Google voice nummer oder einfach mal ein Telefonbuch...

Klingt für mich eher nach der üblichen OpenTransactions Vaporware...
Alle halben Jahre mal gibt's da wieder einen "wahnsinnig unglaublichen Durchbruch" aber nix weiter und keiner verwendet es im Endeffekt. Letztes Mal war's ein "stock market" der auf OT basiert bzw. ein laufender Server (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53329.0).

Bitmessage ist ne coole Sache für sich selbst, aber auch nicht wirklich darauf ausgelegt Nachrichten für eine Trading engine zu senden.

Wenn es nur um Nachrichtenaustausch zwischen Nodes gegangen wäre und das das Einzige gewesen wäre, das OpenTransactions fehlt - tja dann wäre ich begeistert.
Leider ist OpenTransactions aber weit davon entfernt von irgendwem verwendet zu werden, obwohl da ein paar Exchanges anch GLBSE ja schon mal interessiert waren. Die haben dann aber auch lieber ihre eigenen Trading engines etc. geschrieben.

Eine dezentrale Exchangestruktur funktioniert nur mit vertrauenswürdigen Gateways, besonders im Fiatbereich. Wenn man aber ein vertrauenswürdiges Gateway ist, macht man sicher mehr Gewinn damit, selbst die Funktionen von OT nachzubauen und dabei zu verdienen als das an OT auszulagern. Es gibt aus meiner Sicht einfach kaum/keine Anreize OT zu verwenden, es gibt ja nicht mal ALTcoin(!)exchanges, die das einsetzen obwohl da ja oft das Problem herrscht, erstmal einen flüssigen Markt zu finden!

Any exchange transaction has to take place using IOUs (=debt).

Who issues these debt tokens varies depending on the philosophy of the person describing the P2P exchange, a "true" P2P exchange (meaning everyone can be a "full node") would mean that anyone can somehow issue tokens that are redeemable in some way with this issuer e.g. for 1 USD or 1 EUR. Then these tokens would be somehow exchanged for BTC tokens and then the debt will be settled.

This third part is actually the tricky one - it's easy to claim to own a million USD and issue some debt contract and buy some BTC with that contract... but actually settling it might be harder, depending on your real financial situation.

Actually not as many people care that much about crypto or (potential) anonymity - they care much more for usability and ease of use.

Chaum's blinded money is a great example as are some more intricate Visa payment schemes. In some other areas TOR, JAP or Freenet - all great projects but with quite limited user numbers compared to the internet population.

Block chains are nothing new the big thing that Satoshi did was not just talking about some potential solutions but quickly implementing a working client and releasing it into the wild. There are several other e-money systems out there but they only exist on paper/pdf.

The main safeguard in my opinion is that you can choose whom you give credit up to which limit and when you settle it with this entity.

Ripple handles the whole rest (converting currencies/IOUs).

In reality to make any kind of trade that is beyond barter trade in person settled in cash (or trading 10 chicken for 1 cow) will involve IOUs. Sometime quite explicit (MtGox balance), sometimes quite implicit ("you go first, then I immediately will send my funds"). Sometimes for a longer (ASICMINER shares) and sometimes for a shorter (SatoshiDice) amount of time.

Still, the only thing you can receive for BTC are either other BTC or IOUs. There is no system in place in Bitcoin that lets you receive anything else than other ledger entries in the block chain that you can spend with your private key.

If you accept absolutely 0 IOUs or debt ever, then you cannot use Bitcoin as well, as the only way to use it within itself is to get other BTC. You can mine them without owing anyone, but then you're stuck.

Especially with the characteristics of Bitcoin (easy and fast to send + script, irreversible) it makes it easy in combination with Ripple to decrease the exposure to IOUs to a minimum. Instead of sending a balance to Paypal in advance and having it sit there for days/weeks, you can fund your Ripple wallet on the go and also withdraw any incoming payments as soon as they arrive in BTC/LTC/whateverelseyouwant.

Bitcoins are in some sense the ideal fiat money - they have no intrinsic value (they have utility and usefulness though, no doubt!) and are created out of thin air just to exist as money. They can be 100% "owned" (if you keep the private keys safe, yada yada).
IOUs on the other hand exist to be destroyed, either (ideally) by being settled/redeemed or (in the case of TradeFortressBTC) by being deemed useless/worth 0.

