Bitcoin Forum

I found this linked in someones signature, its brings up some valid points, but maybe the pre-mine is necessary for a concept like ripple. I sure hope it isnt a scam, that would irreparably hurt the image of decentralized exchanges.


http://ripplescam.org/ (http://ripplescam.org/)

Judging from last years investment scam, all it takes is a really good PR machine to make alot of money.

The arguments seems to be very logical and I hope nobody will loose very much.

We have to remember why 80% of email traffic is spam, its just too profitable not to.

It's probably not fair to call it a scam. I trust the developers believe in the idea.

I think it's been fairly conclusive that Ripple is a closed source scam 'currency'.

I wonder why there isnt more debate about this.

yeah i tiink is an scam, i dont know how the people are spending BTC on it, soon there will be worthless

you can't prove that it's not a scam

and the price will drop in the next massive giveaway. sell them before its too late

Oh, hi, danyy. You've been  banned on two forums, but I see you're still here.
I am sure, not for long.

I believe Ripple will be a big player in the near future

There isn't a lot of debate because a lot of people here have been paid off. (there are a lot of accounts in this forum that advocate a centralized closed source pre-mined coin/network, as long as they are in on it)

I have voiced the same complaints about ripple but no one really listens.

A question I have asked many times, but never answered is how many ripples have the core team sold for Bitcoin?? No one ever gives me a answer. I think the friends and core development team are actively selling ripples for Bitcoin. 1 Developer alone was granted a billion ripples. I really want to know how many have exchanged these ripples for Bitcoins.

If none of the developers have exchanged ripples for Bitcoin then the whole thing will be a lot less scam like.

There isn't a lot of debate, because there is nothing to debate.

There are people who are envious of somebody else's money, so they hate Ripple.
That's what it boils down to. And no amount of arguments will change their closed mind.

From http://ripplescam.org:


It's a wrong statement. No need to read further, coz the site content is obviously biased.

Even if ripple is not a scam coin, people should sill be educated that ripple is pre-mine to a worse extent than any other coin in history, and when they hand over a Bitcoin for some ripples they really need to know how worthless those ripples really are.

You really have no idea who this guys are, what they've done, or why do you?

1. These are P2P veterans, long term members of this site, and guy who built the foundations for what bitcoin is.

2. They've built the reference implementation (code base) for BitCoin 2.0. Moving all the transaction data and rules for BitCoin to the Ripple codebase will make everything about using BTC better, faster, and cheaper. And have no doubt they will release the server code open source. It's in their trust model for the entire P2P system. The highest level of trust is "I built the server from source".

3. They don't want XRP to be the next "coin". They want Ripple to be the next PayPal and MtGox combined. They built for scale and for speed. The code is brilliant. Buying XRP will NEVER be a get rich quick scheme for speculators. But that is pretty much the point. Sure you can try to use it as a "store of value" but that's not what its for. That's what BitCoins are for.

Ripple will make BitCoins better. Easier and faster to use. It's servers cheaper to run. Make the data that needs to be stored smaller.

And it will increase BitCoin's accessibility. People will BE ABLE to buy/sell BitCoins in every neighborhood corner store. Now, you just have to come up with a REASON for people to WANT BitCoins.

http://riptalk.org/index.php?topic=36.0

Hey its all good i'm just raising awareness. :)

All I know is that the founder of Gox is behind ripple and that the ripple company is backed by venture capital. They seem like shady people that have made no effort to open source the entire network. They conveniently release ripples and allow for a exchange of ripples for Bitcoin even before their network is up and ready.

Also they have stated they intend to fund their company and development by selling their stash of ripples (XRP), so in that way it is a store of value.

Just smells bad.

Gox is shady and so is ripple, let them prove that they are not.

Open source the network already.

That's another thing I don't understand. Why are you so anxious for them to open the source ASAP?

They opened most of it and gave damn good reasons not to open the server yet. So what's your hurry?

This is not that convincing, what product have they delivered to the world?

I am not presenting a "infantile" argument. Satoshi delivered far more to this world than ripple ever will, yet he did not pre-mine one coin and is still a multi-millionaire.

Claiming that my assertion is "infantile" is a defensive move. Why not just get a answer? The network only exists in one closed place, there is no openness about the network, and the only reason ripples have value is because they gave them away in such small denominations to create artificial demand where the supply is insanely large in comparison.

Now for something I might easily be wrong about: I assume Alex Zee and Red hold far more XRP than the 50,000 XRP given out for free. Am I wrong?

Now I may be wrong again, but the reason I think they have not opened the network is that they want to sell as much Ripple as possible before the system goes live out to the world. That's my conspiracy. :)

Also Satoshi set his creation free after discussion, but its not like he started mining first :)

http://tcrn.ch/YNGjfi
just discovered the vc angle a couple days ago, which does lead me to believe that they are very motivated by PROFITS.
any good vc will require a guaranteed exit to recover their investment.
how can opencoin guarantee roi to their investors AFTER the source is released (and potentially forked into something incompatible w/ XRP).
if they can lay out a business model that allows for sufficient profit as well as an open sourced server, i'd LOVE to hear about it.

some transparency into their end-game would do a great deal in calming the skeptics

The founder of Gox was previously the founder of eDonkey2000. Hey's paid his dues in P2P systems.


You can't use Ripple to do anything without having ripples in your account. That is exactly the same as with BitCoin. There is no place convenient to buy Ripples yet, so they give some out free.


They don't want to sell Ripples to YOU. They want to sell Ripples to Amazon.com in exchange for them benefitting from instant free payments from you in Dollars, Euros, etc.


I can send you some Ripples and maybe you can Buy a Clue.

Oh my god, I don't even know where to start... Would you mind educating yourself first about the issues you are trying to "debate"?

How is sitting alone in his basement, mining coins with difficulty 1 is not pre-mining?

And existing (and working) Ripple network, on which at least a year of thinking and coding has been spent, is of course "nothing". Ungrateful bastards, want our BTCs for nothing. Well, don't buy the ripples then.


Oh, yeah, my 17 385 ripples (rfN2xpxWZcSsbeEL13m1hKFGDzp82o14gS - that's one thing good about Ripple - complete transparency) is sure a hell of a buy-off.  It's about what, the whole 77 bucks.

Now excuse me, gentlemen, I am going to go buy myself a yacht.

Haha, like I said I was probably going to be wrong about you and Red holding a lot of ripples, I just can't fathom why you protect it so much.

Satoshi gave a lot of people in the crypto community a chance to join in, and he had to continue mining when no one else was otherwise the network would have died.

As far as I can see the only way for the ripple team is to simply sell ripples for Bitcoins to the people that want to use the network. But 50,000 ripples for 1 Bitcoin is way to steep, when 1 developer alone holds a billion of them.

BTW, if you buy that yacht and ever sail by Perth, I'll invite you out for coffee. :)

Laughing My Ass OFF! I was begging for XRP on this day before yesterday! That's when I learned about Ripple!

I have 20554.9999 XRP

555 from a Ripple founder, because I asked him nicely. I was impatient.
My free 20000 from the free XRP post came a day later.

Many people into P2P are sell outs, look at Sean Parker.

Also a lot of people believe Gox is rigging the Bitcoin market.


The main use of the ripple network is to sell your Bitcoins for ripples. Its a conflict of interest as the stash of pre-mind ripples is so large. The quicker the ripple system is legitimately used the better.




I have never heard this, if this is true then that's really awesome. I certainly see it as less of a scam if this is true.



I already have my free stash of ripples. The quicker I can use them for a real purpose the better!

Haha this is actually funny, I said I was probably wrong, I really wanna know which guy is holding a billion XRP though, so I keep trying to find out.

