RBS Trials Ripple as Part of £3.5 Billion Tech Revamp

[ChrisPop]

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is undertaking a proof-of-concept with Ripple technology as part of its £3.5bn technological revamp.

Chief administrative officer Simon McNamara announced the initiative during a webinar on the bank's three-year transformation plan last Thursday, just one day after a glitch which caused 600,000 payments to go missing.



http://www.coindesk.com/rbs-trials-ripple-part-3-5-billion-tech-revamp/

[LiteCoinGuy]

  Ripple is one of 24 other initiatives listed at the proof-of-concept stage with the bank. Logos from bitcoin startups Coinbase and Blockchain also feature further back in the RBS pipeline, under its 'qualification' stage.

Addressing the RBS investors and analysts on the webcast, McNamara said:

   "I don’t know what’s going to succeed. What I'm certain of is that we are going to see blockchain solutions, peer-to-peer solutions emerging in our industry and we want to be close to that development."

[franky1]

lol ripple? .. its not even a blockchain.. RBS are wasting 3.5billion on yet another centralised system......... im lost for words

[Eastwind]

lol ripple? .. its not even a blockchain.. RBS are wasting 3.5billion on yet another centralised system......... im lost for words

Centralised system so that they can control?

[LiteCoinGuy]

Next on the contender list is the venture-backed and well-marketed Ripple Labs. Whether this platform qualifies as a blockchain is up for debate, as transactions on the Ripple network are subject to the company's own moderation and management instead of network 'mining'. But what's certain is that the Ripple Labs project has turned to the "centralization" of its network management as a way to add features to Bitcoin.

Five Ripple-controlled servers keep the heartbeat of this network in sync, which contrasts starkly with the many thousands of systems managing risk in the Bitcoin network. Ripple Labs has needed to maintain this centralization in order to successfully promote itself as a next-generation competitor to payment clearing systems SWIFT and ACH. But it's apparent that this technology does not provide much in the way of immutability or settlement risk-reduction when compared to a conventional blockchain design.

Ripple throws out the need for traditional mining, by requiring that all actors in their system establish trust relationships with each other as well as trust in the Ripple Labs corporation itself. By centralizing this trust, Ripple has exposed the entire network to risk in the form of an easy point of failure and censorship. This has resulted in the recent and very embarrassing court-ordered freezing of funds for one large digital currency exchange, as well as an anti-money laundering fine levied by FinCen. Within a conventional blockchain design, by contrast, value transfers are final. Neither a court order nor the whims of a small number of participants would be able to freeze funds or levy fines.

The centralized nature of Ripple highlights the settlement risks incurred by such approaches to blockchain technology. It now appears that any user of the Ripple network who needs to settle value amongst untrusted and/or risky actors will do so by way of … well, a Bitcoin gateway attached to the Ripple network.

While Ripple may offer some advantages over the incumbent SWIFT and ACH architectures, Ripple's architecture alone does not settle or route actual value outside the incumbent banking system. Meanwhile, as the Ripple community attempts to bridge its network to Bitcoin, so too has the Bitcoin community added many of Ripple's features straight onto Bitcoin itself.

http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/why-the-bitcoin-blockchain-beats-out-competitors-1075100-1.html

[Zer0Sum]

lol ripple? .. its not even a blockchain.. RBS are wasting 3.5billion on yet another centralised system......... im lost for words

Centralised system so that they can control?

Corporations and corporate officers are directly legally liable for everything...
Therefore, they have no choice but to centralize and control every last detail of corporate business...
Or you might spend 5 years of your life in litigation...

(Which, btw, this will happen to many actors here once FinCEN gets up to speed...
Right now they are wiping up the low hanging fruit like drugs, ponzis... Gen 2.0 platforms that issue "securities" will be next).

So anarchistic, decentralized uptopian visions are unworkable in a world with legal systems...
Outside the system you get a big hive of chaotic or fraudulent activity that is the Bitcoin and BitcoinTalk ecosystem.

Since highly structured banks and corporations have 100s of billions of $$$ to throw at this...
We will see the dominance of "permissioned distributed ledgers" as explained in this paper..
And since Ripple is run by adults, they get this basic fact... and have been targeting the real world for 3 years:

http://www.ofnumbers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Permissioned-distributed-ledgers.pdf

[poloskarted]

lol ripple? .. its not even a blockchain.. RBS are wasting 3.5billion on yet another centralised system......... im lost for words

Centralised system so that they can control?

