Topic: Why Ripple™ is against everything Bitcoin - page 34. (Read 45589 times)

This is a perfect example of what I was speaking about earlier regarding primates. "anti-scam" like everyone, knows full well that you can use Ripple to send, receive, and redeem IOUs without having to invest in the XRP currency and yet he ignores that and continues to spout baseless claims.

precisely my point.  Ripple hasn't developed a fair system to distribute them.  

many XRP's were just handed out here on the forum one day for those willing to post an address.  OpenCoin has just arbitrarily decided to hold back 50% for themselves.  

it's not a fair distribution system and thus creates suspicion/resentment.

contrast this with the proof of work system for Bitcoin.  POW is one real reason Bitcoin resonates with it's adopters even today.

They have to come from somewhere. Let's start with 100M XRP in account #0. Exactly how are the XRP to be divided among the inhabitants of planet Earth?

The main flaw in the "logic" of thinking Ripple is a scam is on the one hand claiming that they are going to get rich off XRP but then saying that Ripple is useless and only exists to defraud the public. It should be obvious that these are mutually exclusive possibilities.

Ripple could be superior to Bitcoin in so many ways.Near instant confirmations, no problems with micro-transactions, no wasted resources going to mining, and no way to rewrite history via 51% style attacks.

they are meant to be exchanged are they not?  that is why we have a price for them, isn't it?  buy them from other sellers; that simple.

Forget OpenCoin and Ripple for the moment, is a trust based system the right way to go in redefining the global transaction system?

And how exactly would that work? How would they "buy" XRP? Where would the money go? And don't forget they did all the work and made all XRP that exists. They should be free to do with it as they please. You aren't entitled to any of it.

Two factors I think. First I realized that my objections were largely based on emotion and then once I set the indignation aside and took a closer look, I saw that Ripple is on a solid technical foundation.

What really sold me on accepting the enrichment of OpenCoin is when I looked at all of the drawbacks that Bitcoin has because there is no for-profit company developing the code. I want OpenCoin to be profitable and keep paying all those C++ programmers, JavaScript programmers, testers, and CEO. I definitely want OpenCoin to grow to many times its size. If they have a large cash flow they can buy up more small companies and send them out on-site to help banks and businesses integrate Ripple. They could put more resources into polishing up a "Ripple SDK" and "Guide for Ripple Integrators". Maybe they could offer free training classes to help companies learn Ripple. Almost none of this is possible with the Bitcoin financing model.

The Bitcoin software has no direct financial link to the appreciation of the Bitcoin price and for that reason we see odd conflicts of interest. Like...there is no "1.0" version of Bitcoin. Still after 4 years there is no official pruning (did that get solved yet?) The interface is clunky and features that people want, the developers refuse to add. There's no official specification. My opinion this is because the developers are not accountable to a corporate entity. They work on what they want, sent their own goals. There's no shipping deadlines, no milestones, etc... in short there's no financial pressure.

Don't mistake this as a criticism of the skills or commitment of the Bitcoin developers - they are doing a great job given the circumstances. But OpenCoin has a better financial structure. There are financial incentives to get Ripple right, and get it done fast.

And yet, people are putting money in / using Ripple, but not Open Transactions. OT got something wrong. Perhaps the XRP currency was the 'secret sauce' that was needed to make Ripple attractive to early adopters, just like mining was for Bitcoin.

the way to solve this issue is for OpenCoin to not hold any XRP back, release the code as open source, then buy in to XRP's just like everyone else so everyone starts off at the same place.  this is the only way they will succeed IMO.

weren't you very much against Ripple at the beginning.  IIRC, you wrote pages and pages of arguments against it.

Doesn't it have a large overlap with Ripple? It would allow the distributed exchange between fiat and crypto currencies. And it adds untraceable digital cash.

So what you're saying is that they want to pump up the value of their holdings as much as possible for the eventual dump?

The notion of "earn" is entirely subjective. Plenty of people hold the opinion that the early miners are unjustly enriched.

+1

Somewhat valid point, but the mitigating factor is the amount of resources that have gone into Ripple. They've developed the consensus protocol, the server and client software, and have I think 20 or more full time employees. They've also secured venture capital funding. It's hard to imagine that their intention at the outset was to defraud the public. A lot of the ideas behind Ripple are simply brilliant. If it's a scam then its practically indistinguishable from the real thing!

The notion of "earn" is entirely subjective. Plenty of people hold the opinion that the early miners are unjustly enriched.

Let me clear up some misconceptions. Every object in the ledger database adds to a "reserve" requirement. This is necessary, or else the ledger could be attacked with spam (for example, by writing a script that creates an infinite number of accounts). The reserve requirement for an account is currently 50 XRP (it used to be 200 but OpenCoin lowered it because XRPs went up so much in value). This means that you cannot perform transactions or receive payments until you have received at least 50 XRP in your account.

The reserves in an account can only be spent on transaction fees (currently, the transaction fee is ten millionths of an XRP but it can be changed if all the servers agree). This means that if your account has only 40 XRP you cannot get the 40 XRP "out" of the account. It can only be used to pay for fees. Each object that you create increases the reserve requirement by 25 XRP (it used to be 100). Objects include trust lines and book offers.

Because XRPs are "sequestered" in an account's reserves, it is possible for OpenCoin to give away 50 billion XRPs to new account holders, but without making the value of XRPs fall by too much. The recipients of these XRP giveaways cannot sell the XRP reserves. I believe that the current giveaway is down to 3,000 XRP (down from 50,000). This means that at most 2,950 can be spent. I expect that the size of the giveaway will steadily decrease over time. Developers might get larger dollops though, who knows.

It seems OpenCoin wants to make it free or cheap for people in the early stage to open Ripple accounts, to spur adoption. To this end the appear to be giving away XRP both to let people open accounts and also so that a market forms.

A lot of the ideas behind Ripple are simply brilliant.

The problem with Open Transactions is that it doesn't satisfy immediate consumer demands. It's a great system (although a little bit complicated) but it seems to be a solution waiting for a problem.

OpenCoin has done nothing to earn the coins they're holding back except write code for a concept that may or may not work.

i still think OpenCoin represents a centralized point of pressure that could be exploited.

weren't you very much against Ripple at the beginning.  IIRC, you wrote pages and pages of arguments against it.

what was the key factor in you switching?

OpenCoin has done nothing to earn the coins they're holding back except write code for a concept that may or may not work.

Somewhat valid point, but the mitigating factor is the amount of resources that have gone into Ripple. They've developed the consensus protocol, the server and client software, and have I think 20 or more full time employees. They've also secured venture capital funding. It's hard to imagine that their intention at the outset was to defraud the public. A lot of the ideas behind Ripple are simply brilliant. If it's a scam then its practically indistinguishable from the real thing!