No retort.  I imagine these things would end up in Ripple too.  Either directly through the card companies or through 3rd parties.   You'd get your airline points or credit card points or whatever (which are essentially another currency), and these could be paid by the company directly into your Ripple account which you could then trade for BTC or do whatever you wanted with them.  I could pay for my pizza in airline points.  Seriously.  The merchant would get US dollars (if that's what they sold pizza in) and I could pay with my AA frequent flyer miles.  Can your bank do that?

I'll give you BTC4 for the 50,000 XRP.

I was just giving some end use examples.  These type of things could be done with or without your bank.  Once something is in Ripple you can work with anyone else in Ripple.  So if someone gets in through their bank and I get in through my bank, we can do transactions with each other that don't involve either of our banks.   I could pay you BTC and never have touched a Bitcoin, if that's all you take when we do a transaction (and no banks need to be involved).  This is why I am saying that I think reaching a critical mass of users is important in Opencoin's business plan (my opinion only - I don't have anything to do with Opencoin Inc.) before they release the open source code.   Users are what will make Ripple powerful as a payment system - not the price of xrp (or even xrp at all).

Sure.  How much do you have and what do want for it?




Yeah, the issue here isn't whether it's open or closed source.  The issue is that the Ripple payment system has a better chance of making alternative currencies (including Bitcoin) more mainstream than Bitcoin does.  However, it's hard to get you guys to think of anything other than the currency side of all this.  That said, Opencoin said they'll be releasing the open source after Ripple comes out of Beta and I imagine if they don't then the project would end up failing.  

I should be more clear... these companies will most likely be financial type companies that are involved in money moving already.   Why would they use this?  Low to no cost of implementation and maintenance while simultaneously allowing your customers more services.  There might be other reasons too.   But those would be the top one's I would think.   Through this interface you could send $120 US to someone by sending BTC,  or 300 EU by sending an equivalent in LTC.   If two banks you deal with are on the system you could send your money from one to the other account instantly.   A merchant would be able to accept 100's of currencies if they wanted to without using different merchant providers, you could send $100 from your bank account to your friend in Italy without having the extra step of sending it to a Paypal. etc. etc.  

The end user most likely won't be the one to choose this intially.  Most likely you will end up using Ripple because a company is using the system and you'll have a custom app to access it.

I think that Bitcoin users are having a hard time wrapping their head around this, because they are trying to fit the way Bitcoin got adopted to the way Ripple will be adopted and the two will not be the same.

I love when muppets parrot the same thing they've seen in 20 other places, without giving any thought to what's been written in the thread they are responding to.

Cue parrot voice:  "Ripple is a scam for devs."  "Ripple is a scam for devs."  "Ripple is a scam for devs."

Go back to reading a LTC thread dumbass, we don't want you to step out of your comfort zone.

I understand that we are on a cryptocurrency subforum and so cryptocurrency is the main thing on people's brains, but is it really that hard for you folks to wrap your head around the fact that Ripple is a PAYMENT SYSTEM FIRST?

If it succeeds as a payment system then it its currency will take off and its founders will make a lot of money.   So what?

Its strength is that it that its a distributed payment processing system for existing currencies.  People that want to get into the money moving business can do so without investing millions of dollars in software development and overhead.   This is its strength - moving existing currencies through a distributed payment system that doesn't cost much to implement.

As to not using mining and distribution...

While the scheme of creating "virtual mining" to mimic the difficulty of real mining was not only useful but brilliant, it is not the only way to "skin this cat" as they say, and it really depends on what you want to accomplish.  In this case, as I've mentioned in my original post, they are using xrp as a sort of stock IPO (IMO).   If the payment system takes off, they and all the early people involved in the "IPO" will be rich.  If not, they won't.  

This is not a "currency" launch, it's a payment system launch that has a currency attached to it.  (maybe repeating myself will get this point through)  Getting people to adopt this payment system will involve lots of work that involves a lot more than programming.  

How is asking you "What page are you referring to?" ignoring you?   I wish we could have a small IQ test before the system allowed people to respond to prevent this kind of idiocy.

What page are you referring to?

It only matters that it's closed-source if they don't open the source to the public after it's out of Beta like they promised.

But, because you guys can't seem to get your brains off the little details (or even the big details) that are irrelevant to the big picture...

Imagine for a moment that Opencoin keeps their server software closed for YEARS.  That's right YEARS.   And during those years they manage to get all kinds of financial providers to use their system.  They help them create custom front-ends so that it works seamlessly with the current banking system, people have apps on their computers, etc. etc.

Then once a critical mass of adoption as a payment system has been reached, they release the code to the public... and the code reviewers find that XRP is just as secure as Bitcoin.    At that point, does it matter?  I think not.   I think xrp would rapidly become the most valuable virtual currency simply because the payment system ecosystem would make it the most trust-free asset to have within that system.

