Topic: Why Ripple will not be competitive! It is not free (ish) (Read 626 times)

This.

Merchant adoption and people getting income in bitcoins -- these are the real revolution.

Ripple would be grreat if all these coins people keep creating could all throw up gateways so that Ripple could serve as a distributed exchange between all the types of coins.

But unfortunately they keep delaying that by not releasing the source code - and also by claiming the gateway code they provide is not actually robust - so all these coins keep creating new exchanges or getting onto exchanges that already exist so if Ripple ever does get around to releasing source code it will pretty much be too late, all the coins will already be on exchanges, no need to go re-invent the wheel as it were, no need to try to get people who are already quite able to exchange their coin fine thanks to get onboard the big corporate takover scheme. Ripple sounded useful once upon a time but is demonstrating day by day that it still is not useful and maybe never will be.

-MarkM-

It will take time if you take the wrong approach. Despite the fact that the Ripple people do have a challenge explaining the principles of Ripple, I believe the concept of Ripple is  extremely disruptive. What the people of Ripple are doing is basically explaining the principle of money/currencies. Surprisingly, this is not an easy concept to understand. Just start asking a random person on the street where his money is coming from.

Now, having a concept like non- open source Ripple in the hands of start-up with backup of VC's, will be a Single Point of Failure of the whole concept. The start-up, the individuals behind the startup end the Venture Capitalist are subject to the jurisdiction in which they are operating and the law enforcement agencies in this jurisdiction. Ripple can be seen as a full blown threat to fiat money and potentially could disrupt all the things we are considering "normal" today.

Guess what will happen when the vision of the founders materialize. The people who will benefit the most of the current fiat money will do everything in their power to get a start up, who is printing and controlling its own money, down as soon as possible.

To make a system like Ripple successful it should be completely open source, the ledger IOU should have similar properties as BTC (may be with a demurage fee) and independent of any company or government.








 

Ripple doesn't strictly need gateways, as people can ripple payments through their network of trusted associates and settle with cash if necessary. Once it's out there and once it has been open sourced I don't think anyone will be able to stop it. Governments may succeed in pushing it underground, but they won't have the power to stop it. I look forward to politicians throwing tantrums when they find out they can't stop it. Only market forces could stop it, for instance if a superior competitor were to emerge.

Yeah, fiat is a bitch, that is part of why fiat has to go. We are trying like crazy to make it go away but its taking time. Next question?

-MarkM-

The gateways in the Ripple system handling FIAT money in and out the ripple system will face exactly the same problem as any of the current money exchangers, like WU or Moneygram. They need to comply with the Bank secrecy act (BSA), have anti money laundering (AML) policies and require Know your Customer (KYC) information.

Setting up gateways handling dimes, BTC, airmiles, gift cards and other virtual currencies could be a profitable niche. However, I doubt that an operator accepting fiat money will be able to comply to all the regulations cheaper than WU/Moneygram.

Any thoughts?