Ripple is not open. It falsely suggests that it is by using the "open" word and additionally providing link to an open source repository.
You figured out our secret, the one thing we absolutely, positively didn't want the world to know. However did you do it? Was it the fact that we've said exactly this over and over? Or was it the five seconds you spent with a search engine? Can you name any payment network that is as open as Ripple is already? Can you see all Western Union transactions. Is the ledger containing all PayPal balances public? Can anyone who wants to check the signature on every Visa transaction? So you manage to marry this most open network with the most esoteric currency ever, good job....Can I know the total amount of XRPs in circulation already? |
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I would not be surprised if CCP sends a few agents to make batch-orders of ASICs from the producers. I have a new conspiracy theory: how many people have known friedcat personally？ It's basically one random guy showing up on the forum and suddenly he creates the world's biggest mining farm, hmmm....  Just occurred to me. Funded primarily by USD denominated Asicminer shares! Perhaps we are witnessing an out to the usd recycling trade... It could also be that the share offering is just a cover-up created to appease the community, so that the government can run the mining operation under a public identity rather than as a "Mystery Miner" which may generate panic, with proper explanation for funding sources, while in fact the operation is at least partially funded by the government. You guys can't be right because JFK, Roswell and Bilderberg haven't been mentioned in this theory yet.. I did not state it as a fact, right? And according to Ripple's "non-colluding" principle, if Chinese government and Bilderberg group both approves, then Bitcoin must be legit and the price will immediately reach $10000/BTC.  |
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I don't really want instant confirmation, rather, I want guaranteed confirmation after a reasonable period of time, and I am sure a lot of people are like me, and for Ripple to achieve that, we need to make a lot of assumptions.
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10 more minutes of wait and it costs you three times more in electricity to double-spend me, not bad indeed. At 9 confirmations, you will need to run your mining farm for 3 years with millions of dollars spent in electricity(assuming you are using the most sophisticated ASICs), not to say the cost in buying mining rigs to keep up with the growth of the network, hmmm...I guess for anything over $10,000 I can wait for another half an hour.  I suspect u r wrong. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=202804.msg2130008#msg2130008
Odds that Alice will find 2 block in a row to fork the blockchain after Bob sees 2 confirmations
60% * 60% = 36%
According to Satoshi's paper, it's not how the probability is calculated. No. I just mentioned a common mistake others do when calculate probability to find a block during 51% attack. So why was I wrong? The Poissonian summing tells you that for mining power not close to 50% of the total hashrate, the chance of you get n+1 blocks in a row is about 1/4 of n blocks in a row. I didn't mean your OP is probelmatic, I was talking about someone else's idea of "10% attack". |
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10 more minutes of wait and it costs you three times more in electricity to double-spend me, not bad indeed. At 9 confirmations, you will need to run your mining farm for 3 years with millions of dollars spent in electricity(assuming you are using the most sophisticated ASICs), not to say the cost in buying mining rigs to keep up with the growth of the network, hmmm...I guess for anything over $10,000 I can wait for another half an hour. I suspect u r wrong. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=202804.msg2130008#msg2130008
Odds that Alice will find 2 block in a row to fork the blockchain after Bob sees 2 confirmations
60% * 60% = 36%
According to Satoshi's paper, it's not how the probability is calculated. |
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I would not be surprised if CCP sends a few agents to make batch-orders of ASICs from the producers. I have a new conspiracy theory: how many people have known friedcat personally？ It's basically one random guy showing up on the forum and suddenly he creates the world's biggest mining farm, hmmm.... Just occurred to me. Funded primarily by USD denominated Asicminer shares! Perhaps we are witnessing an out to the usd recycling trade... It could also be that the share offering is just a cover-up created to appease the community, so that the government can run the mining operation under a public identity rather than as a "Mystery Miner" which may generate panic, with proper explanation for funding sources, while in fact the operation is at least partially funded by the government. |
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10 more minutes of wait and it costs you three times more in electricity to double-spend me, not bad indeed. At 9 confirmations, you will need to run your mining farm for 3 years with millions of dollars spent in electricity(assuming you are using the most sophisticated ASICs), not to say the cost in buying mining rigs to keep up with the growth of the network, hmmm...I guess for anything over $10,000 I can wait for another half an hour. |