No, that would be an idiot who would miss out on every opportunity that wasn't safe. Nobody had any idea how Facebook would make any money. Nobody had any idea how Twitter would make any money. I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that you've never talked to an actual VC person. If you have, they were crappy. We're talking about the people who are looking for the next PayPal because they *built* PayPal.

We're swinging for the fences. A long shot. A possible home run but also possibly a strike out. We're trying to change the world. Really.

I know you'll find this hard to believe, but I met with a lot of our investors. They're genuinely motivated at least as much by the prospect of disruption for good as they are by the prospect of making money.

So as Ripple folks. They gave away a lot in the giveaway topic.



Would you please stop counting money in somebody else's pocket? What do you care?

It's 4.4 million dollars at current price, assuming he can sell them all.

I know, "ONE BILLION of something" sounds ridiculously big, but $4.4 M somehow aren't.

Laughing my ass off at the irony. Let me sell you that Clue. Maybe you should go to the Ripple website and look up the name he posts under here!!!

Rolling on the Floor!

Yeah I guess 4.4 million isn't actually that much, I just want people to know what they are buying into then they hand over Bitcoin for ripple.

I think a lot of users don't realize that ripple is a massive pre-mine. I was talking with one advocate a while back that said ripple has been in creation since before Bitcoin existed, which is true except the old ripple didn't have a inbuilt pre-mine crypto currency. There seems to be a lot of misinformation driving up the price of ripples, as if they are scarce. When they are artificially scarce, kind of like De Beers. :)

Ok, that's enough for me, I'd rather go do something productive, instead of arguing with clueless people.

Need to paint my imaginary yacht.

You are pretty f***ing CLUELESS!
https://github.com/JoelKatz

Seen that name lately? Might want to scroll back a little bit...

You know what's a scam about Ripple?

It won't save the names I put in my address book?  ??? I mean WTF! What a total Scam!  ;D

Thanks guys. You are certainly devote.

thanks for the reply Joel, i really appreciate it. and i want to go on record as stating that i DO NOT consider ripple to be a scam in any way (its very unfortunate that any debate gets this tag). however, i DO believe that XRP was in fact designed to be used as a CURRENCY (regardless of how many times people say otherwise), not simply as a means of spam-prevention.


i am certain there were MANY ideas on how fb & twitter would eventually make money (ads being the most obvious). and those were clearly CENTRALIZED networks (with a single master); ripple claims that it will not be (and its why i have doubts that the source will be released any time soonish (https://github.com/rippleFoundation)...)


i HAVE spoken to many vcs (back in the dot-com boom era) and their very FIRST question was always "what is your planned exit strategy?". this is where i'm confused. its been stated that opencoin will SELL xrp, but then they also state that xrp is NOT a currency (and has no monetary value). how does that work?


i do find that hard to believe, as i've never heard of a benevolent vc who wasn't primarily concerned with roi. that's not to say they don't exist; i just don't believe Andreessen Horowitz is one of them


yes you are indeed; and i wish you and your team the BEST of luck in the success of this venture. i have the utmost confidence in the ripple model. i've spent a "good" amount of time exploring its inner workings and its fantastic, truly! ; i WANT to believe in ripple and i WANT to support it, but i have significant doubts that it will can succeed in its current form that opencoin has established.

There's really no substantive difference between these views. It's just a matter of what time horizon you look at and how you predict the future given limited information. Will people use XRP as a currency just because they can? Will people avoid holding XRP because they know OpenCoin can release lots of it and crash the market? Or will they expect that it's unlikely that will happen? It isn't a question of design or intention but more one of predicting what cannot be predicted.

If Ripple becomes popular, the price of XRP is fairly stable, and there's little perceived risk of a sudden change in price, people will probably use XRP as a currency. It can be held in Ripple with no counter-party risk, and under those conditions could be useful as a "bridging" currency -- because there's only one XRP, paths to and from XRP could be the best way to make a gateway's balances liquid. But those are a lot of if's. There are people who think that will never happen and people who think it's inevitable. If you think it's inevitable, then XRP is designed to be a currency. If you think it will never happen, then XRP is not designed to be a currency.

That really doesn't make any sense. If we were going to keep it closed, we would have just said so from the beginning. We could have required people to sign a contract to get the server code and used certificates to authenticate connections. We could have saved a lot of the design hassle of eliminating the requirement that no central authorities be needed. We chose not to do this because we honestly believe that's a losing strategy. Satoshi could have done the same thing with Bitcoin and sold "mining contracts" if he wanted to. But would Bitcoin be where it is today if he had chosen that route?

In what world though, in a business that relies on people to trust that the rules won't change on the whim of a single party, would any sane person start out a new system with such a huge change in the fundamental rules on the whim of a single party?

ok, that's pretty much what i thought.
i was merely looking for some acknowledgment of xrp being used as a currency from someone within the ripple inner circle.


above all, its the soonish that bothers me the most. as a developer i truly sympathize with giving hard deadlines when you really don't have a reasonable expectation of when something will be delivered; but i cynically translate this as, "we'll release it when a hard-fork is no longer a threat to our profits" (there is no evidence of this, just the way i feel about it)
------------------------------------------

i'd like to just throw out a couple ideas on xrp distribution options:

social networks
facebook, google+, renren and the like would easily allow you to use some credibility scale based on friends, posts, likes, whatever (similar to how you managed the ripplegiveaway here).

android/iphone/fb app
creating a ripple game/app of sorts would allow you to leverage the social graph to spread the word very quickly (probably virally) to a very broad and diverse pool of users.

twitter
using some sort of bot to manage a #RippleGiveaway hashtag.
though, i don't know enough about twitter to offer any details as to how to scale credibility.

obviously mitigating abuse is the priority here, but chances are nothing you do will ever satisfy everyone's definition of fair; however, these ideas would certainly offer a very broad and diverse selection pool upon which to distribute.

~49b left to go
is there already a thread asking for input from the community on a fair system?
should there be?

Claiming that a venture capitalist is throwing millions at you for the good of the earth isnt the best way to build credibility.

The facts we know so far are:

1. You are funded by an industry that expects massive returns to make up for its massive losses.
1. You and your partners have in your possession already the vast majority of XRP's that will ever be created.
2. There will be a price to XRP's.

Therefore you are building a system that places you in a central banking position, which will allow you to:
1. Control the flow of XRP's in order to control and regulate the price.
2. ....???
3. Profit!



If your organization truly were altruistic, you would first release your source code before releasing one XRP into the wild, and then allow the network to distribute XRP's in the same way BTC does, that is for itself. From the slick marketing campaign and the level of astroturfing going on in these forums its evident that your millions of VC dollars are being put to good use setting yourselves up as the new federal reserve.



Exactly.

Grossly misstating someone's position isn't the best way to build your own credibility.

We're not altruistic and never said we were. We're just willing to take a greater risk to achieve a greater result. Developing an open source, decentralized payment system is a greater risk than developing a centralized one, but the potential rewards are much greater as well. We're going after the bigger prize. I hope that if we do fail, it will be because someone else did what we did even better.

Surely you don't think a closed source, centralized network would accomplish that objective best? Do you think Bitcoins would be worth more today had Satoshi adopted that approach?

Like ripple? Of course not.

I'm glad you recognize that opening the network is in our self-interest. Now the question is whether we're smart enough to do it.

Haha, and out come the legion of Ripple employees and shills. Obviously, a very aggressive gorilla marketing campaign was part of the launch plans for Ripple, with BitcoinTalk and specifically the Alt-Crypto board being major targets to sway public opinion and get people to swallow their shit.

Thats what Ripple and XRPs are. Shit, feces, human excrement - so worthless that not only do you not want it, you want to move away from it as quickly as possible to rid yourself of its malodorous stench.

