Drama.... We, opencoin, are a project that started in 2007 to create an open source version of the electronic cash system invented by David Chaum. It is about minting tokens that can be transfered in a non-tracable way. It is fast, and the user has full flexibility on how to do the transfer.
We have nothing to do with "OpenCoin Inc.", a new company that is developing the ripple network. Unfortunately they decided in 2012 to name their company the same as our project. That creates a bit of confusion, as both are about electronic transfers.
So, if you want open source digital cash, opencoin.org (or our repo on github) is the place to be. If you want an account based system like the ripple network, it is not.
From http://opencoin.org/Members/jhb/opencoin-and-ripple |
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I have only a vague understanding, but I think for (1) the answer is Bitmessage, and for (2) it's escrowing(multisig). Can I interpret it like this? 1. By means of BitMessage we can have some P2P market place. I mean "marketplace" just in terms of distributing bid and ask offers throughout anyone interested, not the actual money transactions. 2. Multisig = I can setup some kind of 'combined transaction' with the seller, where I transfer my euros to him, and he transfers his bitcoins to me, and this is effectuated as an atomic transaction (i.e. can't abort or undo half way), and this two-way transaction can only become effective after we both signed it? Or am I completely mistaken? How does escrowing come into play here? See here for fellow traveler's proposal: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/517/how-can-a-single-person-operation-keep-a-collection-of-online-wallets-secure/834#834 the escrowing is used to make sure the OT server will not default on its IOU, and you want to trade on an OT server because you want untraceability(that's right, the server operator cannot figure out who are you sending money to, unlike a mixer operator). An OT server also only signs receipts, and do not store any real currency, so in case of a government raid, they will get nothing. |
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From that pastebin:
"9. Alice's Escrow awakens in 1-5 minutes, and starts periodically checking (via SEPA calls) to see if BOB_SEPA has received the Euros. If so, she automatically releases the Escrow to Jorg's silver account on OT."
This escrow must be able to check the banking transaction via SEPA calls, and I suppose without a formal contract with banks, he won't be able to listen to those calls
Just like a gateway in ripple, this is the point of weakness for all the P2P exchange design: That escrow/gateway must be able to communicate with banks through an authorized channel and that channel is controlled by banks
The core problem is, all of the exchanges today still operate inside a banking framework (the exchange must have a bank account to operate). In order to bypass the existing banking system, there should first be a P2P bank that store fiat money, that bank could in turn carry its exchange without the involvement of traditional banks
Ah, cool. So here we have a battle of two concepts: Trust (Ripple) vs. Escrow (OT). THe whole point of using OT is untraceability, it's implemented around the Chaumian blind token technology, if you don't want untraceability, you don't want to use OT. |
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Uh... I don't see the distributed marketplace. (As most here, I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.) You would still need to 1. Obtain some kind of IOU (DGC) 2. Trade it at a particular place. (OT server)  You are right, that's why the developer prefers the phrase "federated server". The reason why it's different from Ripple, is: 1. By trading at an OT server, you can get cash-like untraceability. 2. When the cash token is denominated in bitcoins, you can check if it's sufficiently backed up by a escrowed address, because OT interoperates with the blockchain. |
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Also, imagine a hypothetical world where this has already completely been worked out, and a OT+BM based P2P exchange system is fully up and running. Suppose I want to buy bitcoins with euros. Two questions: - 1. Where or how do I find someone who wants to sell his BTC, and how do we negotiate a price? (as is currently done by the existing exchanges in their market places)
- 2. Where (or to who) do I wire transfer my EUR, and how can I trust I will get the BTC in return?
I have only a vague understanding, but I think for (1) the answer is Bitmessage, and for (2) it's escrowing(multisig). |
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What Open Transaction is trying to do is to provide a transfer mechanism, rather than issuing a currency, they use the word "cash" in this sense. If you want to hide your Bitcoin transfer, you can choose to use an OT server, which provably cannot see the link between two accounts involved in a transaction.
Fellowtraveler-- if you're willing to do some hand-holding I'd be really interested in making a Chaumian cash transaction through an OT server. I only ever understand about 30% of your posts. It doesn't make sense to me how Bitmessage could possibly be a missing link for OT, but I'd rather just go through the motions of making a few transactions and see how it works. PM me I think we really need to push this forward, volunteers? I can be a voting pool escrower or a transaction participator or something else. |
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It's not OP, it's OT......
