Several reasons. One is that Ripple Labs has different legal obligations to its investors than it does to people who hold XRP. Another is that there's no guarantee Ripple Labs' business model will stay the same over time. Lastly, there's always a chance that the Ripple network will succeed as a payment system without the price of XRP appreciating significantly. For example, if the Federal Reserve issues dollars on the Ripple network with no transfer fee, that could become preferred over XRP.

Also, I don't think anyone really understands what's moving the price of XRP. So the risk and expected rewards are essentially uncomputable.

Yes.

I guess I can't refute a conspiracy theory, and maybe I am naive, but I genuinely don't think this is true. I'm not sure which variation of this you believe (for example, that there's insider information about Ripple Labs that affects the rational expected future value of XRP or that it's all manipulation and there's no real news), but the version I believe is essentially that the vast majority of the time, the market moves primarily on momentum. That is, when the price is rising, people buy just because they figure they can sell when it gets higher, which continues to push the price up. And when the price is dropping, even people who like to hold XRP may sell figuring they can buy back when it's lower.

I guess you can disagree with me, and if you do, I'm genuinely interested in hearing your reasoning because I am fully aware of the possibility that I might be wrong.

That's probably true. XRP is basically feeless except for a tiny transaction fee. So I agree that total volume is meaningless. One useful metric is to look at volume only where there are fees, for example XRP to/from Bitstamp BTC. You can use that volume as a proxy for total volume. Manipulation will appear mostly in feeless market.

I absolutely agree that XRP is not a sensible investment and that prices can drop drastically in short periods of time for no apparent reasons. Also, there are constant regulatory, technical, and business risks that could make XRP worthless overnight.

I'm a member of the Board of Directors of Ripple Labs, I don't have to assume much of anything. The partnerships we're working on are secret. Generally, we would prefer to release that information and announce them as soon as we can. You're certainly entitled to be skeptical of our intentions. If you happen to be in San Francisco some time, let me know and I'll show you who we are and what we're doing, and maybe that will ease some of your skepticism.

You have three choices:

1) Follow snapswap's withdrawal process. I've never withdrawn BTC from snapswap, but the usual way is that they give you a destination tag, you make a Ripple payment in BTC to their address with that destination tag and they credit your snapswap account. Then you withdraw to a BTC wallet using their web interface.

2) If you don't like snapswap's withdrawal process, exchange your snapswap BTC inside Ripple for another asset that you can more easily withdraw.

3) Make one or more direct payments to Bitcoin addresses from the Ripple client.

I'm probably one of the biggest Ripple supporters that there is, one of the first people to work on it, one of the designers of the protocol, and employed by Ripple Labs. There is no scam. However, the price of XRP is extremely volatile and behaves entirely unpredictably. I do not ever recommend people buy XRP as any kind of investment. There is always a significant possibility that its value can drop drastically, possibly even to zero, in a very short period of time.

I don't think anybody knows why the price of XRP surged over the past few days. It is almost axiomatic that it can drop just as quickly and nobody really know why. Buying on hype is a particularly bad idea. It is basically mathematically impossible for everyone to buy on the rise and sell before a subsequent decline. It is even possible for Ripple to succeed wildly as a payment system and the value of XRP not go up significantly.

Maybe, maybe not. That's up to the gateway. Ripple can't force anyone to give you BTC if they haven't agreed to do so. I believe snapswap BTC can be sent over the outbound bridge at no fee, meaning you should get the exact amount out if you send to a Bitcoin address from the Ripple client.

If you want to say that the expected outcome is a loss, that's certainly correct. But it's incorrect to argue that everybody loses in the long run. If you don't see why, apply your same argument to a lottery. Certainly there's a house edge. But it is manifestly false to claim that everyone loses in the long run. The house cannot force you to play if you don't want to. In your example of 100 people, if those 100 people all choose not to play anymore, then 99 out of 100 people have won -- even in the long run since none of them are betting any more.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Don't confuse the system with the revenue model. Google is good if it's a really good search engine. Google makes money if it generates really good ad revenue. But it would be kind of odd to judge Google as a search engine based on its ability to generate ad revenue.

To carry the analogy a bit too far, the way Google might think about it is like this -- if we make a really good search engine, it will generate lots of ad revenue. So if you care about the long term, you design it to be a great search engine and judge design decisions based on that, not on their affect on revenue.

