Speculation Rule: buy when others are irrationally pessimistic or too cautious

[iamnotback]

This is bouncing up and down, but slowly moving upwards. It just exceeded 59% for the first time:

http://litecoinblockhalf.com/segwit.php

Nearly 60%:

345/576 (59.90%) blocks signaling in the past 24 hours!

[1714211485]

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[iamnotback]

This is bouncing up and down, but slowly moving upwards. It just exceeded 59% for the first time:

http://litecoinblockhalf.com/segwit.php

Nearly 60%:

345/576 (59.90%) blocks signaling in the past 24 hours!

60% threshold breached!

348/576 (60.42%) blocks signaling in the past 24 hours!

[iamnotback]

Putting that aside however and thinking realistically, I don't see banks going anywhere in the short - medium term. As a speculator/investor, I'd like to play both sides so that I win either way or hopefully BOTH at the same time.

Ripple is the tech that banks need to remain somewhat relevant going forward in today's globalized economy.

There is something very strange going on with Ripple. Its features are entirely incompatible with sound banking. So it can't be for banking. Whereas LN on Litecoin will be compatible with sound private fractional reserves in alignment with Nash's ideal money concept (with the failure mode being long-term when Bitcoin becomes controlled by one whale due to concentrating effect of fungible finance).

I wonder if Ripple is a bet on corrupt fiat system finding a way to force all public funds and banks into a system which self-destructs? Some people seem to think Ripple is more compatible with governments and laws?

I really can't find any logic in it at all except that speculators will buy anything that the other dumb speculators will associate progress even though it isn't.

I'd be very wary of holding Ripple as it appears to me to be an extremely volatile greater fool speculation (raping) tool. Ripple is having its 2nd hump adoption (similar chart pattern to LTC).

And I think that is the utility of Ripple. It is way to separate more fools from their capital. So get on board and join the musical chairs raping party. Just pray you get out in time.

I have thrown the question out on XRPChat https://www.xrpchat.com/topic/3551-ripples-fatal-defects-would-like-to-hear-an-expert-rebuttal-please/

Ripple Consensus Ledger (RCL) is not difficult to understand.

- RCL is about trustlines and IOUs
- Every account on RCL can issue an IOU. E.g. I can issue USD.roborovskii or EUR.roborovskii or XAU.roborovskii, basically anything except XRP which is the reserved native token.
- Another person may also issue IOUs, but theirs would be seen as USD.anotherperson, EUR.anotherperson, CNY.anotherperson, etc.
- Note that on RCL you may not see USD.anotherperson, but the actual account address (USD.rxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)

- Nobody needs to trust anyone blindly. This is where trustlines come in. Trustlines are simply how much you are willing to trust another party holding an IOU for you.
- E.g. You deposit 1000 USD into bitstamp through the usual banking transaction. You NEED to set a trustline to bitstamp on RCL for at least 1000 USD, or bitstamp will not be able to credit 1000 USD.bitstamp to your RCL account.
- Once you do that, bitstamp can then send 1000 USD.bitstamp to you.
- It is a common problem that new users forget (or do not know how) to set the trustlines. They deposit the money, and wonder why they have not yet received it on RCL.

- The main misunderstanding (or ignorance) in that written piece of garbage, is that you could receive anyone's IOU (e.g. USD.scammer). This is not possible if you do not have a trustline setup to trust 'scammer'.
- E.g. If you had the 1000 USD.bitstamp deposited earlier, and you want to pay your friend through RCL 10 USD, you will NOT be able to send him the 10 USD.bitstamp if he does not have a trustline setup to bitstamp.
- Maybe he only has a trustline setup to gatehub. In this case he can ONLY receive USD.gatehub

So this problem of sending your friend USD who has a different trusted gateway; is where the magic of rippling occurs:
- On RCL there are market makers, there would be a currency (or IOU) pair that trades between USD.bitstamp and USD.gatehub.
- Ideally this would be 1:1 being the same currency, but not always. For the following example, let's say it's an ideal 1:1
- When you send your friend 10 USD.bitstamp on RCL, he would receive 10 USD.gatehub through the rippling process that the market makers help to bridge.
- If you had a friend in Japan who only trusted JPY.MrRipple, sending him 10 USD.gatehub would bring out an option for him to receive 1115 JPY.MrRipple.
- This again is bridged by market-makers trading the pair USD.gatehub : JPY.MrRipple

To sum it up, you cannot receive an IOU that you do not have a trustline setup to. What the sender CAN see are the available routes and IOUs that you can receive (that you have existing trustlines with).

The written piece is by someone who is ignorant of how RCL works, and criticizes through his boneheadedness. This is a common trait of "bitcoiners" you see on Polo and elsewhere.