Corporations and corporate officers are directly legally liable for everything...
Therefore, they have no choice but to centralize and control every last detail of corporate business...
Or you might spend 5 years of your life in litigation...

(Which, btw, this will happen to many actors here once FinCEN gets up to speed...
Right now they are wiping up the low hanging fruit like drugs, ponzis... Gen 2.0 platforms that issue "securities" will be next).

So anarchistic, decentralized uptopian visions are unworkable in a world with legal systems...
Outside the system you get a big hive of chaotic or fraudulent activity that is the Bitcoin and BitcoinTalk ecosystem.

Since highly structured banks and corporations have 100s of billions of $$$ to throw at this...
We will see the dominance of "permissioned distributed ledgers" as explained in this paper..
And since Ripple is run by adults, they get this basic fact... and have been targeting the real world for 3 years:

http://www.ofnumbers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Permissioned-distributed-ledgers.pdf

Exactly. Future for fintech is permissioned ledgers, permissionless (both private and public) and replicated state machines (PBFT style for example)
50% of banks at this time are researching the technology.

BTW few companies are also working on permissioned ledgers for bitcoin to take some of the pie away from ripple but allowing those who want or need to stay compliant to do so. This one you can trial now http://www.multichain.com/

Plus a bunch of of startups with big name alums building on variour forms of blockchain tech to enable tokenizaton and leveraging of the blockchain beyond dumb payments (commodities, bonds, CFD's, overhaul of antiquated legacy infrastructure etc)


-Domus Tower
-Epiphyte
-Symbiont
-NASDAQ OMX
- T0
-Blockstack
-Digital Asset Holdings (inc hyperledger)
-Colu
-Open assets

For the big boys, it's asset classes ON or parallel to the blockchain they'll be trading, not feathercoin and doge

This is where it's obvious the real money was going, and the scene is increasingly maturing. If everyone wants to sleep investing in litecoin copy paste shitcoins on bittrex hoping to get rich again like the old days that's their problem

[TaunSew]

Coindesk has always been one of the biggest shills for Ripple and always printed misleading headlines / titles.

As the article later explains Ripple was 1 of the 24 but that probably means Ripple will probably be eliminated and won't receive a thing.  Much like they've been eliminated / removed as a partner by Fidor, Wells Fargo, Western Union and  other companies they've tried to "partner with".   I know everyone here is in lala land but even centralized blockchain can't compete with better centralized models.

[God27]

lol ripple? .. its not even a blockchain.. RBS are wasting 3.5billion on yet another centralised system......... im lost for words

Centralised system so that they can control?

Corporations and corporate officers are directly legally liable for everything...
Therefore, they have no choice but to centralize and control every last detail of corporate business...
Or you might spend 5 years of your life in litigation...

(Which, btw, this will happen to many actors here once FinCEN gets up to speed...
Right now they are wiping up the low hanging fruit like drugs, ponzis... Gen 2.0 platforms that issue "securities" will be next).

So anarchistic, decentralized uptopian visions are unworkable in a world with legal systems...
Outside the system you get a big hive of chaotic or fraudulent activity that is the Bitcoin and BitcoinTalk ecosystem.

Since highly structured banks and corporations have 100s of billions of $$$ to throw at this...
We will see the dominance of "permissioned distributed ledgers" as explained in this paper..
And since Ripple is run by adults, they get this basic fact... and have been targeting the real world for 3 years:

http://www.ofnumbers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Permissioned-distributed-ledgers.pdf

If one were to think or believe that this will happen:

"Since highly structured banks and corporations have 100s of billions of $$$ to throw at this..."

Will these banks and everything else that come on Ripple enrich the early individual adopters "Boom" just like that so easily by putting billions on the network therefore increasing the price of XRP?

When else have banks done this for a market based asset that hasn't been for the ownership of a regulated "private sourced" security before or after the IPO? Or will you tell me they have to in order to survive?

[tokeweed]

lol ripple? .. its not even a blockchain.. RBS are wasting 3.5billion on yet another centralised system......... im lost for words

Banks don't care much about decentralization, really...

[tokeweed]

Coindesk has always been one of the biggest shills for Ripple and always printed misleading headlines / titles.