OpenCoin is just another for profit company - no different than Exxon or Phillip Morris. As you can imagine, being an executive of Phillip Morris certainly has its benefits, but I think we can all agree that they are not doing a public service by selling their products. They are making a profit for themselves and their shareholders - that is their primary intent and purpose, and everything else is secondary to that.

Also, I wish people would stop referring to XRP as being "premined." That implies that at some point, you will be able to mine XRPs yourself, which is not the case. There is no mining of xrp whatsoever, so its not "100% premined," they simply issued or "printed" their own currency, PERIOD. In this respect, its the same as fiat currency but actually worse, for obvious reasons.

I am thrilled that http://ripplescam.org/ exists and does the public a real service by revealing the true nature of this company. I wouldnt be surprised if the site was DDOS'd soon and I will personally donate 1 BTC to help maintain it, and I hope others do too. However, there isnt a donation address yet on there even though its mentioned, and I hope that it is added ASAP.

Also, Im adding http://ripplescam.org/ to my signature and I hope that people on here wake up and smell the coffee and do the same.

They are using aggressive tactics to try to swindle us, so we need to be hyper-aggressive in our response as a community. They cant pay off all of BitcoinTalk.org

Finally, and most importantly, I am 100% sure that Satoshi Nakamoto himself would be ashamed of Ripple and totally against it. I hope he sees http://ripplescam.org/ and donates 100BTC or whatever it takes to completely and fully bring Ripple to its knees.

I will keep bumping this thread periodically until Ripple is dead and and buried.

its not decentralized

It's design is decentralized. It doesn't require any central authorities of any kind. The currently operating network is centralized, but it will be a decentralized exchange system.

Good luck fighting them, the most devote people are ones holding onto small stashes of XRP (under 50,000) and they are the ones swallowing everything up. They are all over the forum and just wanna believe so bad, they beg for a few thousand XRP further reinforcing the "scarcity" of the mighty ripple. And now JoelKatz has admitted that XRP is meant to have value, but that's ok because he's sitting on 4 million dollars worth, of course he believes in the cause!

They even have the cheek to say Satoshi pre-mined his Bitcoin, when he put a lot of effort into making sure this wasn't the case.

Why all these people here are sucking up to a greedy for profit company I don't know. Andreessen Horowitz is making a mockery of you!


I wonder whats so hard about letting people become nodes and making the entire network decentralized? And the exchange system is not decentralized because it still requires you. JoelKatz, if the ripple team shut off the server running the ripple network would that exchange still work? Nope!

To have a decentralized network you need all its components to be decentralized, your smart and know this, stop lying to everyone. If one part of a "decentralized" network is centralized like your command over all ripple servers, then its not really decentralized is it?

I agree with some of the below, I would not say that Opencoin, Exxon, or Philip Morris do not provide value however.  

OpenCoin should only be applauded for attempting to provide value by being a Paypal for bitcoins.  

However this positive effort is completely outweighed by its hugely negative attempt to establish Ripple as another virtual currency.  Ripple is not a scam it's just an attempt to take the Bitcoin idea, copy it, and make money off of it before Bitcoin completely cements itself with common people (ie non early adopters.)  If the Ripple currency becomes successful (I hope not), it would destroy and replace Bitcoin.  At that point we'd all be on Ripple, a currency that is controlled by a corporation.

I'll also add that it's apparent to me that the attempt to copy/replace Bitcoin is intentional as part of the OpenCoin business strategy.  They will never openly state it because it will scare aware users of Bitcoin that they are marketing to.

If OpenCoin wants to succeed, they simply need to remove Ripple currency from the operating model of their payment system.  Then they could gain a customer in me.

By intentional design, it is very difficult to change the rules by which transactions are executed. Obviously, you want people to be able to rely on the system behaving the same tomorrow as it has today. As soon as the network is decentralized, any new feature or fix that changes transaction processing would require an overwhelming majority to support it. Various people will have to upgrade their servers, the community will have to agree not to veto the feature. Unless there's a consensus that it's an emergency, the servers will wait until they see a stable majority for a period of time to prevent a change from being rushed through. Right now, that would slow development down significantly. But we're getting very close to being ready to flip that switch.

https://ripple.com/wiki/Change_Process

Absolutely. The running network is not decentralized today. But the design is and doesn't require any central authorities.

That's simply not true. You couldn't have a decentalized exchange by decentralizing Mt Gox, for example. It's not *designed* to be decentralized. It's design requires a central authority.

Of course not. But because we designed it so no authorities are required, it will be decentralized once that switch is flipped. Then there's no going back.

This is an incredibly unlikely scenario. It is almost impossible to imagine Ripple's success as being anything but good for Bitcoin.

For the foreseeable future, Bitcoin will be one of the core currencies traded and moved on the Ripple network. Ripple will give Bitcoins faster transactions that don't clutter the blockchain. Ripple will make fiat currencies hard enough that they can be reliably traded for Bitcoins and Ripple will provide a distributed exchange that will make it easier for people to buy and sell Bitcoins. And every merchant that takes Ripple will be one more place you can spend your Bitcoins.

It will be a long time, if ever, before Bitcoin and Ripple compete with each other in any meaningful sense.

In any event, XRP will only compete with Bitcoin as a currency if it is as good as or superior to Bitcoin as a currency. Do you really want to argue that if that happens, nevertheless it's still somehow bad for Ripple to do that?

By the way, is your nickname supposed to be "bitch-ess" or "bit-chess"? It makes a difference.

Why is there so much talk about flipping a switch, if you flip it on and decentralize, what stops you from flipping it off later?  Can you please elaborate?  Thx

Nothing would happen if we flipped it off. We'd just be in the minority and ignored. Once you let the cat out of the bag, you can't stuff it back in. It's just like when Satoshi decentralized Bitcoin by making it all public. He couldn't change his mind at that point. If he realized that 21 million was the wrong number of Bitcoins, he was stuck with it.

The whole point of decentralizing something is that no one entity can impose its will on it. When you give up the power to do evil, you give up the power to do good as well.

Is this actually true though? Every time I press a ripple guy on this, they end up talking about IOUs. If I actually want to send bitcoins to someone, instead of IOUs for bitcoins, ripple doesn't help me, does it?


I can see a distributed order book happening, but won't there still be a need for mtgoxes of the world to clear the dollar side of the transactions?


Merchants are going to start accepting IOUs for bitcoins instead of real bitcoins?

Well stated.  I get your point.  It's a good strategy since your company gets a couple places for upside while piggybacking off BTC growth.  

My handle is actually supposed to be pronounced like bit-cheese.  Can you dig?

We're working on seamless inbound and outbound Bitcoin gateways (so you can just right to a Bitcoin address from the client and send to a Bitcoin address and it will appear in your Ripple wallet). It works just fine right now, you just have to return the IOUs to their issuer and redeem them. Bitstamp has made this totally painless (other than their hot wallet running dry a lot).

Yes. But they'll do less and so they can charge less. No one entity will have the exclusive pathway to the distributed exchange, so competition should not only bring rates down but also keep policies sane. Don't like one gateway's policy? Exchange their IOUs for IOUs at another gateway to redeem.

Maybe, maybe not, but that's the beauty, they don't have to. What the merchant accepts and what you pay them with don't have to be related at all. Ripple is a financial matching engine. So long as you have something liquid and they accept something liquid, a cheap path should be possible.

I guess the devil is in the details.  Will have to wait until it happens and the specifics of the code/protocol before it can be really judged.  The biggest gorilla in the room is the optics of having a for-profit entity pull it off.  Why else did Satoshi so ingeniously use a pseudonym and execute the deployment like an academic.

