Ripple SCAM: You *do not* own BTC or USD, you own debt that will collapse

[misterbigg]

OP: Is it really necessary to start the same thread over and over again?

Ripple SCAM: You *do not* own BTC or USD, you own debt that will collapse

Ripple Scam: Centralized, Centrally Issued, Bribes exchanges, Closed Source, Tax

Report Ripple & ScamCoin Inc to FTC for False Advertising

OpenCoin Inc Will Debase Ripples For Wealth Transfer To Themselves

Why Ripple is a bad idea.

[ymer]

OP: Is it really necessary to start the same thread over and over again?

Ripple SCAM: You *do not* own BTC or USD, you own debt that will collapse

Ripple Scam: Centralized, Centrally Issued, Bribes exchanges, Closed Source, Tax

Report Ripple & ScamCoin Inc to FTC for False Advertising

OpenCoin Inc Will Debase Ripples For Wealth Transfer To Themselves

Why Ripple is a bad idea.

I think it is, I'm a new member and just stumbled into this thread, I think awareness should be raised for a potential enormous scam

[misterbigg]

So what sort of regulations must a ripple gateway have compared to a legal bank in a country? None. Case closed.

Like I said people can invent their earnings and con people with no problem. In Bitcoin I can't con you that I have 20 million Bitcoins, it's easy to confirm. In Ripple I can save I have 20 billion USD and some people may believe me as there is no way to confirm it. If people think Bitcoin scams are a problem Ripple is going to magnify them 100x.

Every gateway will be governed by different regulatory policies. MtGox has to follow AML/KYC rules. A gateway operating in a rogue country might not have to follow any rules. But think about this - if a bank becomes a gateway, it would have to follow the banking rules of the country. This means you could have a checking account which is FDIC insured, which is also Ripple-enabled. It would add functionality to something you are already used to using (a checking account at a bank).

As is stated in the wiki, you absolutely must be aware of the risks when extending trust to a gateway. If you don't like that a gateway is not governed by strict regulations, don't extend trust to it.

[mmeijeri]

The OP should stop bad-mouthing Ripple. He either doesn't understand it, or he is simply scare-mongering, perhaps falsely worried that his stash of BTC will become worthless. Ripple will be great for Bitcoin, but XRP will also be a competitor. Great, because competition is good. And the IOU system is actually what allows a liquid market for exchanging between crypto and real currencies to exist even in the face of government repression. If everyone is paid in fiat and needs to make payments in fiat but wants to store value in crypto, then their social network will provide a mechanism for turning wages into crypto and crypto into fiat when needed.

To the OP and other posters critical of Ripple: please do you homework first before you start throwing around insults and accusations.

[Minor Miner]

I think the whole theory behind it is silly.   It is pointless.   I think we should focus on making BTC mainstream and not waste time on things that seem similar to ponzis.

[misterbigg]

I think the whole theory behind it is silly.   It is pointless.   I think we should focus on making BTC mainstream and not waste time on things that seem similar to ponzis.

Ripple makes Bitcoins more valuable since it creates a distributed Bitcoin exchange and solves the "MtGox problem." Or were you not aware?

[ymer]

I think the whole theory behind it is silly.   It is pointless.   I think we should focus on making BTC mainstream and not waste time on things that seem similar to ponzis.

Ripple makes Bitcoins more valuable since it creates a distributed Bitcoin exchange and solves the "MtGox problem." Or were you not aware?

I'm failing to grasp the whole idea, is there a thread that explains in detail how ripple works? the official ripple site is very vague on the explanation

[Minor Miner]

I think the whole theory behind it is silly.   It is pointless.   I think we should focus on making BTC mainstream and not waste time on things that seem similar to ponzis.

Ripple makes Bitcoins more valuable since it creates a distributed Bitcoin exchange and solves the "MtGox problem." Or were you not aware?

No I read your posts and I do not believe it is a good solution.   The "mt gox" problem is NOT a problem.   Mt Gox is a band aid.   As soon as bitcoin becomes more prevalent, an exchange will list it and you will have real adults trading it and real time feeds from even yahoo to keep your exchange rates correct.   I have no need of ripple.    To me, it is a liability, not an asset to the future of bitcoin.

[paraipan]

• It's closed source

For good and obvious reasons until their out of beta and stable.

and what are they trying to accomplish by doing that? security through obscurity? bitcoin is still beta, but it's open source as well.

No, they want a monopoly on it and if they release the source than people will fork it and make it better.  They want to retain control.  If this prospect sits uneasy with you, it should.

There is no other reason for them to keep it closed source right now.  They paid good money for it, and they want to make money off of it, and if it's forked, their little plan of eventually selling 20 billion XRP that they kept for themselves is in trouble.  Ripple is a get-rich-quick scheme for the creators.  It should be obvious at this point.

Imagine what people would be saying if satoshi premined 1 mil BTC before he released the client.  This is the situation that Ripple is in, and this is why Ripple is clearly a scam.


If you like the idea of Ripple, then please, create your own version if it.  It obviously has utility.  But don't use this corporate crap.  We need a community effort, not a bunch of business people trying to make a quick buck.

