ripple: let's test it!

[molecular]

I grant trust to molecular with 100 usd, but I have only 0.5 in my ripple acc now  

You sure you want to do that? That means that if you ever hold USD in the system, molecular or someone else can take them from you and in exchange give you molecular IOUs, which he is under no obligation to honor.

hey man, are you questioning my integrity?!?

^ this was clearly a joke for those who didn't get it.

On the one hand I feel honored, on the other a bit uncomfortable having so many people extend such hight trust to me.

If I sum it up, I can see people currently trust me with:

• EUR 15
• USD 142
• BTC 8.55

This is beta phase of the software. I will definitely honor any legitimate IOUs people have with me. However it's theoretically possible that something goes wrong and all of the sudden there are some faulty IOUs with my name on them out there. That could theoretically result in some uncomfortable situations having to be resolved.

So please: lower your trust in me to values you can afford to lose (play money!) until we're out of beta.

The majority of people have reasonable values. But 2 or 3 people make up the bulk of above trust.

[molecular]

I grant trust to molecular with 100 usd, but I have only 0.5 in my ripple acc now  

You sure you want to do that? That means that if you ever hold USD in the system, molecular or someone else can take them from you and in exchange give you molecular IOUs, which he is under no obligation to honor.

How exactly would we (I) do that?

[molecular]

what need is there for an exchange with ripples built-in exchange system. mtGox will be degraded to just being a fiat gateway, no?

If you had any real world realistic idea of how much crap is involved in "just being a fiat gateway" you would be glad to know all our so crucial to our whole ecosystem fiat gateways, our major ports through which so much of the trade between the real online world and the real meatspace world passes, can leave "price discovery" to others so they can devote their full energies to making sure our virtual<->meatspace trade-routes remain open.

-MarkM-

oh yes, it wasn't my intention to downplay the "fiat gateway" function. It's crucial (at least at this point) and kudos and karma to gox and the others doing it.

I was just trying to say: mtGox might lose its lucrative exchange business and be left with supplying the hopefully also lucrative fiat gateway function only. MtGox might not be especially happy about that and maybe for that reason might not even consider becoming part of the ripple universe.

[molecular]

and in the end, if everyone uses ripple... POOF: no need for real money?

Real what?

What is this "real money" of which you write?



-MarkM-

I know, right? Scarce commodity? So what? We don't need that. So maybe ripple is a bitcoin killer (in the long, long run) after all.

[molecular]

One area where ripple could shine is microtransactions. Being instant and free has its advantages over waiting 60 minutes for a block to propagate.

Also could take load off the blockchain that can maybe only do 7 tx/s

[JoelKatz]

there are definitely orders being created automatically somehow. Just woke up (so I did definitely not do anything in my ripple client four hours ago, I was asleep):

It is a client bug. There's a fix in the repository, but I don't think it has been tested and pushed to the public server. You're seeing offers that involve you in some indirect way (say, offering or requesting your IOUs) and the client is telling you that you placed them.

[JoelKatz]

For those interested in getting a better idea of what Ripple transaction and ledger structures look like, I've made available a recent ledger with all account information, a transaction as formed, and a transaction as applied into a ledger. They're all in the JSON format that the client uses.
http://goo.gl/GfoZW

[markm]

and in the end, if everyone uses ripple... POOF: no need for real money?

Real what?

What is this "real money" of which you write?



-MarkM-

I know, right? Scarce commodity? So what? We don't need that. So maybe ripple is a bitcoin killer (in the long, long run) after all.

Ripple is not the killer, XRP (Ripples) are. Or at least, before Ripple is, Ripples are.

Eventually community credit could depress the price of XRP, but as long as it is Ripple-based community credit it will have to use XRP just to function. So it would then take a new community credit system to actually kill the XRP. I wonder what its spam-prevention system will be.

Community credit ought to kill most currencies, if it worked. Not just bitcoins, not just XRP. All the fiats too.

-MarkM-

[JoelKatz]

Community credit ought to kill most currencies, if it worked. Not just bitcoins, not just XRP. All the fiats too.

There are a lot of challenges to making this happen and I have to admit it's a long shot and will take a long time under the best imaginable scenario, but it could radically change the way people think about money.

[Peter Lambert]

So I went to Bitstamp and set up an account, but when I go to the ripple page it says I need to add trust to a ripple address, but it is just linking to the ripple homepage instead of saying what their ripple address is, anybody know what is going on with that?

[molecular]

So, something weird happened (basically a trade I didn't want or order):

this is my current order book. Notice the last order I entered about 1-2 hours ago:



Doesn't that last line indicate I want to "buy 0.01 BTC at a price of 1000 XRP/BTC"?

I see some notifications:



But most notably I have now 690 more XRP and 0.069 BTC less in my wallet. So I sold BTC.

Why don't trade transactions show in the wallet history? There is absolutely no indication that a trade happened other than that my balances magically changed. That's pretty intransparent, I'd say.

Most importantly: the trade seems to have happened the other way around from what I would've expected. My intention was to sell XRP and buy BTC. I'm confused.

And also: if this was acutally the order I entered being executed, then the price is off by a factor of 10: 690 XRP / 0.069 BTC = 10,000 XRP/BTC.

------------

just to make sure I understood the displayed order correcly, I just entered another order:



that clearly says I want to buy BTC.

and it looks like the order I entered before (that seems to have resulted in a sale of BTC)



Ergo my original order was also to buy BTC, sell XRP.