I am following the lead of banks who are testing and backing Ripple. Perhaps it will blow up on them, but that remains to be seen.

That idiot who replied to you didn't understand what MP wrote.

MP is stating that when I deposit $1000 in a bank and get IOU back (which I can trade a la the gold certificates of private banking in the 1800s), then I expect to be paid an interest rate and I expect that bank to make a statement as how many IOUs they will issue relative to reserves they have in the vault. Ripple does neither.

And MP also states correctly that Ripple places all those who receive IOUs from the same entity on equal footing, which the idiot who replied to you didn't seem to grasp. The reason this is bad, is because then I can't sue that issuer without a class action lawsuit. And large players can't negotiate for seniority in a default liquidation scenario.

In other words, Ripple has none of the features required for private banking to function correctly.

I would be happy if you posted my rebuttals there.

Perhaps banks think they will like Ripple because they can use it just as settlement layer and have their own side agreements on the aspects which Ripple doesn't enforce:

Fundamentally, Ripple has a much better chance of getting regulated and being brought to a major market, like NYSE or BATS, than bitcoin because it is more centralized. There is also a lot of banks around the world that are looking at ripple as a form of real-time gross settlement. To banks, a system like Ripple has a lot of advantages over bitcoin . Banks really aren't interested in "alternative money" like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies , they're interested in the underlying distributed ledger technology, and that is exactly what Ripple is. They WANT more control over the system, they don't want to give up control to miners who are securing the network based on the price of the currency, they like distributed ledgers because they can actually give banks more control over their back-end systems, bitcoin will probably never be used for this, and as such, Bitcoin and Ripple should be seen as completely different technologies. Some people like to say Ripple has no value because it is centralized, or because the fundamentals are so different from Bitcoin , but that is simply not the case. It is just valuable for different reasons and big Banks definitely see the value in Ripple, while they've been pretty cold towards Bitcoin . This sets the stage for Ripple to have a pretty massive long-term bull-run now that all the weak hands are out of the market and new money is flowing into cryptocurrency .

See also:

https://www.quora.com/Does-Ripple-have-a-chance-of-disrupting-the-banking-industry
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/40530/why-banks-are-trying-consensus-algorithms-like-ripple
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/22/banks-trial-ripple-blockchain-to-make-international-money-transfers-like-sending-an-imessage.html
https://ripple.com/insights/how-banks-use-ripple/


The problem for Ripple is what is the fungible unit of transfer? So banks are going to transfer XRP? Then how can they do fractional reserve banking because Ripple doesn't allow transferring XRP minted by a private bank, unlike Lightning Networks which is in theory could if users blindly trust the centralized hubs.

Ripple would only be useful for trades between banks on their mutual trust of their own USD.chase, EU.sandanter, etc..

I expect Ripple to collapse as the sovereign debt crisis goes into defaults probably next year.

So some soon to be non-existent banks like Ripple. Who cares.

[btcbug]

That idiot who replied to you didn't understand what MP wrote.

MP is stating that when I deposit $1000 in a bank and get IOU back (which I can trade a la the gold certificates of private banking in the 1800s), then I expect to be paid an interest rate and I expect that bank to make a statement as how many IOUs they will issue relative to reserves they have in the vault. Ripple does neither.

Well to be fair it seems this is more a criticism of banking in general, not Ripple. I'm not aware of Ripple claiming they'd reform banking practices. From my understanding they're simply designing a system that can allow banks to operate more efficiently.

And MP also states correctly that Ripple places all those who receive IOUs from the same entity on equal footing, which the idiot who replied to you didn't seem to grasp. The reason this is bad, is because then I can't sue that issuer without a class action lawsuit. And large players can't negotiate for seniority in a default liquidation scenario.

In other words, Ripple has none of the features required for private banking to function correctly.

I would be happy if you posted my rebuttals there.

I'll leave it at that. Unless you want to further discuss over there. I'm just taking it all into consideration and not looking to really go back and forth too much.

Perhaps banks think they will like Ripple because they can use it just as settlement layer and have their own side agreements on the aspects which Ripple doesn't enforce:

Fundamentally, Ripple has a much better chance of getting regulated and being brought to a major market, like NYSE or BATS, than bitcoin because it is more centralized. There is also a lot of banks around the world that are looking at ripple as a form of real-time gross settlement. To banks, a system like Ripple has a lot of advantages over bitcoin . Banks really aren't interested in "alternative money" like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies , they're interested in the underlying distributed ledger technology, and that is exactly what Ripple is. They WANT more control over the system, they don't want to give up control to miners who are securing the network based on the price of the currency, they like distributed ledgers because they can actually give banks more control over their back-end systems, bitcoin will probably never be used for this, and as such, Bitcoin and Ripple should be seen as completely different technologies. Some people like to say Ripple has no value because it is centralized, or because the fundamentals are so different from Bitcoin , but that is simply not the case. It is just valuable for different reasons and big Banks definitely see the value in Ripple, while they've been pretty cold towards Bitcoin . This sets the stage for Ripple to have a pretty massive long-term bull-run now that all the weak hands are out of the market and new money is flowing into cryptocurrency .

