Bitcoin Forum

Assume the following:

1. Beverly Hills Hotel participates in the Ripple network and issues its USD-denominated IOUs which are redeemable for hotel stays.

2. Beverly Hills Performance Car Rentals participates in Ripple network and issues its USD-denominated IOUs redeemable for car rentals.

3. Both the hotel and the car rental shop have unrented inventory.

4. Daily room rental rate in USD is roughly the same as the daily rate to rent a Ferrari.

Question:

Can the hotel owner and the owner of the car rental business exchange their respective IOUs through *either* a mutually trusted gateway/nexus *or* directly (assuming they trust each other) *or* through a web of trust to allow a room to be rented out for a day of stay and a Ferrari to be rented out for a day of driving ?

Bonus question:

Is this the real purpose of the "issuer" field in the current Ripple user interface, i.e. to allow any participant to issue IOUs denominated in any currency of their choice ?


Cheers ...

Internally, currencies are just arbitrary 160-bit hashes and issuers are just 160-bit account IDs. The system was definitely designed to allow anyone to issue any IOU denominated in any currency if someone else was willing to accept it. The challenge is how to present that to users in a non-confusing and, ideally, intuitive way.

Right now Ripple gets a failing grade on that, and I just argued for 30 minutes that it was not clear from either the literature or the user interface that such a thing was possible. The "issuer" field in the user interface is totally opaque in meaning.

May I humbly suggest relabeling that field to be "IOU Creator's Address" instead of "Issuer" ... the label "Issuer" is too much of a banking jargon term

If I wanted to setup a stock market style arrangement, potentially thousands of stocks, each with their own separate order books etc is that something Ripple (the global network) could handle/scale to?  Or would i be better off running the ripple server in a private (not part of global) network so as to not burden the global network?

Or would ripple just not work at all for that purpose?

Absolutely.

That would be a judgment call. You could definitely do it either way. If you want more centralized control than Ripple permits on the global network, you may wish to do it privately. If you want to take advantage of the global networks' (eventual) reach and in/out of cash, then the global network would be a better choice.

Handling large numbers of "currencies" and order books between them is exactly what Ripple is meant for.

Impressive.. And hopefully it scales to support that :)

Two points,

1. So is a single issuer limited to 3 letter "Currencies"? So a max of ~17,000 combo's? Or is that just a restriction of the current client?

2. Taking commission on trades is probably the most profitable part of running an exchange, using ripple the trades would be free?  Existing exchanges might be hesitant to support ripple given they will be sacrificing their own profits to support free trades?

That's a client restriction. Internally, a currency is a 160-bit integer. One part of that namespace is mapped to three-letter currencies which also have a 16-bit 'version' (in case a currency is re-issued). Another part of that namespace is intended to be hashes of a "currency description". I believe custom currencies were discussed elsewhere and the basic idea is that development hasn't progressed much on them because of a lack of good use cases. The core of the system basically just treats them as 160-bit opaque values.

It is the nature of new technologies that business models have to change. Just ask the recording industry or the buggy whip manufacturers.

Suffice it to say that the exchanges we've been talking to haven't had trouble finding new business models that work with Ripple and, if Ripple succeeds, the old models might run into some trouble competing. If you don't think Ripple will take off, it's no threat. If you do think Ripple will take off, talk to us. There's lots of room and opportunity.

I can definitely see the benefits in Ripple and think it brings many new features to the world of P2P payments.. 

Your right, exchanges will have to change their model, because Ripple stands to cut out the trade commissions entirely.. i'd be very surprised to see MtGox support it, or if they did they might charge 5% to issue a ripple IOU.

Ripple is currently fully involved in working with banks, offering them an efficient and economical way to conduct cash transactions in real time around the world. MoneyGram, the world's second largest money transfer business and financial blocking startup Ripple, has entered into a partnership agreement. Under the agreement, MoneyGram will test Ripple for international transfers, so that it is possible to implement them faster and cheaper. And then now the Indian stock exchange Zebpay with its headquarters in Singapore took Ripple to work. So the coin jumped: Ripple XRP: The rate to the dollar - $ 1.08043 (the growth was for the day: 19.17%).

I recently found one project which is based on Ripple consensus mechanism. This is next generation sharing economy  called Uchain. You can get introduction of the project here: https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@lethihongngan/u-chain-a-model-of-the-new-great-blockchain-technology-in-the-future