It's 2:30am. I'm so excited by this I can't sleep. Or apparently think straight  AFAIK it's not stritcly personal, you need a transaction server, or as OP proposed, something backed by a multi-sig escrowed Bitcoin address with enough reserve which many people act as escrowers, so another user can withdraw his cash(a blind token) and give it to you, to allow you to withdraw from this big money pool.
Can't users run their own servers to issue their own IOUs, too? Yes, they can, but it has to be a somehow large pool, so you will need to process many tokens(think of it like a bank processing cash withdrawals/deposits) that you can't figure out who gives the token to whom, think about it, if a bankster only ever process cash withdrawals for one person, next time when he receives an identical banknote that he once gave away from another person, he can establish a connection between this person and his old customer, the whole point of unlinkability, and the unregulability as MSB(you can't ask me to record who gives money to whom because I don't know), is defeated. |
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So, if I understand this correctly...
Bitcoin turns the whole internet into your personal checking/savings account, while BT+OP turns the whole internet into your personal clearinghouse and loan settlement network
Or, said another way:
You use Bitcoin like an equity network, i.e. to store, transmit, and settle value, and BT+OP like a liability network, i.e. to store, transmit, and settle debt.
Is this right?
It's not OP, it's OT...... AFAIK it's not stritcly personal, you need a transaction server, or as OP proposed, something backed by a multi-sig escrowed Bitcoin address with enough reserve which many people act as escrowers, so another user can withdraw his cash(a blind token) and give it to you, to allow you to withdraw from this big money pool. The whole point of OT, at its minimum, is that by using Chaumian blinding, neither the transaction server nor the escrowers can figure out the link between you and the person giving you the token, so the transaction can be carried out anonymously. Based on this form of anonymous transfer of cash, you can build instruments like cheques, IOUs, etc. It may sound a bit centralized, but in fact its unanonymous form, the mixers, is already widely in use, OT just adds the anonymity to the mixers, in its bare minimum of course. |
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I guess we will also need a few people as multi-sig escrowers, I will volunteer as one of the members of the voting pool.
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This honestly doesn't make any sense at all. Why would anyone try to discredit ripple? This community isn't filled with low info retards. They would just be wasting an enormous amount of money.
i read most of the anti-Ripple posts in the many Ripple threads over the last several days and no one appeared to me to be a paid over the top anti-Rippler except for Shadow of Harbinger and obviously Tradefortress. most of our criticisms of Ripple are based on hard facts, imo. When the criticisms are about XRP's value being "pumped", the same arguments apply to Bitcoin and any fork of it. No, it's entirely different. No one entity controls Bitcoin's supply, but Opencoin made it clear that they control the XRP supply, and they wouldn't tell others how they control it, just ask Joel Katz. So it costs nearly nothing for them to manipulate the XRP market, as long as they like. |
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Hmmm, interesting, why "GoWest" has to make it public by editing an old post in Feb.20 which apparently no one other than some archaeological fans will read?
He actually posted it as an article on his site too, apparently. I don't read his blog though so I found it by scrolling through the thread's first page. I saw that post as well, I think it's probably a very transparent astroturfing, as all cooperators posted exactly the same thing in the same thread, one after another, I also remember TF advertising it somehow, otherwise it looks really weird and noticeable to anyone. And yeah, it does look like TF has got a really deep pocket, he can pay for his shills like that, buying forum ad slots just to make them unavailable to BFL and debase Ripple, a lot of these things...., all at hefty prices, wow. |
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Hmmm, interesting, why "GoWest" has to make it public by editing an old post in Feb.20 which apparently no one other than some archaeological fans will read?
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What Open Transaction is trying to do is to provide a transfer mechanism, rather than issuing a currency, they use the word "cash" in this sense. If you want to hide your Bitcoin transfer, you can choose to use an OT server, which provably cannot see the link between two accounts involved in a transaction. As it's said in their FAQ, OT server merely provides receipt to be used as evidence, any redemption is between the users. The difference with Ripple: it's open source, its author is very honest about everything(centralized as federated servers), it doesn't have a premined currency(no currency has a special status in the system), and it serves a purpose(anonymity). EDIT: OP also proposed that, with Bitcoin's multi-sig escrowing, whenever an OT server signs something it can always be checked if it has enough reserve to back it up. to quote OP from here: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/517/how-can-a-single-person-operation-keep-a-collection-of-online-wallets-secure/834#834My proposal was, whenever she wants to bail back OUT again, she sends a signed request to the server, and then she forwards the server's signed reply to the members of the pool. IF the pool members have a record/audit of Alice's account (which must be in a DHT they share) and IF the two signatures both verify on the receipt, and IF the request is within the allocation for that server and its maximum bailout-per-day, then the pool members vote ON THE BLOCKCHAIN to release the funds back to Alice.