I guess some people dislike Ripple because they worry it might rob them of their chance to strike it rich with their cheaply acquired or self-mined BTC. They feel like co-owners of Bitcoin, and they feel they can only be users of Ripple, not co-owners. It's an invalid argument, but I think that's what's behind it. I'm not talking about user "bitchess" here BTW.

Agree.

To add, it's a competitive market and if Ripple turns out to be a better implementation and can gain more user traction, it will replace Bitcoin.  Then people like the Winklevosses will lose some money that they otherwise would have made.  Think about where Apple was a decade ago.

It's hard to judge whether or not ripple is designed with intent to be a Bitcoin killer without looking at the code/protocol specifics.  If I were OpenCoin, I would obviously design it with the potential to kill Bitcoin if possible.  Right now we are just going by the assurances of its employees that it's not or "unlikely" going to replace bitcoin even though there is potential.

Agreed. On the flip side, if Ripple ever does look like overtaking Bitcoin, it will give those with large stashes of BTC an incentive to facilitate development of a rival system based purely on Bitcoin. Competition is good, it will drive prices down, drive innovation and keep everyone honest.

Once the code is open sourced, anyone want to speculate on the alt-ripple networks? Why should we use the infrastructure that opencoin presents instead of some clone?  Maybe the clone will have faster transaction times or something :).  Time to go reserve pipple.com and dipple.com?

That is an interesting point.  

In my view if Ripple>BTC, the majority of people that have large stashes of BTC will just exchange their stashes of BTC and buy ripple.  (I don't have large stash but am in this camp.)  There is nothing intrinsic about BTC in and of itself that can or ever will be able to prevent this.  This is one of the reasons why BTC valuations are so volatile.

People who are active in the Bitcoin community, miners, etc. will probably be in the group of people you talk about.

Maybe even the people with large stashes of BTC, since its value will drop rapidly as people try to cash out. Innovating on top of Bitcoin could be a way to preserve the value. Even if the core protocol of Bitcoin were to need modifications to allow Ripple-like functionality, it could be done through proof of burn (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_burn), keeping the exchange rate fixed at 1:1 for a predetermined period.

The specifics are available on the Ripple wiki. If you understand the internal design and mechanics of BitCoin you will see that the design and mechanics of Ripple are superior in every way. It is like BitCoin (the code base) 2.0. It would be trivial to make BitCoin (the coin) better, faster, cheaper by converting the existing BitCoin block chain into a new Ripple (the code base) ledger.

That is the obvious next step for BitCoin once the Ripple code base is released. Most everything important on the BitCoin Hard Fork Wishlist is already done in the Ripple code base. Doing so would have one really interesting side effect.

Ripple (the code base) has zero use for the "mining" part of current BitCoin miner's expensive rigs. It would be trivial to mod the Ripple code base to distribute 25 BTC among those who helped validate transactions in a given 10 minute period. However, the validation chore can be done with the power of a cell phone. (maybe a little exaggeration, but certainly with the old laptop you recently upgraded)

Goodbye, GPU cards, FPGAs, and ASICs. But really... Would that be a bad thing?

I don't really get proof of burn because that link is hard to read.  Fine, the formula simulates a mining rig, but what about the proof of work property that makes it hard for an attacker to replicate the block chain from scratch and double spend?  In other words, what specifically makes it difficult for the attacker to perform an attack?  

Also, the whole expense replication is complex because it uses the value of BTC itself to represent real resources.  This has an unknown affect (to me) on how the valuation of BTC would be affected.  Who determines the value of c?  A central authority?

Anyway haven't thought about it that much but those are the initial impressions.

I was thinking just of the use of Coin-burning as a tool for transition between cryptocurrencies (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_burn#Coin-burning_as_a_tool_for_transition_between_cryptocurrencies), not necessarily to using proof of burn in that new currency after the transition. The existing Bitcoin blockchain can be used as algorithmic proof that someone gave up their BTC, and the new blockchain can then credit the same amount to the corresponding new address. In that way the value of the old BTC wouldn't drop as it is replaced by the new BTC.

That is interesting and exciting.  It's like a formal upgrade mechanism in our decentralized environment.  Kind of like how European countries worked hard to cutover all their fiats into Euro.

People need to further flush this out.

The nice thing is that no one would be forced to switch, you could continue to use the old blockchain as long as it had sufficient non-evil hashing power behind it. Any number of potential replacements would then enter free competition with each other and with the original BTC. It's possible more than one would survive.

And to get this back to Ripple, I believe Ripple will happily find paths that convert currencies along the way, which should help lower barriers to entry for new currencies.

I guess my point is that once the code base is released we'll see whether or not OpenCoin has any hooks in there to manipulate the system.  Their employees state that once the cat is out of the bag you can't put her back in, which I take as, "trust me once it's open it will be obvious we can't manipulate it."

Also, I'm interested in seeing a concise answer to this question: how does OpenCoin plan on proving their inability to manipulate the ripple network while being able to retain corporate control over the payment system?  Conversely, how does OpenCoin prevent Bitcoin from copying all of its features?  RED do you already have thoughts on this question with your research?  I almost feel like there is a contradiction there.

That's really f***ing clever! At least to my sleepy brain.

We have no desire to retain control, that's the whole point of decentralizing. It is vital that we not have control over the network for all kinds of reasons. That's why we designed the system not to require central authorities.

We don't. We've even suggested some things we do that could be particularly helpful to Bitcoin. We don't see ourselves competing with Bitcoin any time in the near future, if ever.

Do you think if Satoshi had kept control over Bitcoin or tried to stop alt coins from forming his Bitcoins would be worth more today? We learned this lesson.

@JoelKatz:

Have you guys considered a proof-of-burn transition from BTC to XRP?

Why advantage would that have over just trading BTC for XRP? If it ever cranked into high gear, it would reduce the supply of BTC and increase the supply of XRP, making both currencies less useful and means of exchange.

Maybe it would help acceptance by those holding BTC, plus it could help you supplant BTC if that's what you wanted. In general, I think that offering an upgrade path from other currencies could be a good business move for new cryptocurrencies, at least in some circumstances. But I'm not advocating this, just wondering if you had considered it.

I know a lot of people in this forum want lots of currency speculators to drive up the price of BTC. But that's, IMO, foolish short term thinking. That's what causes crashes. And crashes cause risk. And risk drives away adoption of a currency as a means of exchange.

Long term, the real win is getting your currency used as a means of exchange. Price instability works against that. Such a scheme, if it moved at any kind of volume, would reduce the supply of one currency and increase the other, making both prices less stable and making both currencies less suitable as a means of exchange. It would only make sense if both currencies functioned as a unit already, like when a currency is reissued, because everyone already understands that all existing old currency adds to the supply of new currency because people will exchange it.

2 q's:
1) If Bitcoin copies you completely, you will go bankrupt.  Is this not true?  I would expect OpenCoin to try to protect themselves somehow by inserting some hook into the system to protect their intellectual property.

2) Why don't you just take the issue off the table entirely then by removing ripple altogether?

I don't think that really makes sense. Bitcoin is what it is. There's really no way Bitcoin could copy us without being something other than Bitcoin and people would still want the old Bitcoin.

Like Satoshi did for Bitcoin, right? No, wait, he didn't. You think he would have been richer if he had? Was Satoshi a fool?

Trying to adjust your behavior to overcome irrational objections from people who don't even care about the issues they're objecting to and who will just make new equally invalid objections when you overcome the ones they did made is a fool's errand. Ripple has a significant chance of complete failure and being able to give away XRP to drive adoption is strategically critical. And that's only one of a long list of reasons.

If you don't believe us, even when we say we're going to do what's in our own best interest, then so be it. Wait and see.

Agreed wholeheartedly, what Bitcoin needs now is stability, not a higher exchange rate.