See also:

https://www.quora.com/Does-Ripple-have-a-chance-of-disrupting-the-banking-industry
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/40530/why-banks-are-trying-consensus-algorithms-like-ripple
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/22/banks-trial-ripple-blockchain-to-make-international-money-transfers-like-sending-an-imessage.html
https://ripple.com/insights/how-banks-use-ripple/

I'll do some further reading. thanks.

The problem for Ripple is what is the fungible unit of transfer? So banks are going to transfer XRP? Then how can they do fractional reserve banking because Ripple doesn't allow transferring XRP minted by a private bank, unlike Lightning Networks which is in theory could if users blindly trust the centralized hubs.

Ripple would only be useful for trades between banks on their mutual trust of their own USD.chase, EU.sandanter, etc..

I expect Ripple to collapse as the sovereign debt crisis goes into defaults probably next year.

So some soon to be non-existent banks like Ripple. Who cares.

Well, that was my point earlier. I don't see banks becoming non-existent "soon". Are you talking 5, 10 or 20 years when you say that?

[Lecter]

I expect Ripple to collapse as the sovereign debt crisis goes into defaults probably next year.

Can you elaborate on this, or point to where you have already elaborated on this?

What do you recommend people invest in outside of cryptocurrency right now?  Seems like you're stuck with real estate, equities or bonds at the moment.  I feel like there's far too much fiat chasing far too few correctly-priced investments.  What's your take?

[iamnotback]

This is bouncing up and down, but slowly moving upwards. It just exceeded 59% for the first time:

http://litecoinblockhalf.com/segwit.php

Nearly 60%:

345/576 (59.90%) blocks signaling in the past 24 hours!

60% threshold breached!

348/576 (60.42%) blocks signaling in the past 24 hours!

It's happening!

355/576 (61.63%) blocks signaling in the past 24 hours!

[iamnotback]

Well to be fair it seems this is more a criticism of banking in general, not Ripple. I'm not aware of Ripple claiming they'd reform banking practices. From my understanding they're simply designing a system that can allow banks to operate more efficiently.

How is not paying an interest on deposits and not having any central bank or self-reported regulation on reserves represent what banking ever was or is?

If banks will only use Ripple as a clearing mechanism between themselves then what great value does Ripple have?

Frankly I don't understand what the widespread use case is?

Banks have the problem of trusting solvency. I don't see how trusted gateways resolve anything. All Ripple does is record that a promise was made. It doesn't do anything to insure those promises are valid or even fungible. Banks can't trust the USD.banknamehere tokens of each of 100 other banks. That is why they use a central bank backed currency.

I don't see how Ripple improves on the current situation at all.

Ripple reminds me of dot.com bubble with all the build it and they will come nonsense.

Ripple has a coordination problem which even the Fed can't solve. This is why Bitcoin rules and Ripple is dogshit.

Well, that was my point earlier. I don't see banks becoming non-existent "soon". Are you talking 5, 10 or 20 years when you say that?

I expect that in 5 - 10 years from now the world financial and monetary system will be quite different.

I expect Ripple to collapse as the sovereign debt crisis goes into defaults probably next year.

Can you elaborate on this, or point to where you have already elaborated on this?

What do you recommend people invest in outside of cryptocurrency right now?  Seems like you're stuck with real estate, equities or bonds at the moment.  I feel like there's far too much fiat chasing far too few correctly-priced investments.  What's your take?

As for the timing on sovereign debt collapse, I defer to Martin Armstrong. He has a blog.

He thesis is the Eurozone will economically collapse first. This has been and will continue to drive the USD higher as capital seeks a safe haven from the economic (and political) collapse of the EU. So the go to investment since 2012 has been the USA stock market. He has also recommended AAA corporate bonds, since the crisis is in sovereign bonds.

Eventually the ingress of capital to the USD will peak and the US economy will choked by the collapse of Europe and hence the rest of the world. Then we will have a global collapse and a monetary reset. So look for the global economy to become really horrible 2019 - 2020. But 2018 should be start in earnest of the Minsky Moment collapse of the Eurozone.

