i thought xrp wasn't supposed to be a currency.
It's called a bait-n-switch  |
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It's hugely different. In one case, resources and energy that exist only in finite supply and could have gone to productive uses are wasted. In the other case, there is no waste at all. I disagree completely (shocker!). Even if the sole purpose for consuming energy by mining XRP is to prevent OpenCoin from having total control over the distribution of the currency, it would be worth it in my eyes. Obviously you will have a different opinion. But my proof of work proposal for distribution of XRP is compatible with Bitcoin merged mining so how much is really being wasted? Certainly not all the energy. Maybe some of it (very little). Proof of work may suck, may be a waste of electricity, etc. It doesn't matter. All that matters is whether it is better to "waste" power and have Ripple succeed or not "waste" power and have Ripple very likely fail. Inasmuch as those really are the two choices, it becomes more accurate to say "utilize power" instead of "waste power." |
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Insofar as they are legally enforceable, IOUs are scarce. Money absolutely must be scarce.
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There is a reason Bitcoin is mined: proof-of-work technology is what made Bitcoin possible, because it made it possible for the units to be acquired through the same method by anyone. Without proof-of-work, Bitcoin couldn't have come into existence; the same holds for any allocation of virtual currency. The only way to make Ripple work is to do away with XRP or find a way to make them "mine-able."
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It's just following the exponential trendline since January, with a little delay near the all-time high, resulting in a little jump to catch up to the trend (revert to the norm).
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Assuming that a manufacturer made purpose-built Bitcoin device is automatically better is wrong. I wouldn't trust anything with software loaded up in a Chinese factory with my money, especially a device they know will contain my money.
That is a good point... (conspiracy back door key... lol) Makes you wonder... So... Then how do you (the bitcointalk users) tell people with almost zero tech skills how to make a high security wallet? As they all probably own a Windoze machine anyways. Also, it has to be easy to use... Haha, think of all those CEO's, CFO, etc. out there... JK  Generate some entropy by throwing darts, then calculate the private and public keys with paper and pencil. Tell me more! |
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Let me say, though, that I've been a little to quick to jump to conclusions attributing malice. It may just be that OpenCoin sees it as a win-win situation: they get to bootstrap Ripple into being quickly and equitably, while profiting handsomely for their service to the cmmunity.
I just don't think this can work, despite the best of intentions. Power corrupts even the best of people, does it not?
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Honestly I don't remember what I was getting at there. The giveaway seems alive and well at this point. Comment retracted.
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It's almost axiomatic that the only "fair" way to distribute scarce goods is to require people to give up other scarce goods to attain them: time, money, energy, electricity, whatever. And of course the founders must follow the same rules. Any other system necessarily gives tremendous power to the allocators from the moment those goods take on a market value.
For XRP that horse has already left the stable: they have market value. OpenCoin's "giveaway" allocation is now floating dead in the water. People only need to wake up to this and notice the obvious perverse incentives. Time to go back to the drawing board.
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Ryan Fugger, the original creator. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5254737 .. group would like to take over the Ripple project and call their system "Ripple". They have offered me xx for this, which would give them ownership of all Ripple software I've written...[and] ripplepay.com domains... I could continue my work independently, but I would need to give it a different name. Piggybacking on the name to buy the legitimacy that people had contributed in their comments about the old Ripple and earn the confidence of bitcoiners for this switcheroo'd version bastardized to suit their business needs rather than the open source community. Brilliantly executed, until these little play tokens started betraying the economic reality that scarcity + usefulness = value. |
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Zangelbert Bingledack, Baron of the Blockchain  |
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Although the above problem is fatal for the legitimacy of OpenCoin's Ripple implementation and there's no need to go deeper, it gets even worse. The delusions about distributing the 80% of the market cap "fairly" - the part they AREN'T keeping for themselves - are either the most naive central planning Soviet-era bullshit or - more likely - an opportunistic scheme for bribing bitcoiners and others who would otherwise object to what is, objectively viewed, an obvious pie-in-the-sky scam. I think the creators get this, but to them it's "just the way business works."
The XRP are refered to as an afterthought because they wanted to sneak in this little "worthless anti-spam token" to make sure they made the big bucks. Well they fucked up, the secret's out. The little "chits" took on a market value earlier than the schemers were expecting, so all plausible deniability is lost from here on.
The original Ripple will be a casualty, hopefully to rise again in proper form some day. It's really genius how they bought the idea from Fugger so they could use the name and website, so that anyone attacking this bastardized form of Ripple would be seen as attacking the original great idea that Ripple was. Imagine if someone had done this to Bitcoin? Messed with its structure so as to make it so there is no real choice but to default to giving all the coins to one group at the start. It'd have destroyed the project in its cradle. It would be unforgiveable.
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http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/19a1nj/introducing_ripple_a_detailed_look_at/The end goal is nice, but starting with all the money in the company's hands and keeping "maybe" 20% (of the net worth of the whole world?!) to pay for their very closed-sounding development with undisclosed employee names and numbers, with the promise that the centralization is just there to kickstart things, after which the centralization will fall away...reminds me how Marx tried to sell Communism. "We need all the power now so that we can give it away equitably to everyone and the state will simply fall away."
It looks like a businessman took a look at Bitcoin's early adoption and decided he wanted a piece of that kind of massive price growth, asking, "How can we turn that into a business?" Well you have to centralize it, but sell it as a system that will "eventually" decentralize. You get other businesses in on it and pay off the bitcoiners to make them happy they have their cut, get prominent bitcoiners to support you and argue for you, maybe even arguing for changes that would help cripple Bitcoin, then you proceed.
Nice business model; terrible model for open-source spontaneous order. Or if not, worst PR ever. But the very fact that PR is relevant should be a giant red flag that this is primarily about making a profit off the cryptocurrency movement without understanding the fundamentals. What kind of asshole says they're going to have all the control because it's "simpler that way"?
This looks like some jaded Coca-Cola exec's idea of scooping up the latest trendy grassroots movement and shoehorning it into a business model, set up to secure their bottom line as first priority. "We start off with all the cash because hey, that's just the way it's setup. Nothing we can do about it."
EDIT: I want to make clear that the concept itself sounds fascinating and very useful, especially as a complement to Bitcoin, but it looks like it was co-opted into a traditional centralized business model.
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^ Exactly.
OpenCoin's scheme boils down to one simple, logically irrefutable fact: either XRP have significant market value, or they do not. They can't have it both ways. It cannot be both a disincentive to spam and at the same time worthless. They cannot retain 20% to pay off their business costs if they are worthless.
The only possibilities are that the company and its paid shills are ignorant of basic economics and logic, or they are running a sophisticated "soft-scam" (not illegal, but designed primarily to make them money off the original Ripple idea they bought from Fugger).
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lets ask godaddy about bitcoin payment. tell them about namecheap!
It's true, GoDaddy got burned last time they let Namecheap out-net-credibility them, and they may be scared of it happening again. |
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This is awesome, I really hope this is a start of a trend for the mises.org people as Bitcoin is the best that they're going to get in terms of a competing sound money to the monetary system that they so despise. Definitely, if they would just realize the solution is staring them in the face. Looks like the lightbulb clicked on for Tucker. French seems near-ready. Woods...oh god please yes! |
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皆さん、日本のどこにいるんですか？
関西の集いにも興味あるかなあ。
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It just occurred to me that mining economics in China would be much more favorable: you can buy ASICs and other hardware domestically (cheaper, I assume), and you have a very low cost of living so a few BTC in profit per month is a big deal. Mining in China might take off. What is the search term for mining bitcoins? 比特市発掘？
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The accounting standard of the internet
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