As the article later explains Ripple was 1 of the 24 but that probably means Ripple will probably be eliminated and won't receive a thing.  Much like they've been eliminated / removed as a partner by Fidor, Wells Fargo, Western Union and  other companies they've tried to "partner with".   I know everyone here is in lala land but even centralized blockchain can't compete with better centralized models.

I don't know about "can't compete"...  In the real world, banks and its billions usually win.  But decentralized models are way better..  and cooler.

And if I were to speculate, the world's biggest banks will get together and create their own distributed/decentralized ledger/blockchain that they themselves control...  Taking the small - medium banks in.

[TaunSew]

Coindesk has always been one of the biggest shills for Ripple and always printed misleading headlines / titles.

As the article later explains Ripple was 1 of the 24 but that probably means Ripple will probably be eliminated and won't receive a thing.  Much like they've been eliminated / removed as a partner by Fidor, Wells Fargo, Western Union and  other companies they've tried to "partner with".   I know everyone here is in lala land but even centralized blockchain can't compete with better centralized models.

I don't know about "can't compete"...  In the real world, banks and its billions usually win.  But decentralized models are way better..  and cooler.

And if I were to speculate, the world's biggest banks will get together and create their own distributed/decentralized ledger/blockchain that they themselves control...  Taking the small - medium banks in.

In other words there's no room in the banking world for parasitical middle men like Ripple Labs, especially when Ripple has already been proven to be forkable / cloneable (see Stellar) and developers you can contract for high 5 or low 6 figure salaries are a dime a dozen.   Heck even Ripple Lab employees are poachable if you offer them a slight salary increase.

[photon_coin]

They will choke on ripple , let them

[tokeweed]

Coindesk has always been one of the biggest shills for Ripple and always printed misleading headlines / titles.

As the article later explains Ripple was 1 of the 24 but that probably means Ripple will probably be eliminated and won't receive a thing.  Much like they've been eliminated / removed as a partner by Fidor, Wells Fargo, Western Union and  other companies they've tried to "partner with".   I know everyone here is in lala land but even centralized blockchain can't compete with better centralized models.

I don't know about "can't compete"...  In the real world, banks and its billions usually win.  But decentralized models are way better..  and cooler.

And if I were to speculate, the world's biggest banks will get together and create their own distributed/decentralized ledger/blockchain that they themselves control...  Taking the small - medium banks in.

In other words there's no room in the banking world for parasitical middle men like Ripple Labs, especially when Ripple has already been proven to be forkable / cloneable (see Stellar) and developers you can contract for high 5 or low 6 figure salaries are a dime a dozen.   Heck even Ripple Lab employees are poachable if you offer them a slight salary increase.

That's cos they (banks) are the ultimate middlemen.  I could see Ripple Labs being acquired by a big financial company for billions in the future.  Then they could use and create their own versions of Ripple's tech.  Closed source, of course...

[hua_hui]

Ripple pefectly fits banks' requirement. Banks could join Ripple, will be able to compete with Bitcoin or alcoins, get rid of SWIFT, ACH or West Union etc. They could act as super gateway, their trustworthy will be very high.

[JuniorSv]

Wow.. that is something - lets hope it will lead to further innovation!

[tokeweed]

lets hope it will lead to further innovation!

Bottom line, this +10000000000000.

Good thing it's open source.  That's one thing really good about it.

[zsp]

Wow, that's an interesting and great news.

[muddafudda]

And if the Banks spent $10 on researching what Ripple was they would realize they could just centralize itself with the blockchain tech without the need for a $10 third party such as Ripple.

[TaunSew]

And if the Banks spent $10 on researching what Ripple was they would realize they could just centralize itself with the blockchain tech without the need for a $10 third party such as Ripple.

That was exactly the point when I called them parasitical middle men.  There may had been a time when Ripple had a proprietary advantage, being closed source and not replicable, but the whole Stellar thing demonstrated that ex-Ripple employees and founders can simply fork / clone the system.   A proprietary system could have had a valuation in the billions but something non-proprietary isn't even worth a packet of gum if a kid off the street can clone it.


It really begs the question is why would anyone want Chris Larsen - he is definitely NOT worth billions let alone tens of millions.  If the banks want Ripple it's much cheaper to create their own clone.