if it has people and then it will be valuable, but nobody wants to be apart of it if it has no value and no outside support.  

There will be other competitors too, as others have mentioned NXT or Etherium, both of which have their pluses and minuses.  Maybe Bitshares or CounterParty.  One thing is clear to me, in the coming years Bitcoin will be a gold standard for the 2.0s platforms.  Sooner or later a 2.0 will be way more powerful though.  Too many things to know for sure.  A major mover with the right backing can still win this.  

1) Ripple predates bitcoin
2) *Ripple Labs* is trying to get the big business and banks behind it -- bu tremember Ripple Labs is approximately 0% of the network.  Some of the rest of the network have given up on it.  Some of the rest of the network is working to get big business and banks behind it.  Some of the network is trying to make things work in house, between friends or in other situations that have nothing to do with big business.   And guess what?  The latter two categories outweigh ripple labs' efforts by several orders of magnitude.   Like Bitcoin, Ripple is not a business.  It's a collection of communities and businesses.  It's basically a very small economy.  That's like saying "Guatemala is trying to get big business and banks to invest"....sure it's probably true, that the government of Guatamala does these things but this ignores the vast majority of effort and projects undergone in that economy.  "A major mover with the right backing" cannot outmove a billion chinese people realizing that Ripple is useful to them in organizing their lives without government.  That's where we're trying to go.

3) Stop calling them 2.0 platforms.  Bitcoin 1.0 isn't released, and there will, someday be a Bitcoin 2.0, and these platforms are not that.  This is abuse of version numbers for political reasons.
 
sr. member
Activity: 252
Merit: 250
April 07, 2014, 01:41:38 PM
I see Ripple also tried their own quasi-mining attempt with the Computing for Good project.  But like everything else they do, it fails before it even gets off the ground.

While CFG was not a very good final outcome for sure, and you are absolutely correct to point it out as something that didn't go well...

1) They did produce valid results -- computing cycles were, in fact used for good.  This isn't a 'failure' just not as much as a success as we both might like.
2) It's unclear who 'they' is.  If 'they' means *the entire ripple network* then you're completely off your rocker.  A great deal of successful transactions have occurred, although nothing close to the amount that the bitcoin network has allowed, but still a huge amount of benefits of trade.  I have personally done quite well, and have accomplished projects I would have thought impossible without it.  

Good outcomes have come out of ripple -- we just need more of them.
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