Why is this crazy?  I'm sure numerous people had or still have thousands of dollars w/ Gox.  At this point and for the foreseeable future, the most reasonable way to obtain Bitcoins is by trusting some of your fiat balances to a centralized exchange.  Even if you go through a company like Coinbase, there's still a period of a few business days where the money is ACH'd out of your bank account and your Bitcoin is not available.  Counterparty risk is still one of the major issues that needs to be resolved.

Matthew,

I have no skin in this game but it's pretty clear that your best course of action is to continue to try and compensate those you owe a debt to, keep your nose clean, and STFU.  Sorry to be blunt, but trying to explain yourself by using words like "stunt," "lesson," and "prank" is only pissing people off even more.  You're better off just saying you were wrong and are trying to make amends, and leave it at that as every sentence you write is going to be scrutinized.  By coming back and trying to justify your actions or give insight into your thought process, you're just coming off as someone who isn't 100% remorseful.  Forgiveness comes in time and by your deeds, nothing you say is going to speed up that process, to the contrary, it will probably just slow things down.  JMHO.

The more I think about it, the more I come to the realization that this doesn't really solve anything.  Ripple is based on the hope that it will become widely adopted (i.e. enormous growth).  If all of the XRP were distributed, it would still be held by a very small fraction of the populace.  There's a bit more distribution than the current control by one major corporation but in the end, you're still talking about a very small percentage of people controlling the majority share of XRP. 

The better way to do it would be to have a controlled disbursement of XRP, similar to the creation curve in Bitcoin.  Rather than one corporation holding the lion's share of XRP or dumping all XRP to early adopters, XRP gets distributed to the user base over the course of a few decades.  This would encourage acceptance, reward early adopters, and still allow for new users to get their share of the pie.  Unfortunately, this type of distribution does not seem to be possible.  I have a feeling the creators of Ripple did not go down this road because they did not want to be seen as a Bitcoin copycat, but in doing so, I think they created a system that will be very hard for people to adopt as it is abundantly clear that unlike Satoshi, the creators of Ripple wield all of the power.

That's not comparable at all, it's rather apples and oranges.  You're comparing a Bitcoin third party to Ripple, not Bitcoin to Ripple.  If you were able to show that wealth was lost from the Bitcoin code itself that would be a comparable analogy.  What TF did was entirely within the Ripple system, unless you have an analogy where Bitcoin itself was compromised, your argument falls apart.  

Can you post some samples of what the shirts look like?

You'd probably be better off listing your terms, "top dollar" is rather subjective.

I think we need to see a resolution or some sort of progress on the MtGox issues first.  As Gox's future remains in limbo, I think so does the short-term price of BTC.

Complete crap.  He tips his hand at the very end of the article, Paypal is not going to support Bitcoin, they already think the user base is comprised of only "zealots and criminals."

Bitcoin doesn't need backhanded "endorsements" from decrepit companies that should have been bankrupt years ago if not for making the very lucky decision of latching onto Ebay's balls. 

Do you do guitar tablature?

Because they are unenforceable.  As it has been pointed out to you, several times, there are no terms to these IOU's.  Even if these were binding, they have no stated repayment terms so he could very well still owe X amount of BTC's to someone but pay them back the day after the sun burns out.  That would not be a breach of contract.

Furthermore, have you heard of the term consideration in contract law?  In order for a contract to be binding, it is required as a prerequisite that both parties offer consideration (something of value promised to the other).  In other words, a contract must be something in which both parties benefit in some way.  TF benefits in no way by giving away free BTC, there is no consideration.

I don't agree with his methodologies but I think he proved his point and I do not believe he meant any malice by doing it.  There was to my knowledge one person who was monetarily damaged in the whole stunt and TF offered to return the BTC to him but he stubbornly refused.

I see no evidence that ironcross is a scammer.  I find his constant, "I'll do anything for BTC" threads annoying at best and borderline spam at worst, but that's about it.  Ironcross, you would do yourself a lot of good if you started focusing more of your energy contributing to the board rather than constantly peddling everything under the sun for BTC.

Correct.  Chris Larsen was co-founder of Prosper and I was able to meet him in the very early stages of Prosper's launch (commonly known as Prosper 1.0).  Since then, Prosper has undergone a major transformation so I cannot speak about its current incarnation but from what I can gather, the new Prosper is even less transparent than the original.  With the original Prosper you were able to get much more information out of borrowers.