Current fiat currencies (USD, EUR etc.) are a mixture between being IOUs (they cover about 1-10% of the economy they represent) and just existing as a useful token. Bitcoin only exists as a useful token, Ripple (as I understand it) tries to exist as far on the other end of the scale as possible.
As much as Bitcoin has useful characteristics to be a money system, Ripple has useful characeristincs to be an IOU trading engine.

https://pay.reddit.com/r/bitmessage/comments/1ay3kh/why_not_use_the_public_key_directly/ seems to partly apply here.

I would strongly suggest using the payment protocol, as it is also more versatile than pure bitcoin transactions.

So who holds their jackpot then and what does the "waiting" state imply? As long as they don't send back Bitcoins directly using a function of the network itself, they issue IOUs. Maybe for a short amount of time (in BitMillions it seems you can play for multiple rounds), maybe with a limited risk (you only risk the coins you send), maybe not even with a displayed balance but only an implicit version of it. Still, BitMillion can run right now just by refusing to pay out anything they promised to pay. I'd call that an IOU.

True, that's why I keep a good part of my BTC in a safe place. The analogy is actually quite good, as you would likely also only want to have chips from 1 or maybe 2 casinos nearby and not some random chips from somewhere in Siberia, even if that was an honest casino over there.

I the fuck mean that the issue you are referring to (automatic exchange between 2 IOUs of the same currency where one is potentially toxic) is in my opinion a bug (in the sense of that it can't be easily adjusted in the client).
If Bitstamp did that (issue and send huge amounts of IOUs), they would be effectively bankrupt/hacked, I don't see the difference to any other service (including the ones in your signature - this exact scenario actually happend at MtGox btw.) offering fantasy amounts of balance that are not withdrawable. I would try to recover whatever is possible and then move on with my life, cutting the trust line to the bad service.

As long as I don't trust somebody not trustworthy, I have low risks. Feel free to send me any amount of your trillion BTC to my ripple address (it is in the giveaway thread), all I will receive are Bitstamp BTC that I can withdraw or XRP that I can trade.

You only repeat the risk that a gateway is hacked or goes out of order for some reason. I don't see the risk for that happening much higher than any other service in the Bitcoin universe being hacked or closing down in an unorderly fashion. This is not inherent to Ripple at all but simply the risk you cannot avoid, even dealing purely in Bitcoin (just like your BitMillion game that can still steal from you, as there is no enforcable contract in the block chain that will get you your earnings).

I spotted at least 1 error in that table just by skipping over it, interesting read nevertheless.

Actually it's easier to be licensed as a Ripple gateway than a Bitcoin/fiat exchange, at least in the EU. I'm not sure how this empirical analysis of some Bitcoin exchanges that shut down mostly while bitcoins were worth a tiny fraction of what they are worth today relates to my points that you quoted though.

From your signature:
http://coinlenders.com/
https://bitfunder.com/
http://coinchat.org/
https://bitmillions.com/

All these services only issue IOUs, never pay directly to your private key (thankfully, otherwise there would be a lot of bitdust and spam in the block chain).

I can and did choose how much I am willing to risk with Bitstamp as you can do implicitly by allowing to let your balances on these services grow to a certain amount before you withdraw. You just have a bit more manual work and less control over the amount of debt you are allowing these services to have towards you (e.g. with Ripple you could limit your exposure towards Bitfunder to 5 BTC max., everything above that gets converted to some other IOUs, with Bitfunder currently you have to take as much debt as they give you).

They are not exposed in the current clients, they are very much reflected and built into the design of the Ripple system.

https://ripple.com/wiki/Contracts (<-- most general solution)
https://ripple.com/wiki/Gateway_policies
https://ripple.com/wiki/Authorized_accounts
...and a few more.

It's perfectly possible to restrict all holders of a certain IOU to max. 1000 USD per anonymous account for example and to offer registered/authenticated accounts with higher limits similar to MtGox.

You wouldn't (actually shouldn't) trust a gateway that you cannot use - if you don't have a Dwolla account, don't trust gateways that only allow withdrawal via Dwolla. You might have a Paypal account though and somebody else might have both types of accounts, so there is likely a pathway from Dwolla to Paypal in the system that will be used.

If they are issued by you I don't accept them, if they are issued by Bitstamp I do. You will either have to find someone who trades your own BTC (or any other of the currencies in your account) to BitstampBTC directly or via a path or you won't be able to send me any. If there is a path I don't care if you have 100 BTC, 1 BTC or 1 million BTC - I only care that Bitstamp will pay me upon request as these will be the only BTC I can receive.

To receive 100 BTC issued by you, I have to trust you for that amount and I won't do that.