Ripple was designed to be a great payment system and to federate existing payments systems. It also has features to support social/community credit and other types of possible future economic activity. We weren't trying to build something whose primary purpose was to generate revenue for us. Those priorities are reflected in the design.

If you build something whose primary purpose is to make you money, there's a good chance nobody will ever use it. And if you try to decentralize it, it will fail because there's no shared goal to make you money.

Build something great first.

You're talking about the currency inside the Ripple payment system, often called XRP. That's really not intended to be used as a means of exchange or a store of value (at least in the near term), so it's not really fair to compare it to Bitcoin (which is).

Absolutely true.

Absolutely false. You can make this highly unlikely with betting systems. The vast majority of people who use a betting system correctly will win.

These are not incompatible. Imagine a system where you have a 99% chance of winning $1 and a 1% chance of losing $200 and the total number of bets required is always less than 100. The house certainly has a huge edge. But the vast majority of people who use this system will win. And there can never be a "long run" because the total number of bets required by the system is always less than 100.

Typically you're not offered those options. If you are, then there's no point in using a betting system.

Not so. Some systems provide a very low probability of losing and a very high probability of winning.

Betting systems let you choose between this:

You have a one in a million chance of winning $700,000, otherwise you lose $1.

And this:

You have a one in a million chance of losing $1,300,000, otherwise you win $1.

That is, they adjust the odds of winning, the odds of losing, the amount you win, and the amount you lose. Typical progressive betting systems provide a very low probability that you will lose. In compensation, the amount you can win is very small relative to the amount you can lose.

A sanely-implemented system should permit you to set the odds and returns of the available bets, the betting limits, the amount you are willing to lose, and the amount you would like to win. It should report to you your odds of winning. It should then make it easy to execute the computed strategy. And once you win, you are done. If it makes it easy to repeat the strategy, it is fundamentally broken and likely made by someone who doesn't understand the entire point of betting strategies.

Cutoff time. 9.1 Bitcoins is the highest bid. PM me the shipping address. If you want Ognasty escrow, set it up. If not, we should be able to get this shipped tomorrow.

One small update: I'll pay for two-day shipping in the US. I'm not crazy about trying to work out international shipping.

I'm going to sell to whoever provides the best offer. I'll close the "bidding" when I get home in about two or three hours.

Kilo17 has the high bid so far. All bids should be made in this thread so there's no confusion about what price people need to top.

I'll cut off bidding when I get home this evening, probably between 7 and 8 PM Pacific.

The address payment will be made to is: 18Te2oUEQksRTkjjyZX773TTsWudre3mpr (Either by the buyer or the escrower.)
Of course, nobody should send any funds to this address yet.

Okay, two things.

First, I don't think I'll be able to ship the miner Tuesday. But I will ship it Wednesday morning. I apologize for the one day delay.

Second, I got a request for some images of the miner operating. I ran it for about 20 minutes and then grabbed these images. From my experience, this is slightly better than the miner usually runs.

http://snag.gy/fFEXV.jpg
http://snag.gy/ag7BJ.jpg
http://snag.gy/nFcb7.jpg

I'm willing to use escrow, but it's really not necessary. I'm happy to disclose the terms in this thread and commit to a particular amount and Bitcoin address. I've done other transactions without escrow (such as the Spondoolies miner I recently sold). I'm very well known to many people on this forum, including many who know me in person through my work at Ripple Labs. I'm not going to provably cheat anyone over a few thousand dollars.

I'd post the Bitcoin address you pay to in this thread. Someone would re-post it for posterity. If there were any dispute, you'd have proof you paid. If you dispute unjustly, I'd disclose the tracking number, but otherwise I'd communicate the tracking number to you privately.

But if you want escrow, I have two requirements:
1) You pay the escrow fee. The amount agreed is the amount delivered to me.
2) Ognasty is acceptable, for anyone else, I must approve the escrow.

I will accept the highest offer some time Monday. If escrow is not required or escrow can be set up on time, I'll ship Tuesday. If two day shipping is acceptable, I'll cover all packing and shipping fees (UPS, insured).

It is still available. I believe my best offer so far was 5.5 BTC.

Thanks for the warning! I've put a warning in the top message in this thread.

I live in Oakland. I could meet someone in San Francisco, Concord, Fremont, or other nearby areas.