His thesis is China and Asia will bottom 2020, while the West will continue to spiral down into the abyss for many years hence. By 2033, Singapore and Shanghai will have replaced London and New York as the financial capitals of the world.

We are headed into a tempest. I am not very enthused about any tangible assets because the governments are going to be forced to tax and sequester (i.e. confiscate) everything they can get their hands on. I think even gold has lost most of its utility in such a crisis.

On the more bizarre point of view I offer the following which perhaps you should not view entirely seriously right now...

My thesis is fungible money is dying along with the industrial age.

You could try to do business in Asia, but you will likely be at a disadvantage being a non-Chinese. Philippine born Chinese even control the government and economy here in the Philippines where I am.

I would try to have investments in knowledge age businesses if at all possible.

My desire is to launch a blockchain project that will make such investments more readily feasible for you with a fungible token as the base of such a system that drives massive knowledge trading activity. But at the moment, I am still undergoing treatment for whole body disseminated Tuberculosis (meaning that bacterium is/was every where in lymph nodes, digestive system, brain, etc). This treatment is toxic and not even sure to work if I have MDR-TB (which is more likely for me given my location and historical pattern of exposure). Thus at the moment I am not able to work (code/program, etc) at the level I am accustomed to be before I got ill. So at this time I am very frustrated and am not sure if I can complete my project effectively. There are new better cures coming from the http://TBalliance.org, but I think it is not possible for me to get access to those medicines until years hence, unless one of you readers has a connection and could help me? I'm 10 weeks into treatment and not totally convinced if I am improving or not. Very toxic to the liver. Very fatigued and cognitively fatigued.

[Okurkabinladin]

You only registered in 2016. It is quite easy to make money while bull trend lasts.

Check my signature. I (@AnonyMint) registered in March of 2013.

If you abided by your own advice during bear market, that is in 2013-15, you would go bankrupt. I should know, I did go bankrupt at that time.

I called correctly the decline from $600 to $150. Go check my history. I was also quite upset with my friend @rpietila at $700 for telling people to buy moar. I was flashing red alert signs when BTC crossed $1000. I did make one mistake expecting BTC to make another dive below $100 and so I missed the rise from $150 back to $300. Then I got back on board.

Okay, thank you for explanation and clearing that up. I am also upset that Rpietila somewhere along the way stopped being investor and became what could by only described as cheerleader, if not cult leader.

Good to see you back.

Subbed.

[mikenz]

dude thanks for elaborating all this. I researched a lot about those topics too for years now, but your summary is pretty plausible.

[iamnotback]

Info from an LTC miner:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1506064.msg18445912#msg18445912

[btcbug]

Rising fast... 9% to go!

380/576 (65.97%) blocks signaling in the past 24 hours!

I am looking forward to what the market does when this gets activated. Should be fun 

[york780]

Its time for ETC now guys.



Thank me later.

[btcbug]

Its time for ETC now guys.



Thank me later.

I've got a position in ETC, but I've been really debating on whether it has a chance against ETH. Perhaps I'll continue to hold and see what happens after the fund opened. Maybe it will get  a nice big pump and I can trade back into ETH if I think it's still the long term winner.

[york780]

Its time for ETC now guys.



Thank me later.

I've got a position in ETC, but I've been really debating on whether it has a chance against ETH. Perhaps I'll continue to hold and see what happens after the fund opened. Maybe it will get  a nice big pump and I can trade back into ETH if I think it's still the long term winner.

We dont know who the winner is yet. Ethereum Classic hadnt any serious inevestor like Ethereum backing it. Now its the FIRST altcoin fund ever backing it, grewscale investments the same who are backing bitcoin. This means more capital flowing into Ethereum Classic, what pushes this crypto to higher levels. We will see a significant rise. Also Ethereum Classic only has a max of 210 000 000 tokens while Ethereum has 900 000 000. The current ETH price :10 is the real price. ETC will make some nice movements in the upcoming weeks. ETC fund will start this saturday. Lets ride this beast guys.

[iamnotback]

Its time for ETC now guys.



Thank me later.

I've got a position in ETC, but I've been really debating on whether it has a chance against ETH. Perhaps I'll continue to hold and see what happens after the fund opened. Maybe it will get  a nice big pump and I can trade back into ETH if I think it's still the long term winner.

We dont know who the winner is yet. Ethereum Classic hadnt any serious inevestor like Ethereum backing it. Now its the FIRST altcoin fund ever backing it, grewscale investments the same who are backing bitcoin. This means more capital flowing into Ethereum Classic, what pushes this crypto to higher levels. We will see a significant rise. Also Ethereum Classic only has a max of 210 000 000 tokens while Ethereum has 900 000 000. The current ETH price :10 is the real price. ETC will make some nice movements in the upcoming weeks. ETC fund will start this saturday. Lets ride this beast guys.