Feel free to send me 1 10 BTC on Ripple right now, my address is in the giveaway thread.

Maybe a local ABE instance might work? https://github.com/jtobey/bitcoin-abe

Read some more, to become a gateway or user all you need is an amount of XRP that is cheaper than a BigMac + fries and that's your whole interaction with OpenCoin.

Bitfinex in this case would be the entity/gateway that we as users need to trust (just as we do now by sending USD/BTC to them), not the other way around and Bitfinex could do quite well probably without trusting anyone else in the Ripple network at all.
We would be the ones abused by Bitfinex (which already is possible now, they could run anytime with their funds, something that has ben discussed in detail in this thread already), as long as they don't extend trust to others (and why would they?) they can loose exactly 0. It might be the case that they will trust for example Bitstamp for some smaller amounts, then they risk up to this amount with them. This is again no different than the current situation where Bitfinex has already IOUs (only more implicit ones than on Ripple) outstanding from MtGox and Bitstamp in both USD and BTC.

Well, I guess we have to agree to disagree in this point. I hope XRP keep some certain mostly static value which would make them useful as intermediate currancy within Ripple, but I don't hope they will be used as currency directly.


They get TradeFortressed and end up with bad debt that they agreed to accept. It doesn't influence you or anyone else who didn't trust this bad issuer just like you are not affected directly from Bitcoinica going belly up if you didn't have BTC lying there.

"Trust" in Ripple means:
"I would accept a check of up to __ units of currency __ from issuer __."
When you cash this check and if it is actually still "good" is your problem. If you accept checks from 2 different issuers, you can trade between them (e.g. I can offer to pay you 0.99 BTC for a 1 BTC "Bitcoin Code" from MtGox), which is how Ripple does path finding.
TradeFortress for example wrote himself a check of 1 billion or so BTC and then claimed this is a flaw in the system. It isn't - it's exactly how it is supposed to work. There is nobody stopping you from taking a blank check and writing "1 googol USD" on it either. You might have a hard time paying with it though probably.

XRP might be, Ripple is not - even in the current opencoin implementation.


Ripple has also a philosophy and vision and had it already longer than Bitcoin exists. Also it is built in a way that focuses on decentralization, it would be much easier to build Paypal or Dwolla 2.0 and integrate an interface to Bitcoin if that was their goal than what opencoinRipple is trying to accomplish.

And in my opinion very unwise... just from giveaways alone it is easy to pump + dump the thin internal markets, not even counting the reserves opencoin has.
XRP might have their uses but I would not recommend on using them as value store. Similar to Bitcoins by the way, which are also held quite centralized and are traded on comparatively thin markets.


boonies4u, if you for example only want to deal ever in Bitcoins in your whole life and Ripple gained traction and you are either trusted by a few people or do trust someone like MtGox, BitJAM, SilkRoad or for example somebody who runs an OpenSource Bitcoin<->RippleIOU gateway (sample code for that can be found in the github repo actually) for let's say 10 BTC temporarilly, you can actually live on Bitcoins for the rest of your days.

You would set up the 10 BTC trust line (enough for a month wage), your employer sends you your payment in USD and you automatically receive the IOUs from your gateway, maybe even with an email alert. You then (maybe again even automatically) withdraw these IOUs or most of them as "real" BTC and you're golden. Once you want to buy something on Amazon, all you do is fund your account by sending some BTC to your gateway, waiting for 6 confirmations and then sending the payment to whatever merchant you want. Ripple selects the cheapest path by itself and just telly you how many of your BTC IOUs that item will cost. If you agree, you hit "send" and the merchant receives whatever currency IOU he prefers (e.g. USD from Paypal). You don't know and you don't have to care - all you ever have to touch is BTC and 1 XRP every million transactions or so.

Seconded, it is possible to stay logged in for quite a long time (which is nice, please don't change that!) but as long as you're logged in you can withdraw without any further checks. A GoogleAuth code there for enabled accounts would be really great.

BTC ATM = receiving fiat money after depositing BTC or receiving BTC after depositing fiat money?

The former seems to be quite a bit more difficult than the latter.

But, but... he hasn't even posted yet! https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=27249

I've had countless forum discussions with people that showed the same attitude 2-3 years ago about a different revolutionary monetary system that was "a ponzi", "a scam trying to get you to run malicious code on your GPU", "fake funny money nobody will use" and "if they give it out for free on this faucet page, it must be worthless" called Bitcoin.

Compared to other forums the trolls and scam callers are quite civil here actually, in other forums they didn't hand out money to run advertisements though...