Topic: Was Ripple ahead of its time? (Read 1462 times)

Not really. Price would crash and all, sure, but I think it would stabilize at some point. BTC went over 1000USD before and now is around a third of that. It still exists.

From what I understand that doesn't matter. You can run your own rippled and the network stays up even if Ripple Labs goes down.

You didn't get the point. The file sharing protocols developed by Napster are in use everywhere and Big Copyright Industry has yielded and admitted defeat. FBI, NSA etc. can and does hurt people (including people like Kim Dotcom and all those who used megaupload for file sharing (e.g. game mods)), but that does not mean they are winning. They cannot and will not stop and destroy block chain ecosystems any more than they stopped and destroyed file sharing protocols. And Kim Dotcom is still in business and Snowden is still free.

Don't be a Crypto Nerd.  FBI and security agencies don't really care about this sort of details.  It's like saying Kim Dotcom couldn't go to jail because his site went defunct.  All these Ethereum developers are known people who can be tracked down and put into prison, especially if they reside in USA / Canada.

"Napster" - p2p file sharing - won, Copyright industry lost (which means win-win ). It's not about individual companies but about the tech and community.

On which big toes do you expect Ethereum (basically a new programming language) to step?

On more general level, Ripple/Stellar can this day and age of global transition serve a useful role as a link between traditional banking and cryptocurrencies. There is also demand for good mediums between various block chain ecosystems. Ripple/Stellar has many advantages over single third party exchange markets, but of course they are not the final word in that role - gateway idea is not limited to either of them and can and will be developed around AE of any platform.

Ripple is a private startup company selling a product mainly to financial industry and intrabank transactions, in that sense XRP can be a good investment for profit making. As ordinary user, I don't like it and the little experience I have from Ripple gateways left me mostly disgusted.

I like Stellar much better, at least the non-profit ideology, active education efforts and the global community being born from Facebook spreading. Community is the all important distinction between "same product" (ie digital Hawala), Ripple is financial tool for OECD financial industry,  Stellar still has at least a chance to become community driven global network. if they succeed making their gateway building very easy and simple so that ordinary people everywhere can participate. One question I have not seen rised, what additional value does digital Hawala offer compared to traditional Hawala? After 9/11 Bush admin went after Hawala, but AFAIK didn't manage to do any damage to it. Digital Hawala seems to me actually much more vulnerable than the traditional Hawala.

You do realize that Napster back in the day had huge investments from private funds and banks, correct?  It doesn't matter what banks or funds are backing what, it's what the FBI thinks.

If Ripple gets too big and gets too much attention it is inevitably going to be raided by the FBI on accusation of money laundering, tax evasion, drug facilitation or enabling crimes, it's almost guaranteed.

The legal compliance departments of 3 banks and counting disagree with this.

Actually the staff owns another 20 billion more for themselves.  If they can take Charlie Shrem's BTC - they can easily throw Jed into a jail cell with gangbangers and seize his computers and auction it off.


Really Ripple is such a joke if you think about it - it's a Napster waiting to happen, same with Ethereum.  Development teams should remain anonymous unless they live in a country like Japan or Denmark which is pro-BTC.

Yes, it was a lot ahead of its time. And yes, all other cryptos that call them selves 2.0 are trying to copy Ripple.

But Ripple doesnt leave competition in the dust, it empowers all competition not just in crypto but in fiat as well. If Ripple succeeds then all cryptos succeed as they will all finally get usage.

The company is called Ripple Labs and a currency doesn't "die" if it looses value compared to other currencies (otherwise BTC for example would have died already several times and have been "reborn").

I guess it definitely would loose value, that however doesn't mean that XRP would be "dead". Also people actually using Ripple often don't hold (serious amounts of) XRP, unless they are speculating on it. They are quite irrelevant to the functioning of the network itself, so while speculators would be pissed, it wouldn't impact Ripple's ability to work as a decentralized exchange and value network.

Ripple is a kind of medium transaction between all kinds of digital currencies and charge for handling fee and avoid the procedure of transfering one kind of currency into other foreign currencies. It is a connection and not a crytocurrency itelf.

Is it really wrong?

afaik Ripple still owns 71,010,747,718 XRP and that's about 70% of the supply

You don't think XRP would go under if the authorities seized 70% of the total supply?

I think so

Which is simply wrong.

Also Ripple is more about the exchange and transfer function, less about the native currency.

I think the point he is making is that if Ripple (the company) goes under then XRP dies

Bitcoin has no central owning company so it will not go under because the authorities cannot shut it down as simple..

Personally I believe Ripple is AFTER its time.. Ripple would have been a good phase inbetween Fiat and cryptocurrencies but now I don't see any benefits using XRP over BTC for example.

That applies to practically everything. If the US goes down, nobody wants your USD anymore. If Steam goes down, so do your games. If Facebook goes down, you lost contact to your "friends" there.
Bitcoin only has value because some people think so. There is nothing backing it physically. Heck, even gold is worthless in catastrophic times. Just look at post-war black markets: you could get lots of gold for some food.

Bitcoin is also numbers in a database, too. The point is for the database to be distributed and for modifications to be made with cryptographically signed transactions. Both Bitcoin and Ripple are distributed databases.

The Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm:

• https://ripple.com/files/ripple_consensus_whitepaper.pdf

This. It's numbers in a database. It has value because ripple says it does. If Ripple goes under, so does its currency. Pass.

The other fiat pegged assets are not the same as Ripple's as they aren't IOUs so they are a bit closer to being trustless.

I like Ripple, but I like it as an alternative to banking functions which cryptocurrency isn't yet ready to replace, rather than as an alternative to crypto.

Ripple is not fully decentralized, but its not fully centralized either. Its kind of a halfway house between traditional finance and crypto, and I personally think it will help move the world in the right direction even if it doesn't represent an ideal end point for me.

Well it is centralized, isn't it?

Same founder, same principles, same forum operator - the only difference is Stellar has early external financial backing and some corporate experience on its management team.
However, it is still being dominated by two authoritarian figures.
Plus, neither Stellar nor Ripple is competing for a pie from the crypto landscape - they are actually competing against fiat and conventional monetary instruments and payment solutions.

this

Ripple is what bitcoin was made to replace. Its hardly better than what we currently have.