That need not be the only effect. It could also make transition from BTC to XRP less painful, which could decrease enthusiasm for a Bitcoin-based rival to Ripple. The end result could then be a single, more stable currency, namely XRP.

I don't care about BTC valuation, most of my wealth is in equities.  I do care about virtual currencies "making it" because it is revolutionary which I know you agree with.  When you have more than one cryptocurrency this undermines the probability of success for the market leader.

ripple has a huge disadvantage because of its public association with OpenCoin, a for-profit organization, which you are a part of.

I will even concede that Bitcoin probably started out as a for-profit scheme, but I don't care because it has the vast market share right now which is why I will only use Bitcoin for now.

Having a controlled exchange mechanism (via proof of burn) from BTC to ripple is advantageous because it allows organized and controlled transition of currency 1 to currency 2.  Doing this via trading is undesirable because it does not address the volatility issue caused by the competition for alternate cryptocurrencies.

When you standardize the conversion from X to Y in a controlled decentralized environment this addresses the volatility issue inherent to ALL cryptocurrencies which need to always be on the watch for its future replacement.

Concisely, if people sell BTC to buy ripple, BTC goes to 0 and ripple goes up.  This creates inherent instability in BTC valuation.

You're definitely right that this is conceivable. I'm not so sure it's likely though. If anything like this ever happened, it would be way off in the future. We we designed Ripple, our primary goal was to make a system that was as useful as possible so that it had the best possible chance of widespread adoption. Thinking through a solution to some possible distant future Bitcoin/Ripple endgame was not part of the equation. And I don't think any of us can imagine what such a scenario will look like such that we could design for it now.

If you believe Ripple will inevitably destroy Bitcoin because it's so much better, then I would argue that it should do so and it's irrational to oppose it because Bitcoin somehow "deserves to win" despite being inferior.

I don't think anyone can predict what some Bitcoin/Ripple future endgame would look like or even if there will ever be one. If you genuinely think this is likely, sell all your BTC today and buy XRP. (I bet you didn't. Why? Because you don't think it's likely. I don't either.)

I think it's a double-edged sword. On the one hand competition is good, on the other hand you also need critical mass. The ability to make payments in IOUs using Ripple looks like a killer feature that may allow XRP to establish critical mass very quickly.

I feel like your responses are just based on rhetorics (if that is a word).  Can you please openly tell me why Bitcoin community cannot copy your open source code right after you flip your magic switch?  That is all I am asking you.  Theoretically, if they do, you will have no competitive advantage to Bitcoin and a smaller user base in an instant.

I know I sound irrational to you but I am sincerely looking for a clear response to make me understand why I am irrational.

I didn't do so because I don't have any nominal BTC or XRP.  The reason why I am raising this as an issue is because it undermines the probability of success for ALL CRYPTOCURRENCIES including XRP.


The future endgame in my mind is this generic process:  

1) cryptocurrency 1 takes the market lead,
2) the masses buy cc 1 and feel happy to have this great advancement
3) cc 2 appears which is WAY better than cc1, the masses are seduced
4) the masses sell cc1 and buy cc2
5) in the process volatility for cc1 spikes
6) cc1 gets a bad name, and the reputation of all cryptocurrencies get incrementally undermined
7) go to #1

Furthermore, expectation of the above creates inherent volatility.

The excitement that I have with a formal replacement mechanism is that it prevents the above cycle and expectations of such.  To your point, I don't think proof of burn answers all of the questions on achieving this but the point is:

We need a mechanism to upgrade BTC is a way that kills volatility caused by the competitive cryptocurrency issue.

I could care less if Ripple or pipple or litecoin is BTC2.0 but don't do your conversion by relying on an exchange.

They can and they certainly will. Just like Bitcoin spawned a dozen alt coins.

We will have the first mover advantage, just like Bitcoin has over all the alt coins.

You're not irrational. You just think we have a fear of competition. If we are not better than our competitors, we deserve to lose. We will be, just as Bitcoin is better than its competitors.

I agree with you that this might be a concern in the future. I have no idea how to solve it though. If it ever appears actually likely to occur, we'll be in a better position to figure out the right solution because we'll know the actual circumstance we're in. Perhaps people might agree to inflating the currency supply.

FATAL ERROR! I didn't mean to slander Liberty Reserve. I meant to reference Liberty Dollar! I'm changing this post now... Changed. My apologies to everyone at Liberty Reserve.



Yes, I am 100% convinced, 1) they will release the source code, 2) they will not be able to *manipulate* the rules once they have done so. The rules will always be changeable (as they are with bitcoin). But it will require near 100% community approval (as with bitcoin).

The main reason I'm so certain (i.e. the Satoshi reason) is because the less the formal control Ripple has over the rules of the system, the better the chances they don't get prosecuted for forgery like the Liberty Dollar guy.


That is the beauty of their plan. They don't need to manipulate the network ever. I'm going to answer this concisely in this post and I'll give an extended answer in my next...

Owning all the XRP (as they do now) implies that they can manipulate the market price of XRP at will. I presumed that they would do so in order to preserve a SteadyCoin like value for XRP. I just had no idea of what steady target value they saw as their StableTarget.

To me it seemed "intuitively obvious" their goal was to be able to have *external* USD/XRP exchanges, along with euro/XRP yen/XRP rupee/XRP ... etc.  People would physically give or electronically transfer USD to their preferred gateway and that gateway would exchange it for XRP that you would hold in your Ripple address (a la bitcoin). Then when you would send the XRP to another address (a la bitcoin). Then the person you send it to could convert it to euro, yen, rupee... etc. using their preferred gateway.

Duh! Right?

To make that system work pretty much REQUIRES keeping the value of XRP stable (SteadyCoin). Otherwise, people wouldn't be able to PERCEIVE their XRP as being EQUAL to USD. Again, Duh! Right? The *evil brilliance* of that plan is that maintaining the perceived stability of the system REQUIRES them to sell their boundless stash of XRP as necessary to compensate for increased demand for XRP as Ripple user base increases. Right? Brilliant! Right?

Wrong. It turns out thats how morons like me and Liberty Dollar would implement the system. They have a name for that in the USA. We call it FORGERY. The government has secret agents to put a stop to that. They're called "The Secret Service". Ask the Liberty Dollar guy.

No. What a truly F...ing, genius level, Satoshi level, BRILLIANCE would do.... would be... wait for it...

Convert from USD/XRP at market rates *and* XRP/euro, yen, rupee...etc. at market rates... wait for it...

INSTANTANEOUSLY! All in one, F...ing, single transaction. Holy Shit! as they say. It's Madness and I'm One Step Behind! That way Ripple (the company) doesn't have to give a flying F... about what the market rate for XRP is.

Better still, Ripple owners holding so much XRP give the perceptions that they can manipulate the market price at will (They can). Thereby reducing most people's urge to speculate in XRP (a la bitcoin). The fewer people who perceive XRP as equivalent to the USD the better for Ripple (the company) and its founders. The last place they want to be standing is next to the Liberty Dollar guy. The more people who perceive XRP as inflationary the better as well. Being guaranteed inflationary means that selling XRP can't possibly be perceived as an investment scam (except on this web site) nor as a Ponzi scheme.

There! How's that for CONCISE.


They don't. They don't have to care. To Ripple BTC is just yet another externally issued currency. Inside Ripple you can have as many of those as you want. I could be a Cheese Burgers gateway in Ripple if I saw a market. Someone in Russia could send 500 rubles to me in Cheese Burgers and I could take delivery in the USA.

Ripple changes F...ing everything.

Great, you will be doing the world a considerable favor if you address this issue.

