My biggest objection to Ripple as it's commonly understood is that it's a way to swap debt that is totally uncollectible. It will take people a while to realize that it's a currency of empty promises. Once understood for what it is, I can see it being pretty powerful, but can't see why it being decentralized is any sort of benefit.
Case in point: Alice owes Bob, and then Bob uses Alice's debt to pay Charlie. It's a lot of money. Charlie tries to collect, but Alice refuses to pay Charlie, so Charlie sues Alice. Alice denies owing Charlie anything, and Charlie can't prove otherwise. The court won't recognize Ripple's database as being a legal way to transfer debt since it's not a legal form of contract. Game over, Charlie got left holding the bag.
If instead of using Ripple, Alice owed Bob, and Bob used Alice's debt to pay Charlie by pulling out a pen and a piece of paper and drawing up an assignment agreement, suddenly the problem no longer exists, because courts recognize agreements like that when written on paper.
Pen and paper 1, Ripple 0.
So how again is this revolutionary?
Topic: Why Ripple is a bad idea. - page 5. (Read 10646 times)
Joel ripple is your site? If so where can I get an explanation of how it works and if i like it how can I help?
in other words, opencoin inc is comparable to the federal reserve. Go beg OpenCoin Inc for some ripples, you need them to even start using the service 
I would argue that a more appropriate model than the federal reserve is the post office, which starts out with all the stamps. Opencoin plans to begin giving away most of if it shortly. 1,000 ripples is enough to create an account, set up a trust relationship with several gateways and fund thousands of transactions. Unfortunately, making it free for everyone forever is not really possible because of malicious transactions causing denial of service attacks, ledger bloat, and so on. The use of a peer-to-peer model with no central authority should make it possible for it to get pretty close.
OpenCoin Inc gets 80 billion ripples.
The founding developers get 20 billion ripples.
There is a hard limit of 100 billion ripples.
in other words, opencoin inc is comparable to the federal reserve. Go beg OpenCoin Inc for some ripples, you need them to even start using the service
The founding developers get 20 billion ripples.
There is a hard limit of 100 billion ripples.
in other words, opencoin inc is comparable to the federal reserve. Go beg OpenCoin Inc for some ripples, you need them to even start using the service
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