Despite all this information, it was more or less a massive failure for lenders due to the sheer number of defaults by borrowers.  Even with a diversified portfolio, a small number of defaults will kill your ROI.  I've posted this elsewhere but this is a list of default loans (no longer updated but it proves my point):

http://www.wiseclerk.com/reporting-a-late_loans-l-late_loans-m-all.html

As you can see, everyone from an "A" rated borrower to a "HR (high risk)" borrower would default.  This was partly due to the fact that loans were unsecured.  The best recourse a creditor had was to allow Prosper to send a collection agency against the borrower with next to no success.  And of course if they filed bankruptcy, that was the end of it.  But these were legally binding loans with terms and conditions including maturity date.

Enter Ripple.  To me, Ripple is founded on the same failed business model, peer-to-peer lending/trust.  Except now, there is even less transparency and legal recourse.  IOUs are essentially unenforceable and as we have seen with TradeFortress, without terms of repayment.  Ripple does not shy away from the fact that people will default but like Prosper, touts diversification as a way to mitigate risk. However, Prosper has already shown that it is difficult to mitigate risk with diversification because in these types of extension of credit, risk cannot be properly assessed.  Yes, if you trust one or two reputable gateways it's essentially the same counterparty risk as trusting Gox, Coinbase, etc.  However, their business model appears to be on a much grander scale than each person trusting only one of two gateways.  As Ripple scales, I see an increase in risk that is not mitigated by potential reward.

As I mentioned, this is my personal apprehension and my personal concerns due to my past experiences with Chris Larsen.  At this point in time, I do not see sufficient evidence that he has learned from his mistakes with Prosper.  Given that Ripple is still in beta, I believe he deserves the benefit of the doubt, however, at the same time, he has not earned my trust yet.

You can only choose who you directly extend trust to.  You have no choice in who or what your trusted Ripple group does.  Do you know why the derivatives market almost collapsed the financial markets?  It wasn't because of a breach of trust between A and B.  It was because A and B entered into an agreement but parties C, D, E, and F also made side bets on that agreement.  It becomes an incredibly complicated web to untangle and people can be easily deceived as TradeFortress pointed out rather easily with his BTC IOU giveaway.

I'm not saying Ripple is a scam or doomed to fail, all I'm saying is I still see some very fundamental issues with their business model, especially knowing the history of their founders.  Ripple is still in beta so I'm willing to see what they have in store but I feel its better to bring these issues to light now so either they can be addressed or people can be aware.  

Good job although the order of words in the URL seems odd to me.  whybitcoinisntworthless.com sounds better IMO.

No, because XRP is needed to facilitate transfers.

No, a society without rules and consequences result in anarchy.  There is no society that runs solely on trust.

We all know Chris Larsen was co-founder of Prosper and is now a co-founder of OpenCoin.  We've been through the whole trust experiment before, it does not work. 

First, I think we need to agree that trust is broken when a debtor does not repay a creditor.  In this case, trust is broken when one does not fulfill their obligation to the other.  If that is the case, your utopian society should have a minimal amount of people defaulting on their loans.

Here's reality, a list of Prosper loans while Mr. Larsen headed the company that are late and/or defaulted:

http://www.wiseclerk.com/reporting-a-late_loans-l-late_loans-m-all.html

Is there a way to "cold store" XRP?  As we all know one of the major issues with Bitcoin, especially early on, was accounts being compromised and BTC's being stolen.  Paper wallets and such was a huge leap forward in terms of security, is there a similar option with Ripple?  At the very least, they should enable two-factor authentication (Google Authenticator or SMS Text are my preference).

I just wanted to be clear if I was talking with a representative of the Company or just an investor.  Thanks for sharing your views on the topic.

Of course it's reasonable, but it's not practical in the Ripple system.  In fact it's not possible.  It's a pure trust-based system.  You would need to go outside of the Ripple system to make this transfer of debt legally binding.   


That was an odd tangent.  You said debt can last forever, and I said, I don't care if debt can last forever, I care if debt is collectible.  What's the use of debt with no maturity date?  Because I don't want to extend evergreen loans to people, I somehow no longer care about human rights?  Give me a break.


Uh, no.  OpenCoin will make money by selling XRP.  They're hoping that Ripple will become widely adopted thus increasing the value of XRP, which they hold the lion's share, which they will then sell on the open market.  Stop making it look like this is a charity or non-profit organization.  They're in it to make money.  There's nothing wrong with that, but cut the Kumbaya bullshit.