Good or bad, we all remember Peercover.

Who's your banking partner?

There are lots of banks considering using Ripple for international transfers.  Many of them are big name-brand banks.  Fidor was the first.  It won't be the last.

What banks like most about Ripple is that it is purpose built for moving their existing fiat balances with instant clearing and settlement.  The five second confirmation time is a big benefit, and the ability for Ripple Labs to optimize the development cycle of this open source software is also a big plus.  There are a lot of things that a private company can do that a loose confederation of volunteers and not-for-profits cannot do.

It is true that the initial distribution of XRP was ill considered and that many challenges exist with regards to the distribution of the remainder.  But banks don't care.  To them Ripple is just another ledger for them to integrate with.  Once that can reduce costs, increase speed and allow them to offer better services to their customers.

Then, with suitable bridges across the different networks, liquidity in one becomes liquidity in all.  Several Ripple gateways are also Stellar gateways.  The first fiat gateway on the Bitcoin blockchain (tether.to) via the Mastercoin protocol has just launched.  Pretty soon we'll see similar entities operating on Counterparty and others.  Gateways have been running successfully on Ripple for over a year offering USD/EUR/JPY/CNY/BRL/BTC/XAU assets, etc.

Ripple has pushed the cryptocurrency envelope within the context of the traditional banking system far father than Bitcoin has done.  For that it should be applauded.

And, if anyone is looking for intelligent discussion on all things crypto, XRPTalk.org is one of the better forums out there.

Peace.

- CW

How do I get Reaper to mine Fastcoin?  Cgminer has been giving me problems...

I'm in too!

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I'm a Mastercoin newbie.  I'm not a technical expert in cryptos, but from what I can see something like Mastercoin seems the be an appropriate next step in their evolution.  Now, if only there was an exchange somewhere on which to trade them...

What are your thoughts on Mastercoin?