There is no "mining", because there's no proof-of-work. Using "consensus" instead of proof-of-work is what enables new ledgers (analogous to blocks) every 5-10 seconds.

Mining rewards give the incentive to process bitcoin (and other alt-chain) transactions. That has led to plentiful bitcoin nodes and hash power. But it has left a network of exchanges which is lacking, "balkanized", and expensive. (the spread between bitstamp and mtgox is a consequence of this).

With ripple, it is OpenCoin giveaways which provide the incentive to become a gateway (as opposed to mining rewards to become a miner). And the infrastructure which XRP provides (order books built into the protocol) makes it easy for anyone to provide exchange liquidity (cheaper fees/smaller spreads should be the consequence).

XRP acts like the grease-and-gears for exchanging bitcoin (think of it as the dollar for trading the gold).

I won't argue that its a shining light of egalitarianism, but certainly moreso than the conventional bitcoin exchange (and its more transparent to boot. IOU deposits aka "gateway capitalization" are public in-the-ledger knowledge, currently standing at $284k USD and 2,250 BTC).

Try holding only USD, and then send a payment to yourself, received in BTC. You should see some trading happen on the order books (the USD gets exchanged for XRP, and the XRP for BTC).

Not quite true. I'm pretty sure the BTC/USD order book is "synthesized" by combining the BTC/XRP and USD/XRP order books.

Currency conversion in ripple is automated. It's called "path finding", and it finds the cheapest "route" through the order books. This happens when you send someone a payment and they've chosen to receive a different currency/IOU than what you are holding.

www.rippleprice.com to check the price quickly, with USD as the quote currency (eg $0.006 dollars per ripple).

In most other places, eg http://xrp.webr3.org/usd-xrp you'll see the price quoted with XRP as the quote currency (165 ripples per dollar. 1/165 = $0.006 dollars per ripple)

With XRP, the order book is built into the protocol. With bitcoin, each exchange maintains its own proprietary/closed, centralized order book. XRP "federates" the exchanges into ripple "gateways". Gateway deposits become ripple IOUs, and they get traded for XRP in a global decentralized ledger of bid/ask offers.

Or maybe his lover?

Let's DDoS people, everybody start hitting refresh. Go.

Um, only one other time? The one you are talking about, the 2011 bubble, is obviously the closest comparison we have to choose from. So yea, it happened twice, I would expect something similar to happen again. Though in 2011 it took some 18 months to make the full retracement to $2 (to just higher than the $1/$1.10 previous top), today in 2013 the full retracement to $50 (just higher than the $32/$30 previous top) obviously happened much quicker (assuming $50 was bottom).

But regardless, who could know, for sure, what would happen this time? Or even what is likely? For a player big enough to come in and control a significant portion of the market, they would have to be sure that they can get players to follow who are even bigger.

By the way, I only call the immediate bounces after crashes "dead cat bounce". Upward movements that break a downward trend are something else. They are reversals, like bitcoin got at $2. There are also just upward volatility bursts, which is what what we would have called the bounce up from $2 if it had turned back down at $10 or $20 instead of making an all-time-high at $32. So you can't truly know the difference between a long-term trend reversal and an upward volatility burst, until it continues on to set new highs.

Look at the conventional markets. Stocks have bubbles, corrections, and then growth cycles which follow. The ones which don't have subsequent growth cycles, they get kicked off the NYSE and go to the OTCBB, become penny stocks, and (usually) die.



Yes, but how do you know that was a short-term peak or a mid/long-term peak? A growing price will drive more news and interest. Its hard to say which direction the market will play out, it could happen in 2 months or it could take 2 years. The closest example we have for comparison is the one other example in bitcoin history, the 2011-2013 example.

It may not be any kind of news event, or any kind of exogenous (as compared to "endogenous") action. Its estimated that 80% of volatility is due to self-reflexive feedback of activity.

Sometimes you just have to let the market play itself out. There's already enough new investors in the gox queue, or who wanted to buy but thought the $150/$250 price range was too high (relative to recent price history).

There may be enough equilibrium/momentum to take the price to $500 in 6 mo, or it might take 2 years. Even without any particularly noteworthy news.

+1. There is no asset safe from the greedy tentacles of global finance, from the madness of crowds. We will have corrections and we will have crashes. You can design the protocol for the blockchain, but look around at the state of global economics. There are no experts who can engineer efficient price price discovery, in any market. It is what is it, love it or hate it.

I have learned to love it. Be patient, don't panic (not to buy or to sell), and you will be rewarded.

I'm expecting it to fall below $100 and test $50. Then a range of $50 to $150, consolidating around $100 before the next growth cycle.

Look, just because it can be compared to a "currency", doesn't mean that it should never fluctuate. Maybe fluctuating is exactly what its supposed to do. Look at price history, it speaks for itself. Bitcoin price will probably never be stable. But that's exactly how I like it, because I know the long-term trend is up.

Its more like silver or gold. A precious peer-to-peer electronic asset/commodity. Its the speculative vehicle of the future. Not your grandma's e-currency.

Did anyone else see it? This is pretty unbelievable, quotes are easy to fake..

I don't usually agree with proudhon, but I do about this. Mid-term trend is likely down. Don't get caught by a head-fake over $200. You'll have to be patient to catch the next rally from the lows, probably several months from now. I'm expecting a low around $50, though could go lower (but I'd bet my house that it won't be single digits). Look at the price history. It takes a while to recover from a mid-term correction, but it will recover.

We already saw single digits. That ship has sailed. Mid-term we're likely headed down for a while, but long-term trend is up and has always been up.

Why are you so sure that its intended purpose is for the buying and selling of goods? Bitcoin seems to be absolutely perfectly suited for speculative trading: the buying and selling of bitcoin itself. I have been speculating since 2011 and I don't plan to ever stop.

lol, even at $2.00 you said we were headed for $0.10 or $0.50.  Good times.

You've been saying "down" and "overbought" since $5.00.

You'd really rather leave the forums than just admit that you were wrong?

Scaling a database which needs guaranteed atomic consistency is hard. Nasdaq had a "flash crash" when it couldn't handle the load, and BATS botched their IPO when they debuted a new back-end and their APPL prices went haywire. They had to suspend trading and roll back trades.

I am disappointed that mtgox still lags, but I am glad that MagicalTux is doing more extensive testing. I remember when we couldn't go more than a month without seeing some mismatched rogue trades show up on bitcoincharts outside of the trading range with crazy volume, and not knowing whether they were real trades until they were deleted and removed from the charts. And rememember when trading was "halted" once, for about 12 hours, when someone sent an invalid currency pair to the API? Its more important to prevent those kinds of mishaps than to do realtime processing of peak volume (though i agree, we are paying enough for both).

Sometimes I wonder if its a reverse psychology thing he does because he thinks its healthy for the market to have some consistent contra-trolls. Sorta like Mr. M with his ask walls.