Is ETC committed to remain PoW?

Thanks for the point about the future money supply. That would help explain the ratio in price.

[york780]

Its time for ETC now guys.



Thank me later.

I've got a position in ETC, but I've been really debating on whether it has a chance against ETH. Perhaps I'll continue to hold and see what happens after the fund opened. Maybe it will get  a nice big pump and I can trade back into ETH if I think it's still the long term winner.

We dont know who the winner is yet. Ethereum Classic hadnt any serious inevestor like Ethereum backing it. Now its the FIRST altcoin fund ever backing it, grewscale investments the same who are backing bitcoin. This means more capital flowing into Ethereum Classic, what pushes this crypto to higher levels. We will see a significant rise. Also Ethereum Classic only has a max of 210 000 000 tokens while Ethereum has 900 000 000. The current ETH price :10 is the real price. ETC will make some nice movements in the upcoming weeks. ETC fund will start this saturday. Lets ride this beast guys.

Is ETC committed to remain PoW?

Thanks for the point about the future money supply. That would help explain the ratio in price.

Lots of people dont know this yet, but I think that ETC will rise a lot this year. And by the way you were right about ltc. Pump seems to continue, but i still think that Litecoin wont be able to stay at a nice high level. I think that this is a temp. movement because of SegWit. But what after Bitcoin(what will take a while) gets SegWit? Litecoin is screwed right?

[iamnotback]

This is bouncing up and down, but slowly moving upwards. It just exceeded 59% for the first time:

http://litecoinblockhalf.com/segwit.php

Nearly 60%:

345/576 (59.90%) blocks signaling in the past 24 hours!

60% threshold breached!

348/576 (60.42%) blocks signaling in the past 24 hours!

It's happening!

355/576 (61.63%) blocks signaling in the past 24 hours!

392/576 (68.06%) blocks signaling in the past 24 hours!

I guess once we break above resistance at $9.50, then we rocket up again. Two attempts already. The 3rd should succeed.

[iamnotback]

Lots of people dont know this yet, but I think that ETC will rise a lot this year. And by the way you were right about ltc. Pump seems to continue, but i still think that Litecoin wont be able to stay at a nice high level. I think that this is a temp. movement because of SegWit. But what after Bitcoin(what will take a while) gets SegWit? Litecoin is screwed right?

Bitcoin will never get SegWit. <--- reading the linked thread, will provide insights into my perspective of the future of our world

Litecoin will be volatile. After the activation of SegWit, the long road to actual implementation of LN. Above $50, it might drop back to $30 or something like that. Note I haven't studied the chart and tried to predict the longer-term price action so those are just rough guesses from a helicopter view analysis. But overall notwithstanding high volatility, it will outperform Bitcoin until it reaches full valuation.

[york780]

Lots of people dont know this yet, but I think that ETC will rise a lot this year. And by the way you were right about ltc. Pump seems to continue, but i still think that Litecoin wont be able to stay at a nice high level. I think that this is a temp. movement because of SegWit. But what after Bitcoin(what will take a while) gets SegWit? Litecoin is screwed right?

Bitcoin will never get SegWit. <--- reading the linked thread, will provide insights into my perspective of the future of our world

Litecoin will be volatile. After the activation of SegWit, the long road to actual implementation of LN. Above $50, it might drop back to $30 or something like that. Note I haven't studied the chart and tried to predict the longer-term price action so those are just rough guesses from a helicopter view analysis. But overall notwithstanding high volatility, it will outperform Bitcoin until it reaches full valuation.

Yes i have seen that you had mentioned it. I am going to look furhter into it tomorrow. I also think that SegWit2mb is quite interesting. Combine BU and SegWit. Jihan Wu and the owner of Shapeshift are supporting it. I am going to do more research on this propossal as well.

[iamnotback]

I believe Jihan Wu is using any diversionary excuse he can to make sure SegWit isn't activated any where, including Litecoin.

In other words, I think he tries to create political division, so that no protocol modifications can happen. He pretends is for things, but this is just diversionary IMO.

He wants to maximize the fees they can gouge from the power brokers of Bitcoin and/or he is a power broker. The link I provided explains the math of the game theory involved that is driving the stalemate.

They seem to have become more aggressive in past day or two on proposals, because they probably want to try to pull support away from Litecoin's attempt to activate SegWit. Erik of ShapeShift may just be a pawn, or he may be aware of and part of the manipulations. I haven't tried to dig on that aspect.

But we'll see how it turns out...