IMO, there are two major issues with all cryptocurrencies as of today:
1. replacement by a better newer cryptocurrency - there must be a formalized cutover mechanism that allows upgrades, this will allow continual improvement and avoid volatility associated with expectations of being killed by a younger sexier currency.
2. supply must allow inflation - deflationary spiral will doom any transactional economy, any cryptocurrency must either have a perpetual built in inflation mechanism, or banks need to spring up to lend the cryptocurrency

Sorry this is not concise, Joel did better :)

In fact I find your response really hand-wavy and untrustworthy

Such is life.

But let me point out that you should find my, a random stranger's, opinion less trustworthy than a founder of Ripple's opinion.

I really can't be offended by that.

I judged you based on the content of your post nothing else.  Trust me (and trust your own logic) that you have an advantage vs. Opencoin employee in terms of default trust.

Sorry, to elaborate, I was hoping you would back up your statement that you've researched the ripple protocols to the extent that it is better than bitcoin in every regard.  The key response I was hoping to get was, how OpenCoin proves in their protocol that they have no control over the network once switched on?  You came back with a lot of sentences talking about converting with fiat which I found to be unrelated to the original question.

FATAL ERROR! I didn't mean to slander Liberty Reserve. I meant to reference Liberty Dollar! I
edited the post above to correct my mistake. My apologies to everyone at Liberty Reserve.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/us/liberty-dollar-creator-awaits-his-fate-behind-bars.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Oh! That question. Give me a minute. And I will respond directly.

Edit: My response will probably cause more controversy than the OP.

Don't stress about it.  By definition, you probably cannot answer it undeniably until they release the code.  If you can that would be interesting and controvertial (as you suggest.)

The concise answer is: it is impossible to maintain control through the code, when someone else possesses physical control of their own code. They could write some kill switch into the original code. Source code hackers could just comment it out and re-compile.

You can only maintain a "kill-switch" kind of feature if your product is closed source. There is not a chance in hell that Ripple would take that chance.

HOWEVER, my explanation requires a non-concise story...

Sorry I still do not buy your story.  How do you have such a strong view about the code without access to look at it?

Are you just naive or do have access?

To elaborate, Opencoin could simply just require some pre authentication to a central server.  If they wanted to be surreptitious about it since being open about it would be "stupid" they would try to hide it in the code.

In other words, why pitch this view based on, "why would they even try it?" Basis.  Let's see the code and make final judgement.  Very simple

Do you write code?

When you run a Ripple peer, every transaction gets copied to your machine just like running a bitcoin peer. If you have the code, and the data. You have total control. Unless the data is somehow encrypted by your secret server. But that would be detected as soon as someone ran their own Ripple peer.

What you are suspicious of, technically, cannot be done. Unless you are presuming that Ripple will never decentralize their system. (Ripple will own EVERY node)

In that case this conversation is pointless.

Do you have all the source code now?  Pls forward me the link

https://github.com/rippleFoundation

Source code for the server is not released.

If you would like to contribute to RippleScam.org, send me a PM. I'm also spending a moderate amount on advertising. Send me a PM if you could help.

so can you summarize how looking at the client code, you can ascertain that there is provably no way the server code cannot control overall functionality?

I actually don't have as strong of a negative view as you.  I don't care if Ripple can be successful.  I just think they should be mindful of the competitive cryptocurrency issue which plagues the entire market.  And they are increasing the prevalence of the issue.

What are you talking about? Making a payment IS NOT and NEVER WILL BE sending someone an IOU.

Making a payment is giving someone something of value. If you want to make an electronic payment, just send Bitcoins.

Sending Bitcoins is anonymous, fast, free and doesnt require a 3rd party corporation, XRPs, or any fees or IOUs.

Sending someone an IOU when they request a payment is pretty much the financial equivalent of trolling.

If you cant pay me NOW, put it on your freaking Amex or Visa card.

Credit Card companies understand how debt works, thats why you pay INTEREST on your LOAN.

Im NOT in the interest free credit business and very few people want to be, because it has a negative expected value.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value

BTW the reason I store roughly no wealth in any cryptocurrency is the prevalence of the 2 issues below.

Once I am convinced both are solved.  I will store a significant portion of my liquid assets in the leading cryptocurrency.

1. replacement by a better newer cryptocurrency - there must be a formalized cutover mechanism that allows upgrades, this will allow continual improvement and avoid volatility associated with expectations of being killed by a younger sexier currency.
2. supply must allow inflation - deflationary spiral will doom any transactional economy, any cryptocurrency must either have a perpetual built in inflation mechanism, or banks need to spring up to lend the cryptocurrency

@bitchess, there are a group of us discussing similar ideas under the concept name StableCoin <-- not a real coin. That is a site searchable term we've coined for #2 with an option of #1. You might want to introduce yourself in this thread.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179918.0

will do

as a few others have suggested, why don't you add a donation button to the website?
i'm sure you'd receive plenty of support, maybe enough to cover all hosting/marketing expenses.
Coin Widget (http://coinwidget.com/) seems to work very well for that purpose.
----------------------

In my eyes, Ripple in and of itself is clearly NOT a scam.
OpenCoin? They're a whole different story.

since I discovered that they'd stuck they're hands into the VC Cookie-jar (http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/11/now-backed-by-andreessen-more-opencoin-looks-to-build-a-better-bitcoin-and-a-universal-payment-ecosystem/), I've lost almost all confidence that they're doing ANYTHING in the interest of bettering the community (more like exploiting it -- as many others have done -- nothing wrong with that, just own up to it -- you're in it for the MONEY).
----------------------

those that truly believe that Ripple IS a scam may want to delve a bit into the ledger using some of the available Client Tools (https://github.com/rippleFoundation/ripple-examples).
They'll then be able to see for themselves just how well Ripple handles some of Bitcoin's weaknesses, namely rapid confirmations.


this seems promising; which again begs the question, "why don't you release the source already?"
what is so hard about implementing a self-contained upgrade notification system?
to make it easy-peasy, set the folder to 777 (not very safe, but...) and it becomes, "click here to upgrade to Ripple v0.2.x ... upgrade complete"
the answer is NOTHING

I strive to be fair.  I am an OpenCoin skeptic like you but let's be fair, no judgment can be fairly passed until everybody has complete access to the codebase.

The context of the situation detracts from our expectation that OpenCoin can prove their trustworthiness.  But hey, let's give them a chance to prove themselves.  Attacking them without all the facts is not productive.

Technically, what you propose can be done. I imagine it will be done (with appropriate warnings) once the server software is released. Read my post on eDonkey2000 (above) to grasp the potential consequences of easy/automatic upgrading.

As for why not now. I'm presuming this is OpenCoin's beta period. Beta is a time allotted for potential real world customers to bash on the system and report bugs. This allow OpenCoin to make the system as stable as possible for it's actual P2P FULL release.

RED, how do you have complete trust in a system that is not yet open completely?  They are openly hidden as of now!  When I try to answer this question logically, it makes me distrust you and your statements.

Just to be clear bitchess, I DO NOT recommend you or anyone else buy XRP and hold them like you hold BTC. I also do not recommend that anybody EVER buy XRP to speculate on its price. Ever. Period. That is not what XRP is for. Speculative trading in XRP will not make anyone rich EXCEPT OpenCoin founders. It should be clear to the casual observer that OpenCoin can manipulate the exchange price of XRP at will by rapidly adjusting/constricting supply. It is also clear that they will be GIVING AWAY XRP FOR FREE for a long time to come.

I do, however, recommend you personally *acquire* enough XRP to activate two addresses. Then send some XRP back and forth to yourself. I think the minimum amount of XRP required to test out those features is about 150 XRP right now.