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a 10% or 51% attack is possible
Ok, let's clarify one thing. This claim that getting a miner having 10% of the hashing capacity to be able to reject transactions is referring only to being able to get six blocks in a row. This is no different than coin flip trials ... yes eventually you will get six tails in a row. Eventually you will get sixteen tails in a row. Eventually you will get six thousand tails in a row (though chances are none of us would live long enough to see it happen). Now, because there is a financial penalty for each failed attempt (as you are using expensive hardware and consuming elecricity, but not earning any bitcoins on the failed attempts) then there is less and less chances that you will make this attempt. The logic is, if you have 10% of mining capacity you might as well mine and earn 10% of the bitcoins issued. Next, let's say that someone does take their million dollars worth of ASICs and do this to prove a point. OK, so they try for an entire month and do actually get six blocks in a row. They won't get seven though. Not with only 10%. So at best, this attack will cause double spending to occur for transactions in the first block for each side of the blockchain fork. But the attacker is going for an entire month of trials, not knowing which block will be the one that the attacker follows by mining five more in succession. So sure, you might get six blocks in a row. But you aren't going to be causing much financial harm as a result. Every exchange has AML policies requiring identity for any significant amounts of funds (e.g., amounts over $1K USD per day withdrawal). You might be able to get a withdrawal out. It won't be a significant amount though. So yes, an evil miner with 51% attack with 51% of the hashing power would be terrible for bitcoin. But an evil miner with 10% of the hashing power and a good string of luck would simply be providing a learning lesson (e.g., for an exchange/E-Wallet provider to start requiring more than six confirmations for larger transfer amounts ... something one might realize might have already been put in-place. if you have your ear to the ground.) Out of curiosity, what's the longest trail of blocks being mined by a single entity, after the network achieved a significant size? |
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So far I don't see anything of real use that is > Bitcoin model in the ripple system.
Less than one minute transactions. Federating payment systems. Cross-currency payments. Exchanges. Community credit. But fundamentally, I think you're comparing in a way that doesn't make sense. Bitcoin and Ripple are trying to solve completely different problems. If you ask "does Ripple solve the problem Bitcoin solves any better", then the answer is "no". But that's because Ripple isn't trying to solve the same problems Bitcoin solves. I don't see Bitcoin and Ripple ever competing like Coke and Pepsi where each gain for one is a loss for the other. Merchants that accept payments on Ripple will be merchants you can pay with Bitcoins. Users drawn to Ripple by our marketing will be able to easily buy and sell Bitcoins. And so on. So OP's title actually makes sense, right? |
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The main issue isn't necessarily trust in my opinion but rather the fact that bitcoins are NOT consumer friendly. The vast majority of people who use bitcoins are highly tech savvy. Bitcoins are complicated and security and storage is challenging.
Why you filthy blasphemous heathen! You are probably going to tell us that the Emperor has no clothes next I suppose  The issue is exactly the trust. If you don't want to just trust math and your ability to understand it you need to trust someone else to not cheat on you. Bitcoin gives you the option to handle everything on your own, whether you like it or not is your business. Being completely independent and trustless always requires you to know better and do more, consider how the traditional American pioneer way of living is to build your own house, grow your own corn and raise your own cattles, skills a modern city dweller is never supposed to grasp yet indispensable for completely independent living. |
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With this kind of hashing capability, we can already birthday attack MD5/SHA1 fairly easily. |
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My current theory is this: Satoshi works for some three-letters government agency or massive orgnaization with extremely deep pocket, the reasons are listed below.
1. Intelligence agencies such as NSA are known to employ some of the world's best cryptographists, and the job requires you to consider every possible threat and make things bullet-proof, the kind of meticulousness we saw in the Bitcoin protocol.
2. Satoshi went to such great length to conceal his identity, because if it's made public, he may lose his job. He should have talked to his superiors about what he was doing, and since his pet project involved nothing classified, and even contains something probably useful to the intelligence work, he got a "go ahead", but on the condition that he kept his identity a secret, for obvious reasons. And needless to say, the revelation of his identity would not put Bitcoin in a good light.