It doesn't matter if Ripple is the system that makes this happen or some other system.  The important thing is (IMHO), is that PAYMENT SYSTEM adoption must come first and must be inclusive of existing legal tender, and that payment system adoption will lead to better widespread adoption of the virtual currency vs. doing it the way Bitcoin (backwards).  The thing is - all Bitcoiners think that every currency must come up the same way.   That is not the case.

You are sidestepping the issue.  Having a Bitcoin debit card would still involve people moving USD (or other currencies) into Bitcoin in order to put the Bitcoin on the card.   Why bother?  Just buy the pizza with USD.  Done.

Until this issue addressed, the only people who will be paying with Bitcoin are miners, early adopters, and idealists who already have them.   And yes, you will find vendors that will accept them using services that turn them immediately into their local currency because who would want to turn away business?  And of course, some vendors might want to hold on to some of the BTC for speculative reasons.   However, none of that makes it a mainstream currency or anything close to it.

Mainstream usage will start with a payment system that doesn't interfere with the existing one (or makes things a lot easier).   From there, adoption of alternate currencies will flourish.  That's my view on this.  I'm happy to consider other views though, I just haven't heard any yet.

OK.  Bank Vault instead of Bank.  Are you happy?   Not sure what your argument is.

Ripple is a distributed payment system involving IOUs (which is exactly what we use now in our daily lives).   If it takes off as a payment system then the only trust-free internal currency (xrp) will be very valuable.  They are using payment system adoption as the route to trust-free currency adoption.  Bitcoin is doing the reverse.

You fail to understand that I'm talking about IDEAS and you are talking about particulars.

The entire IDEA of Ripple is a better execution of an alternative currency because it is inclusive of CURRENT currencies and can be used as a payment system for those currencies, and the adoption of the "trust free" currency is secondary.

What about this don't you understand?

I wish you guys would stop with the circle-jerk and help me understand how Bitcoin plans to become a mainstream currency.

That is one of the great things about Bitcoin.  You can be your own bank.  This is useful in the same way it would be useful to have a vault under your house to store gold and a Star Trek transporter to send that gold to whomever you wanted to instantly.   Very useful.

However, as an everyday way of making payments to other people, not very useful (unless you already have tons of them and your friends and vendors have tons of them).   In order to buy a pizza with Bitcoin, I need to find a merchant that accepts Bitcion, and then I need to find a way to get my money to an exchange (at a fee), then buy Bitcoin on that exchange (at a fee).    That's a lot of work and expense to buy a pizza.   Now I might be ideologically inclined to go through that work, but most people won't be.  Most people are going to whip out their debit card and make a payment to the pizza guy with their fiat currency.   That simple.

Whatever the legal tender of the land is, is what people will use, unless their is a reason not to (ie - transactions that are illegal with the legal tender, etc.).  The only way to get a new currency to move with existing currencies is to make the addition of those currencies TRANSPARENT to the majority of the people involved (not the hard-core people like Bitcoiners).   This is what it will take for mass adoption.   To avoid this issue is folly.

Not one of you has addressed how Bitcoin is going to become a payment system.   Ripple DOES address this FIRST.  xrp will only take off in value once the payment system takes off.

You CAN'T USE BITCOIN until you exchange your regular money to get it.  Why would someone do that to buy a pizza?

Answer this question and let me know how Bitcoin plans on addressing these problems.

Ripple on the other hand DOES address these issues.  

If Bitcoin has something that will address these issues in the near future, I'd be happy to reverse my opinion.  I don't see any answers other than people don't like that Ripple is closed source, they don't like that a company pre-mined 100,000,000,000 of that system's currency, or that they are worried their might not be enough currency to create an account for everyone in the world.  

Are you guys for real?

I'm all about solutions.  Tell me how Bitcoin fixes (or plans to fix) the issues I illustrated in my OP.

And if it's true that Jed McCaleb is Satoshi, then he's about to bump that chicken feed up quite substantially.  

You didn't insult me.  You just demonstrated that you either can't read or that even after you do read, you can't understand what I wrote.

Open-source, closed-source.  Who cares?  If someone makes a duplicate of Ripple that starts as open-source, it will still be the fact that it's a PAYMENT SYSTEM FIRST that makes it successful.  That's the point of my post and that's what makes Ripple superior.  But hey, keep knee-jerking with your answers, that always works when some disruptive tech is about to disrupt the thing you're married to.

Another "brilliant" reply that doesn't address anything I've written about in my original post.  Good job genius.

I bet you put a lot of thought into that reply.  

How much owners will make is irrelevant to the reality of the situation.   In order for Bitcoin to move into the mainstream it would have to replace current money somehow.  I don't see any foreseeable way for that to happen.  If you do, why don't you let us all in on it?

On the other hand, Ripple has a very smooth way to transition people from their current currencies into using xrp.  

That's a fact, irrelevant of your opinion on whether it's OK if the owner's of Opencoin make tons of money or not.

Bitcoiners are so stuck in the "mining" solution put forth by Satoshi that they can't wrap their head around any other possibility.  Why is that?