What's the best way to *acquire* XRP? Make an address and add it to OpenMarket's Free XRP thread. That gave me 20,000 XRP but it took a day or two to receive them. I was impatient so I asked an OpenCoiner for some in order to test. He gave me a few hundred. FULL DISCLOSURE: I don't expect to EVER buy XRP to use for saving or for spending directly. I will keep some around to use to pay transaction fees. From my experience, the current transaction fee is 0.00001 XRP/transaction. This does not seem to change relative to the amount of XRP send in a transaction.

wow another hand-waving response that doesn't directly address my question.  How do you have trust in a decentralized currency in which you cannot see proof about the decentralization?

Right now I have enough XRP to make 1,700,000,000 PayPal like USD transactions. However, now I need to find a Ripple Gateway I trust to hold USD for me. That is where my worries lie. (my counter party risk is here) Not with OpenCoin.

Does anybody have any personal experiences with any of the current Ripple Gateway operators?

I'm just going to stop this back and forth because it's not productive.

Nobody can pass judgment on ripple unless everything is out in the open.  I don't understand why you are so persistent in not responding directly to my concern.

I don't. I trust a currently centralized currency that is not distributed at all yet.
I trust it implicitly because I have ZERO at risk with OpenCoin. They gave me all the XRP I'll ever need. If they shut the whole project down tomorrow I would lose nothing. The same will be true of the majority of their potential customers/users.

These facts cannot change for me over time. My only risk is in choosing to trust a particular Gateway to hold my USD.

How is it hand wavy to recommend you only TRUST OpenCoin enough to ask for Ripple's equivalent of an "invite to their closed beta"?

That is exactly how much I trust OpenCoin.

Great but it would be stupid of an opencoin employee to publish their code to the world who can copy them completely.  They must have some protection built in as a corporation. 

I don't know the details about what they will publish, but the first thing I will look at when they flip their magic switch is how do they protect their own intellectual property while proving that their system is decentralized.

I don't care about any BETA, I want to see the code and the protocol in full naked glory.

You cannot establish any trust without that.

Then don't use the beta. It's too late for that anyway, as you cannot currently create an account. I'm glad I created one in time, I had to jump through some hoops to do so.

I won't use the beta.  What value is there?  I won't use ripple or Ripple until I see undeniable proof that OpenCoin is trustable.

Yes, we get it. You've said that enough it sounds like a childish tantrum.


I'm fine. YOU cannot establish trust without that. Good for you! Off I go now! Bye bye.

I found it educational, and I was impressed by the extremely rapid, courteous and helpful response to a bug report I filed. It turned out I simply didn't understand the system well enough and that the alleged bug was not in fact a bug. I agree the system cannot be trusted until after they've open sourced the code, but I have high hopes for Ripple. If nothing else, it would be great for Bitcoin.

Sorry, didn't mean to convey any tantrum or emotion.

I just want to hear how you have established trust in a system that is currently opaque.  It doesn't make sense to my logical mind.

Again I won't waste my time until the proof is there.  Proof comes first for me.

Fine with me, I was just explaining my own choice.

I never bothered too much about ripple, since as long as you exchange with existing fiat money, you will have to cooperate with banks, that ruled out the possibilities of an unregulated exchange

Maybe for small transactions people could use localbitcoins.com, but when it comes to millions of dollar, your only interface is bank

I'd rather see some established foreign currency exchange join the bitcoin exchange business, Etrade, IB, etc...

Actually, one of the great things about Ripple is that you do not have to deal with banks ever, if you don't want to. All transactions can be settled in cash with people you know personally.

Not for large transaction, for small transactions localbitcoins.com will provide a face to face exchange possibility

That is another possibility, but Ripple allows you to do this with people you know and trust, and it is accessible 24/7.

We have no mechanism to stop people from creating accounts. An account is created automatically when it receives XRP. Theoretically, we could disable creating a new wallet in the client, but we've already publicly released a version of the client that allows wallet creation so that wouldn't do anything. I suppose we could ask Payward to stop allowing new wallets to be created, but storing a wallet at Payward is not necessary to use Ripple. You can store your wallet locally or, if you're a coder, use the account directly through the Javascript library without a wallet or using any language that can exchange JSON objects over a Websocket connection. The "blob vault" source is also public, so anyone could create their own wallet provider.

https://ripple.com/client/
Push "Create a wallet"

While the network is centralized, we could add mechanisms to prevent accounts from being created, delete accounts, freeze or adjust balances, remove trust lines, and so on. But we have never had any need for any of these mechanisms and so they currently do not exist. And, more importantly, we would prefer not having to having them. (And, as other people mentioned, once the server source code is released, any such mechanisms would just destroy our credibility and be removed by the community anyway.)

Were we to delete an account, change a balance, remove a trust line, or anything like that, there would be one ledger before this change and one after, both signed by us. Each ledger contains the transactions that justify the changes between the previous ledger and that ledger, signed by the account holder, along with precise descriptions of what ledger changes each transaction made. Every account state change is justified by a transaction on the other side of the ledger. If we were to tamper with any ledger entries, we wouldn't have a signed transaction from the account holder justifying that change, and this could be provably shown to everyone. (Though this wouldn't stop us from freezing an account by just not processing its transactions, though if we did that, presumably the account owner would complain loudly.)

@joelkatz, I have a friend trying to active his wallet. I sent him 250 XRP but he says his Ripple client is reporting "Offline". He sent me his secret key and I can open the wallet from my machine.

Any idea what that might mean?

EDIT

How do I send the entire balance to another account and close that ledger entry? The wallet is not useful anymore now that two people have the "secret" right?

It seems that you cannot delete an account. At least, not yet. I am not sure about whether they plan it, I've suggested it in their forum not so long ago.

Thanks! Just posted the same question in the "let's test it" thread. Oops.

It's funny how the Ripple developers and shills on this board refuse to tout Ripple as a competitor to Bitcoin and say they are supposed to complement each other but in the news press lately people high up in the company are being quoted as positioning Ripple to be a Bitcoin competitor.

I encourage everyone that is anti-Ripple to make comments in any news articles mentioning Ripple about that 80 billion XRP the ripple foundation has awarded itself (80% of the entire coin supply).

Unfortunately this is hard to do and I can understand why ripple's switch being flipped is being delayed. Updating the protocol once the cat is out of the bag is rather hard, especially for Bitcoin.


What do you think of PPC?

That means you should sell out of all cryptocurrencies until it's solved.  That is my position.  Think about what complaints your girlfriend and all your future girlfriends would have with it that are not solvable without an upgrade.


Don't want to waste any time on non market leaders.

If your willing to accept very low or zero risk then what you say is true, get your money out of crypto!

However I am taking a risk that I am ok with. Bitcoin has first mover advantage so it seems like a good bet. I admit its a bet and a gamble but I am at peace with this reality.


You state that a cryptocurrency with a  inflation mechanism could be more viable than Bitcoin, and you dismiss the only serious cryptocurrency that has inflation just because its not beating Bitcoin at this moment? If you really thought that a cryptocurrency with inflation would be a better option then wouldn't PPC overtake Bitcoin eventually?

PPC is a market leader, its the leading inflation based cryptocurrency.

Apart from adoption, what do you think of PPC?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagholder

I actually trust the market to eventually be an accurate predictor.  Hence the best cryptocurrency should be popular (and stable) if it addresses all the obvious issues the people bring up.  Obviously I'm just rationalizing my laziness because the cryptocurrency competitive marketplace is not perfectly efficient which allows for hidden gems...