3. Since these government agencies are extremely well-funded, they probably would not care too much about if their employers are always hard at work, so Satoshi got plenty of time to pursue his own ventures.
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Satoshi is certainly here and observing how his baby is developing.
When the world has accepted bitcoin, he might reveal his true identity.
If someone claimed he is Satoshi, would you believe him?
To prove his identity he needs to at least:
-send one bitcoin from his original wallet to a new wallet.
-discuss cryptography with experts so his competency can be proven
-show personal projects, documents and mail conversations that has not been publicized yet
Nah, it's a lot easier than that for him to prove it was him. He would just sign a message with his PGP key and that would confirm it. GPG sig is not proof. He's fairly recognizable by his writing style and knowledge. People of Satoshi's genius only come along a few times a generation. And he still probably knows more about bitcoin than anyone else. He's either hiding, or was made an offer he could not refuse. No. 1. Key signing is the closest there is to unimpeachable proof. That's what it's for. 2. Writing style and knowledge are no more evidence than any other quasi-scientific metric: galvanic lie-detectors, for example. Writing style can be faked. Easily. There is software that will check your fakery for you. 3. Satoshi manifestly does not know more about bitcoin than anyone else. At the moment, the person who does would be Gavin. Satoshi hasn't touched the code for over two years. Please... 4. There are any number of explanations for why Satoshi left, and for what he is doing right now. And why. 'Hiding' and 'made an offer he couldn't refuse' are the stuff of wild conspiracies. Maybe he has a sense of humor? Or perhaps he's just waiting to cash out responsibly without damaging the value too badly? 4b. What about this: what if his hard drive totally crashed and the dog ate his paper backups? What if he lost every bitcoin he ever mined, and is more fucking embarrassed than any human in all of history has ever been? I would say with the kind of amazingly controlled manner/character/style Satoshi displayed, and the meticulousness of his design, I doubt he is someone careless enough to have lost all his wallet data if he had wished to make a fortune out of it. Maybe he just didn't care enough about the wealth or he was worried that greed may get hold of him, which impacts his neutrality, so he willfully wiped out all the wallet data. |
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And nobody other then you knows how much is out of your control.
What do you mean by that? "You" refers to whom the "you" in your sentence refers to, the Opencoin. They decide how much XRPs they will allocate to anyone out there at any given time, nobody else knows. this is exactly how our Federal Reserve plays its game. preferential dealing. With FED you at least know how much money is out of the printing press, assume they did not lie. |
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Nah, if you want to replicate the BTC network, you need to spend hundreds of millions to replicate its hardware infrastructure first, or your network cannot achieve the same degree of reliability and security, a Ripple network costs very little to create and thus very little to cooperate, all you need is trust, which is cheap, a botnet operator can just ask his thousands of nodes to be very cooperative and helpful with validating your transactions.
That remains to be seen. It's not inconceivable that the consensus process is superior to the block chain. It's also quite possible that it isn't. I don't think anyone here is in a position to know that just yet. Yes, I think it will come down to a philisophical rather than technical problem. After all Bitcoiners are here using Bitcoin because fundamentally we are pessimistic about human nature, but maybe the great mass are just not as paranoid as us. |
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"You" refers to whom the "you" in your sentence refers to, the Opencoin. They decide how much XRPs they will allocate to anyone out there at any given time, nobody else knows.