and: s long as the pool members make audit information available to each other (preferably in real time), then they will always know whether/when a server exceeds the amount of funds in circulation than it actually has in the pool. An OT server cannot normally change your balance, or forge any of your transactions, since it cannot forge your signature on the receipt. But the server COULD potentially create a "dummy" account (that it controls) and then sign FALSE RECEIPTS with that account, thus inflating the currency. BUT--this could NOT escape notice of the afore-mentioned audit protocol.
So unlike a RIpple IOU, a open transaction cash token can be backed up. |
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the meaning of your other statement is unusual, other than people working on mining are worthless and will be replaced. But maybe you didn't mean that.
I didn't mean they were worthless. Just that mining will become more and more specialized, and storing the blockchain even more so, but that's OK, because a lot of the peer to peer stuff is done on the clients who can keep miners and blockchains honest by constantly comparing them. I understand now. Verification is already becoming more specialized and the people are adapting. As long as the process remains in the hands of the people then it will remain a system that I can support. I think the system you are thinking of where everyone is running SPV clients is a long way off. Today pools control the process and people like organofcorti and Meni Rosenfeld do a lot to keep that system honest. Programmers/computer scientists like to talk about theoretically worst-case scenario, I think that's what Mike Hearn really meant. And if freedom is of value to a person, it's not unfair for him to participate in the verification himself without being given meaningful economic benefits. |
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That's why I said the banking system is archaic by not providing cryptographically signed transaction receipt, to facilitate the whole process.
"Anachronistic" might be even more accurate: they could have done it if it suited their purposes to do so, but instead time has passed them by. That's the word I used initially.  |
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Combining the above Bitmessage capabilities--which we already proved out experimentally--with Open-Transactions, makes possible fully-decentralized p2p markets, as well as p2p escrow across OT federated servers, easy p2p and server-to-server wiring of funds and conversion of currencies, both within OT and also between OT and the conventional banking system.
How does this enable wiring of funds and conversion of currencies between OT and the conventional banking system? i am wondering about this too. perhaps fellowtraveler could take us thru an example of how to convert BTC to USD and the exact steps involved. Yeah I would like a process walkthrough to understand this better. Process as per http://pastebin.com/SsLrxVP6. If I'm reading it right, Jorg has USD he's offering to put in Alice's nominated account (which might be her own or might be someone elses) and is willing to accept her BTC in exchange - the bitmessage is involved in the discovery process by which Alice and Jorg can meet in a distributed market. Alice sends BTC, Jorg wires USD to the other account. If Alice wanted to send as Shekels, or Pesos, the discovery process finds someone who has those and wants to sell them, and presumably is located within that jurisdiction. Indeed if Alice has Russian Roubles and wants to pay a bill in South African Rand and doesn't have BTC at all then she could still do in two goes: discover someone who wants BTC in return for Rand: they provide a BTC address, she provides the South African bank details. Then she finds someone who offers BTC in return for Roubles -- she provides the BTC address from the first guy, he provides his bank account details. She pays in at the cashiers desk, he sends the BTC, the South African receives them and pays the bill denominated in Rand. (Obviously matters of escrow also, dealt with in the pastebin linked above.) Arbitrary person-to- arbitrary person fiat A to fiat B transfer, no international aspect, "below the radar" in both source and destination country. If I'm reading it right, that is That's why I said the banking system is archaic by not providing cryptographically signed transaction receipt, to facilitate the whole process. |
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Without repayment date, I am just gonna tell you I will pay back after one thousand years, then you can GTFO. There is no condition upon which the mods can judge if TF defaults, otherwise his creditors can ask for him to pay back after only one minute as well.
THe mods standard has been consistent, every scammer I have seen so far, which has pulled off something similar, has failed to comply with something that is phrased in a unambiguous way(e.g., in the MNW case, MNW's condition is that Pirate defaults, which is failing to make a payout at a time Pirate promised).
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IOU is not a binding agreement, ask any lawyer and they will tell you. Specifically, IOU has no repayment date so it's almost always impossible to be enforced.
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What sucks is, surprise, the completely anachronistic banking system. Had banks digitally signed transactions like SEPA transfers, the dispute resolution could have been much easier.
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The longer they try desperately to make it look like everything is OK, the greater the crash will be.
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