Anyway, took a quick glimpse now ONLY at PPC's supply description (I ignored all the other sections.)  "For many years annual inflation of gold is around 1-3%. In ppcoin there are two types of minting, proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. The proof-of-work minting rate is regulated by Moore's Law, which dictates that our ability in proof-of-work grows exponentially. We are aware that Moore's Law eventually has to end, but by that time inflation in ppcoin is likely already approaching gold's level. The proof-of-stake minting introduces at most 1% annual inflation. Meanwhile ppcoin's transaction fees are destroyed to counterbalance these inflationary forces. So overall ppcoin's minting design is still a very low future-inflation design comparable to Bitcoin. "

My thoughts are as follows:

1) predefining a number by which to increase money supply is arbitrary.  The challenge is to match money supply with money demand.  This is how monetary value is stabilized.  In the past and now, a centralized entity, the Fed, manages this delicate balance.  IMO, they are doing a decent job (except being slightly biased toward the stimulative side.)
2) no algorithm can easily predict the monetary demand.  If somebody is smart enough to create an algorithm to reflect this and incorporate into the supply algorithm, they solve what is likely impossible and also become the most important person in monetary history ever (even more than Satoshi.)
3) in the absence of #2, the only solutions are to either
   a) have a competitive marketplace where external parties modify the money supply by lending in a fractional reserve system
   b) have a competitive marketplace to control the monetary velocity of the currency, ie. the rate at which transactions can be conducted.  ((b) is likely a naïve suggestion because, it assumes that people's desire and timing to conduct a monetary transaction can be controlled at the aggregate level.)

The equation I am basing my opinion on is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantity_theory_of_money

Look!... I deleted all the stuff irreverent to my following comment and left only the link for those who care to look up it's context.  :)


I totally agree with you're logic. Been thinking about this problem for almost 4 years. That is what the [StableCoin] topic is all about.

Your "(b) is likely a naïve suggestion" is probably true in terms of fiat currencies and the world at large.

However, I do believe it is possible in a Coin based ecosystem. In fact, I think I have a stable & practical solution to "(b)" (in terms of an alt-coin) worked out.

I encourage you to create a thread with your ideas on 3a. I'd love to hear them. If you do please put [StableCoin] somewhere in the title so I will notice it when I search for new concepts.

Lets assume getting the code to simulate correct inflation amounts based on various factors is either too difficult or if controlled by third parties, becomes too easy to gain. What would you prefer as a chosen inflation amount, a fixed number that cannot be gamed?

If you had to chose, 1%, 2%, 3% or even more percents a year? If the only option was to hard code an inflation figure in. Or do you believe that to be pointless and as bad as the current model of 0% in the Bitcoin world.

The magic number would be correlated with long term real economic growth rate.  Trying to set the money supply growth constant at 2% is likely closer than setting it to 0% yet it has the same flaw that if your number is lower than the observed monetary demand, you will get deflation, if your number is higher you will have built in inflation.

The fractional reserve system allows banks to react to deviations from equilibrium as numbers are observed

If the algo to set money supply growth rate can take in real values of what is transacted on a regular basis then it would solve the problem completely.  Not sure if this is feasible.

It can't be done with self-referential code alone. Something needs to be able to observe changes in external demand for the coin. Inputting the "market price and depth" as it changes is one possibility. However, that initiates a cascade of design questions. Which market? Who inputs the data? How often? What if the dominant market changes? Who decides when to change markets and who inputs that data...

Ripple makes this closer to a possibility since trading happens INTERNAL to the Ripple system. However, there are still lots of other issues to consider.

A solution to a hard problem like this may very well allow a crypto coin to overtake Bitcoin, do you agree?

not a scam if u believe it

Yes and it would have the potential to eliminate inflation and deflation altogether as well as the need for a central bank.

What variables would need to taken in?

For example take a look at Bitcoin mining with the massive resources being put towards it. This is clearly a case of huge monetary demand, would the perfect algorithm increase or decrease the supply based on that demand? Would it be better to disallow mining altogether and use another variable, perhaps unique transaction info? In that case only transactions between aged unique wallets might allow for a input to allow for inflation or deflation. (aged wallets that are only transferring between other unique wallets that do not have too many connections to determine that they do not belong to the same person)

This is what the fed uses as a baseline: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_rule
But it assumes that you have the existence of a prevailing fed funds rate you can adjust (and a banking system as well)

You can't simply look at transaction volumes because people could just sell an apple to themself and control that number.  The demand for money must be linked to real economic activity.

i like the way this sounds

+1

Thanks.  The "real values" part is the part that I find not feasible to put in an algorithm but let's see what the future holds.

Your ideas are very well reasoned and elucidated. Again, I encourage you to:
1) Introduce yourself here.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179918.0

2) Create a new thread that puts forth the ideas you've expounded here. Also, include the parts you think are infeasible. All of us are doing that.

Perhaps an odd combination of each of our ideas will turn out to be feasible. Please put [StableCoin] in the title of your new thread. That way like minded forum users will be able to find it when they search for the topic.

ok I know, I'm talking about a topic that deviates from the thread subject.  My bad...  I'm just responding to responses to prior posts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_%28finance%29

I don't think this is feasible. I could run a script to transfer money from A to B all the time. If you are thinking of "oh, then hard code a case to ignore that", you're thinking in the wrong direction because I'll just transfer from A to [B or C or D] to [A or B or C or D].

yeah, you're right, i really didn't take into account how easy it is to game some of these systems.  i was just reading a discussion https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=166302 that talks about better ways to handle transaction fees, with a focus on how to prevent mining pool collusion from gaming that system.
 
with that said .. i never could have imagined someone (Satoshi) creating a system like bitcoin in my wildest dreams; so if someone (or more likely a team) with that same sense of vision would tackle this problem, it could certainly materialize into the next great coin

Bump to prevent more people using ripple.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeering

At 8500/BTC, 100 billion XRP is valued at 11.8 million BTC = $1.3 billion USD WTF! Of course this is due to the public scarcity. Still WTF!  :D

i came here to post the very same thing, but you beat me to it :(

was just on bitstamp and came across their Buy Ripples page
currently @ $1 per 50 XRP (seriously?)
that's a 2 BILLION DOLLAR valuation
don't see any way to actually SELL yet, but still, yeah, WTF!!!

with bitstamp (which i believe is the 2nd largest exchange) supporting ripple, do ya think maybe, just maybe, it might be time to flip that "code release" switch ???

edit:
even if the next massive giveaway was 5,000 XRP per account; that's literally giving everyone a hundred dollar bill to then unload on the free market; this decentralization plan of OpenCoin is making less and less sense to me

And this is why we should be getting an announcement any day now,

Due to the overwhelming success of Ripple XRP, we currently do not have any plans to make this project open source. Thank you and please continue making us money.

This will decrease the chance of competing ripple clones which would devalue the Ripple. But for the record, I don't consider this to be a scam and more like an innovative business venture.

Just to touch on your last point, if the Giveaway thread starts giving out $100 bill, then each bitcointalk account who has not posted in that thread will be valued at $80. Hacking, buying accounts, and dead accounts coming out of the woodwork will be rampant then it was at $10-$20 range before.

2funi :D

Hello, I'm Etlase2, and I am tackling this problem. One way to ensure transactions remain fairly honest is to charge a percentage fee rather than a flat fee or a fee based only on bytes/coin age. This is possible when you use an account ledger system instead of a transaction ledger. For this and a million other details, click the link in my sig.

that's quite a read; do you have a cliff notes version?

i'll try to digest it over the md weekend -- look forward to discussing

Check out the 4th post and see if that helps. The money supply is intended to expand when the people deem it necessary, and do so without using much energy, while also retaining bulletproof security and using an insignificant amount of energy when no new money is necessary.

read the post and it sounds sweet-as-hell, but i still don't get it
there is just soooo much to read; i promise i'm not lazy, i'm just incredibly busy
perhaps some pictures would help summarize the details?
e.g. http://thumbnails.visually.netdna-cdn.com/bitcoin-infographic_5029189c9cbaf.jpg

I think that project is too overreaching.