Why is that important? And how would OpenCoin know what happened to the money after they gave it away? They could carefully ration it so that their fiats/BTC reserve is enough to push up the price, even if everyone other than them decides to sell out. Again I am not stating it as a fact. |
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I am neutral about Ripple and taking a wait-and-see attitude, there are good arguments both pro and con whether the system will actually work as marketed. As part of my research, I have a question which hopefully someone here can answer: OpenCoin, Developer of Ripple Protocol, Closes Funding From Andreessen Horowitz, FF Angel IV, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Angel Investors What is the sustaining business model for OpenCoin on which this investment was predicated? Or did these firms simply receive a large chunk of XRP with the assumption that the value will appreciate? Basically I'm trying to understand how investing in OpenCoin was pitched, and what the VC exit strategy is going to be. These guys would not have handed over money without the expectation of a 10x or 100x rate of return. Given that OpenCoin doesn't take a cut on transactions, and that once the source code is released and cloneable the technology stops being a scarce resource, is OpenCoin planning to offer additional/ongoing/proprietary paid-for services and products, or is the entire monetization strategy based on widespread network adoption and a rising XRP value? This is a very good question, and you're absolutely right that the VC investors are being enticed by something like 100x potential return or higher. They are not investing millions for any other reason. That said, I see only two possible business models: 1) Give a large amount of XRP to the investors. If system takes off, they make huge returns. 2) At some stage, attempt to license gateways, such that Ripple becomes a proprietary system earning money on its IP. I doubt OpenCoin is so foolish as to think this would work. I do not think this is their plan. This leaves only option 1, above. Notice something important though... the promise to investors must have been more than "you get X% in OpenCoin equity" because the company MUST ASSUME that it will be closed or shut down once Ripple achieves a significant size (the egold problem). In other words, everyon in OpenCoin must know that OpenCoin is temporary, and thus the only promise they could make to the investors is to hand them a bunch of XRP's which would outlast the company. If the investors really only invested in return for equity in OpenCoin, then they are fools and don't understand the implications of cryptocurrency markets at all. But when you open source everything, not a line of code or any IP right is your own, competitors can replicate your network easily, including your currency, how is the XRP to worth anything then? For the same reason that BTC is worth something when anyone can easily clone it. Network effects, user adoption, brand recognition, proven track record, etc. Nah, if you want to replicate the BTC network, you need to spend hundreds of millions to replicate its hardware infrastructure first, or your network cannot achieve the same degree of reliability and security, a Ripple network costs very little to create and thus very little to replicate, all you need is trust, which is cheap, a botnet operator can just ask his thousands of nodes to be very cooperative and helpful with validating your transactions. |
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And nobody other then you knows how much is out of your control.
What do you mean by that? "You" refers to whom the "you" in your sentence refers to, the Opencoin. They decide how much XRPs they will allocate to anyone out there at any given time, nobody else knows. |
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I am neutral about Ripple and taking a wait-and-see attitude, there are good arguments both pro and con whether the system will actually work as marketed. As part of my research, I have a question which hopefully someone here can answer: OpenCoin, Developer of Ripple Protocol, Closes Funding From Andreessen Horowitz, FF Angel IV, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Angel Investors What is the sustaining business model for OpenCoin on which this investment was predicated? Or did these firms simply receive a large chunk of XRP with the assumption that the value will appreciate? Basically I'm trying to understand how investing in OpenCoin was pitched, and what the VC exit strategy is going to be. These guys would not have handed over money without the expectation of a 10x or 100x rate of return. Given that OpenCoin doesn't take a cut on transactions, and that once the source code is released and cloneable the technology stops being a scarce resource, is OpenCoin planning to offer additional/ongoing/proprietary paid-for services and products, or is the entire monetization strategy based on widespread network adoption and a rising XRP value? This is a very good question, and you're absolutely right that the VC investors are being enticed by something like 100x potential return or higher. They are not investing millions for any other reason. That said, I see only two possible business models: 1) Give a large amount of XRP to the investors. If system takes off, they make huge returns. 2) At some stage, attempt to license gateways, such that Ripple becomes a proprietary system earning money on its IP. I doubt OpenCoin is so foolish as to think this would work. I do not think this is their plan. This leaves only option 1, above. Notice something important though... the promise to investors must have been more than "you get X% in OpenCoin equity" because the company MUST ASSUME that it will be closed or shut down once Ripple achieves a significant size (the egold problem). In other words, everyon in OpenCoin must know that OpenCoin is temporary, and thus the only promise they could make to the investors is to hand them a bunch of XRP's which would outlast the company. If the investors really only invested in return for equity in OpenCoin, then they are fools and don't understand the implications of cryptocurrency markets at all. But when you open source everything, not a line of code or any IP right is your own, competitors can replicate your network easily, including your currency, how is the XRP to worth anything then? |
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