Bitcoin Forum

I registered too late to get in on the Ripple giveaway, but I'm curious what people here think of it. Seems sketchy that all the Ripples are owned by OpenCoin Inc. to start...

Ripple is much more than a currency, XRP wasn't meant to be used as one, it's more for in-systems operations.

I see a single point of failure in it, the xpr.

..and then theres always the liquidity that will not be there for a decade(s) to come, even if you miss the single point of failure.

They say it's not a currency, but it ends up being one no matter what they say, doesn't it? If you can exchange it for other currencies, and for goods and services, then it's a currency.

As far as I understand it, you would normally -> load wallet via 3rd party (gateway?) such as paypal or a bank.  This would incur a real cost of 1-3% which they are deriding.  But it would be a one-time cost when you load.  From there, you could buy and exchange at will for basically no cost.  Seems reasonable.  Also, if people are willing to exchange rxp for currencies with little to no cost incurred, wouldn't this be the new way to trade currencies or get currency when going abroad?  Travelers' exchanges are usually quite costly to get foreign currency.

I just think its a Bitcoin ripoff to some extent. It might work faster as a medium of exchange at merchants that require quicker confirmation of funds...correct me if I am wrong.

Quicker, yes.  Also, it should be less volatile since massive appreciation shouldn't be in store, ie less speculation.  BTC is near terminal speculation.  If speculators drop out in the next year, btc prob drops quite a bit unless really big retailers adopt it and people start using it for real transactions (outside of silk road). 

There seems to be a lot of interest in using BTC for real transactions, but we'll have to wait and see if usage catches up to the speculation before another crash...

I know that Visa/Mastercard will not allow you to purchase virtual currency with them.  You can't use them to buy Bitcoins, basically.  That's why there isn't really a legit payment processor that takes CC and turns it into Bitcoin. 

So, my guess is, that Ripple is not calling their XRP a currency because then banks, payment processors, etc will likely reject what they are trying to do.  Not sure just calling it something different will work for them though.  It would be nice if it works out the way the developers intend.  Right now, it's mostly useless to me.

I think Ripple's one of the more interesting projects right now.  Next to bitcoin itself it's the one I'm most closely watching.

Very interesting! I hadn't thought of the credit card angle. Calling it something different might be enough for them to fly under the radar long enough to establish themselves.

I just found out about it today as part of an article on bitcoin. I agree it WILL be interesting to see if this stuff takes off or if it ends up being a step backward from bitcoin