-------------

any ideas / explanations?

[markm]

Could it be other people's exchanges on the markets are Rippling through you?

(A rhetorical question, in the sense that that its not you I am really attempting to elicit an answer from.)

-MarkM-

[JoelKatz]

Could it be other people's exchanges on the markets are Rippling through you?

These can only result in one of two things happening:

1) IOUs that you used to hold from one issuer you now hold from a different issuer in the same currency. (And unless you do something very unusual, in the same amount.)

2) Offers that you placed are taken or partially taken. Your balance in the currency/issuer you are selling will decrease and the one you are buying will increase.

To be honest, I don't fully understand how the client presents offers. There's an open issue to make it clearer.

[Peter Lambert]

I have been wondering about the XRP. They were all created at the beginning of ripple, and they are used for each transaction, seems a tiny fraction is used for each time you extend trust, or send a transaction, or place a trade offer. What happens when the XRPs get used up?

[JoelKatz]

I have been wondering about the XRP. They were all created at the beginning of ripple, and they are used for each transaction, seems a tiny fraction is used for each time you extend trust, or send a transaction, or place a trade offer. What happens when the XRPs get used up?

Each transaction costs a very tiny fraction of one XRP. The XRP used to open accounts and held for reserve against offers and credit lines are not consumed and can still be used to pay transaction fees. For offers and credit lines, the reserve XRP are released when the object is destroyed.

The thinking is that XRPs will never get used up under any imaginable realistic scenario. The transaction fees and reserve levels can be adjusted by consensus and XRPs are divisible into millionths. If it were ever needed in some far distant future, the protocol could be changed by consensus to make XRP more divisible or to multiply everyone's XRP holdings by a million. But it's hard to imagine any such thing would ever be needed. If we're wildly successful, our great, great grandchildren will be smart enough to figure it out.

[molecular]

Could it be other people's exchanges on the markets are Rippling through you?

These can only result in one of two things happening:

1) IOUs that you used to hold from one issuer you now hold from a different issuer in the same currency. (And unless you do something very unusual, in the same amount.)

2) Offers that you placed are taken or partially taken. Your balance in the currency/issuer you are selling will decrease and the one you are buying will increase.

To be honest, I don't fully understand how the client presents offers. There's an open issue to make it clearer.

just one quick sub-question: "offer" == "order" or not?

[molecular]

Could it be other people's exchanges on the markets are Rippling through you?

(A rhetorical question, in the sense that that its not you I am really attempting to elicit an answer from.)

-MarkM-

I will answer anyhow deducing from JoelKatz' answer above: No, that shouldn't result in a trade (between currencies) happening on my balances.

I've read many times and understand that one has to look at the pair currency/issuer. Wouldn't that mean that -say- my USD balance does really "consist" of USD IOUs from different issuers? Maybe that could optionally be displayed in the client for clarity?

[Belkaar]

So am I correct to assume that ripple is designed to allow fractional reserve banking at the gateways?
I think this will happen:
- 1000 users at a gateway will deposit 10 BTC each and extend trust over 10BTC to said gateway.
- The gateway should hold 10000 BTC to cover the trust.
- The gateway will monitor how many BTC are withdrawn and deposited per day over time, say 1000 BTC
- The gateway will only keep 2000 BTC on hand.
So we have 2000 real bitcoins that back 10000 ripple-BTC-IOUs and this will work until there is a bank-run on the gateway at which point the gateway can't pay up and the people will start revoking their trust.

Question: If I trust A to owe me 1 BTC, then send 0.5 BTC to B, then revoke my trust to A. What happens to the 0.5 BTC B holds? Are they still tradeable? 


Here is my ripple-address rJVshcxcxSAXkgzg1PiUQWr5TodTNAETva
Someone wants to try this?

[molecular]

So am I correct to assume that ripple is designed to allow fractional reserve banking at the gateways?
I think this will happen:
- 1000 users at a gateway will deposit 10 BTC each and extend trust over 10BTC to said gateway.
- The gateway should hold 10000 BTC to cover the trust.
- The gateway will monitor how many BTC are withdrawn and deposited per day over time, say 1000 BTC
- The gateway will only keep 2000 BTC on hand.
So we have 2000 real bitcoins that back 10000 ripple-BTC-IOUs and this will work until there is a bank-run on the gateway at which point the gateway can't pay up and the people will start revoking their trust.

I think this is correct.

However it is not unreasonable to expect that there will be a competitive market in gateways. One of the selling point will be the advertised reserve ratio and its auditability (easy with BTC). Other ones will be the fees and general reputation/trustworthiness of the entity.

I'm thinking of this:

Free Banking
Free banking refers to a monetary arrangement in which banks are subject to no special regulations beyond those applicable to most enterprises, and in which they also are free to issue their own paper currency (banknotes). In a free banking system, market forces control the supply of total quantity of banknotes and deposits that can be supported by any given stock of cash reserves, where such reserves consist either of a scarce commodity (such as gold) or of an artificially limited stock of "fiat" money issued by a central bank. In the strictest versions of free banking, however, there either is no role at all for a central bank, or the supply of central bank money is supposed to be permanently "frozen." There is, therefore, no agency capable of serving as a "lender of last resort" in the usually understood sense of the term. Nor is there any government insurance of banknotes or bank deposit accounts.

sounds good to me. free market for banks.

[molecular]

An order popped up that I did not enter (the last one at the bottom):



wtf? can anyone explain this? or is it a bug?