Topic: Why Ripple has failed. - page 2. (Read 10953 times)

The only reason prices are going up is because ripples get destroyed in every transaction

yup. just brilliant.

That could work.

Thanks for the response.

Payment systems may or may not be gateways, but essentially, yes. Imagine if PayPal and Western Union are both Ripple gateways. Now, a PayPal customer can make a payment to a Western Union customer through a mechanism like this:

1) The PayPal customer logs into their PayPal account and selects to make a payment.

2) The PayPal customer specifies the Western Union customer using something functionally equivalent to an email address.

3) PayPal talks to Western Union and gets the Ripple account and destination tag to use for the payment.

4) PayPal uses Ripple pathfinding to find out what the payment will cost and informs their customer.

5) The customer approves the transfer.

6) PayPal makes a Ripple payment to Western Union. PayPal decrements the balance on their customer.

7) Western Union sees the payment and credits their customer.

This allows payment systems to federate through Ripple. The payment system operators don't have to handle any cross-currency or cross-issuer issuers so long as there is sufficient liquidity through market makers in the Ripple network. The users don't have to know that the two payment systems used Ripple to make the payment.

This payment can be reversible or irreversible, depending on the agreement between the payment networks (which can be automatically negotiated at step 3). Payment systems can be payment systems themselves and/or they can accept balances from one or more gateways of their choice.

Now, you might wonder why PayPal and Western Union wouldn't just agree to do this without Ripple. And, for this example, they probably would. But if you imagine a number of payment systems using different currencies, you can see why this works better. Email used to work with ad hoc arrangements -- if you had AOL, you could use their Compuserve email gateway to email a Compuserve user. But nobody does it that way anymore, and for good reasons.

If this model takes off, Ripple's direct user base could consist mainly of gateways, payment systems, market makers, large merchants, and power users.

I thought the same thing about bitcoin, even as recently as one year ago. Six months ago I ignored ripple on similar reasoning: "well bitcoin is already so abstract and difficult to explain. The chances are very slim that a meta-bitcoin like ripple will gain any traction." It was only two months ago that I learned bitstamp is a ripple gateway. It is gaining traction, much to my surprise.

Could you expand on this? I'm not sure I follow what you mean.

You think that Ripple may only have Gateways?

I think most people expect OpenCoin to handle the development, as our understanding is that development was supposed to be funded by XRP.
If that is not the case, then it's more probable that voluntary efforts will be put behind something without the premine. I hope you don't take that as a personal insult, that's just where the incentives lie.

Okay. thanks for clarifying.

So I presume you folks have your own VC investors you need to pay off?

http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/federal_reserve-qe3/images/demonocracy-federal_reserve_money_printing-qe_3-2012.jpg

https://opencoin.com/wp-content/themes/open-coin-theme/assets/img/logo.png

http://lis879.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/mine.jpg

http://www.newyorkfed.org/images/v2/features/seal.jpg

http://pics.photographer.ru/nonstop/pics/pictures/489/489840.jpg

To fund development, to drive adoption of Ripple as a payment network, to do some good in the world, and, of course, we are a for profit company.

your parents?  i would love to meet them.

for ripplelabs to give to its potential partners/gateways... i think.

Thank you for clarifying the secret portion of my post. I appreciate that.

Why create so many XRPs and hold the majority of them..if indeed your bolded statement is true?

Why do you folks needs to many XRPs?

You can look at the code. The secret is random. It's stored, encrypted, in your wallet. Your encrypted wallet can be stored locally in your browser or remotely in a blob vault.

As for why there is a need to have a centralized company that backs it, it's because adoption is absolutely not a sure thing. We've worked as hard was we can to design the system, develop the code, build relationships with other companies, and so on. There will come a time when Ripple no longer needs us. As people find the Ripple network useful, we hope they'll contribute the features they most need or want. We're having a developer conference in Las Vegas in about two weeks.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-ripple-developer-conference-2013-las-vegas-october-10th-2013-293086

Right. To move an asset electronically that isn't an inherently electronic asset, you need to trust someone or something to hold that asset. This is why if you want to move dollars into or out of Bitcoins, you have to trust an exchange to hold the dollars for you. The main advantages of Ripple are that you can transfer balances without having to go to or through the issuer and everyone has access to the order books between assets with no forex middlemen. This allows people to hold the assets they choose while still being able to make payments across currencies and across issuers -- so you don't have to trust the same entities as the you want to do business with.

So then why is there is a need to have a centralized company that backs it? I'm curious to know when your "secret" gets generated if the issuing party keeps a copy somewhere. Hmm.

but you need to trust people to send anything but xrps in ripple

Ripple is an irreversible payment system just like Bitcoin. There is no recourse if you regret sending funds or do so in error.

The issues for Ripple are much the same as Bitcoin. In much of the world, irreversible payment systems are already available and widely used.

Ripple may wind up being predominantly used between payment systems rather than between users directly. Ripple can provide the cross-currency and cross-issuer movement of funds without users having to interact with Ripple directly. This allows payment systems to make payments reversible between each other under whatever terms they find mutually agreeable. This also avoids the need for users to manage cryptographic credentials.

Now that I think about it.

If you get scammed while using ripple by a user that decides to be untrustworthy there is no recourse.

In the traditional banking system recourse actually exists. So I'm trying to figure out where you fix the scam portion of things when you still need to trust someone. I do not see any government or institution willing to (and able) to provide recourse to financial victims if they are scammed using ripple.

How does it fix the current "broken" system when you still need to trust someone?