I agree. The fact these guys have centralized it and created so much currency for themselves screams of get rich quick. Not to mention a digital currency system based around human trust in tenuous at best.

+1 I was thinking the same thing.

[misterbigg]

I much prefer the structure on the left. Proprietary software is almost always better than open source software. Of course, there are a couple of exceptions like Linux, or Apache. But for the most part, when I think of open source I think of clunky, shitty interfaces that are hard to use and of course forget about customer service. GIMP is a prime example.

A commercial entity needs its customers in order to survive so they have to be more attentive. There are deadlines, schedules, and milestones for development. Again, I'm not saying that open source is necessarily always bad but look at what we have with Bitcoin. Primadonna developers who work on whatever they want, with no particular deadline. We don't even have an "official" client and it's been over 4 years. If users demand a feature the answer is "it's open source, write it yourself."

One of Ripple's strengths is that it is being developed by a for-profit company. They have a real CEO who is making deals to bring established institutions online as gateways, they have a budget for marketing and promotion, and unlike Bitcoin they write the specs BEFORE writing the code (see the Ripple wiki). OpenCoin has a financial incentive to make sure that the rippled software is robust, bug-free, well documented, and of course open source. They have a financial incentive to create milestones and stick to deadlines. They are accountable to their investors, who only get paid of the software succeeds.

Think about it - if Ripple is so obviously a scam, how will the people who have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions, and decades of man-years worth of development time, ever recover their investment? Maybe, just maybe, there are a lot of smart people who have been putting this system together and it will deliver as promised. The alternative is to believe that these intelligent people have just been wasting their time on a dead-end scam project and that mr. anonymous forum trolls like TradeFortress has some special insight as to why all their work is worthless. Guess which one I believe.

[Minor Miner]

Misterbigg;
what is your stake in ripple?   You said it was nothing but you spend a LOT of time defending and promoting it.   I will be blunt, this is one of the reason I do not like it.   Because of the Inaba (oops, now I am BFL_Josh) constant promoting.   
With the full court press, you all are giving this right now, it really reminds me of MLM (which to me is very similar to ponzi).    You seem very intelligent but you interest in this is not just a passive defense, you post constantly about it, why?

[misterbigg]

what is your stake in ripple?   You said it was nothing but you spend a LOT of time defending and promoting it.   I will be blunt, this is one of the reason I do not like it.   Because of the Inaba (oops, now I am BFL_Josh) constant promoting.  
With the full court press, you all are giving this right now, it really reminds me of MLM (which to me is very similar to ponzi).    You seem very intelligent but you interest in this is not just a passive defense, you post constantly about it, why?

I hold Bitcoins and XRPs. But more importantly, Ripple is the only clear path that will play nice with the banking system and let me conveniently live my life while storing my wealth in uninflatable cryptocurrency. The design of Ripple is well thought out and solves several problems with Bitcoin. I'm not saying that Ripple will immediately become a replacement for Bitcoin, rather it complements Bitcoin. Ultimately it is beneficial to everyone. Except perhaps entities with illicit control over the financial system.

I don't see how my posts remind you of multi-level marketing. Have I told anyone to buy XRPs? No. In fact, you can use and benefit from Ripple without investing in XRPs at all, a fact that I have stated a few times. A "full court press" is not even possible, because Ripple hasn't officially opened its doors to the public. The server code is certainly not currently open source. I don't expect anyone to jump on board full bore until they release the sources, which is in their best interests to do so this year.

Much like other people I was very much opposed to the whole Ripple concept, specifically because of what is the pre-mined currency but also for other reasons stated. You can see these old posts here:

Ripple: Disproportionate enrichment of the founders of the system?

Ripple SOUNDS nice but there are some MAJOR problems

Ripple: Why XRPs are superior to Bitcoins

Despite these misgivings I continued to explore and learn more. Finally I realized the enormous benefits and functionality that the Ripple system will provide. The progression of emotion I went through will be similar for everyone (although perhaps on a larger time scale):

1. Denial: "This Ripple system is useless, and its not open source."
2. Anger: "Ripple is a scam, they pre-mined all the coins!"
3. Acceptance: "Ripple is useful, and the founders will be rich."
4. Profit: "Ripple will benefit me."

Right now people are stuck in stage #1 and #2. But as Ripple catches on and people realize how powerful it is, they will move to acceptance. And finally profit. Note that all Bitcoin users will eventually benefit from Ripple because the first thing that Ripple will do is create "profoundly liquid" markets for Bitcoins. Imagine being able to deposit your money at Bitstamp, but have access to the order books of all exchanges simultaneously. And no possibility of a denial of service attack. That's just the beginning of what Ripple can do.

How about opening a Ripple-enabled bank account, keep your balance in Bitcoins and when you use your debit card the Bitcoins are automatically sold at market to pay for your purchase at incredibly low fees, and your bank account is FDIC insured against loss? Yes please.

The problem that most Bitcoiners have with Ripple is largely emotional. They are upset that these guys gave themselves all the money. Which is actually a valid point. Money is such a sensitive, intimate subject that to think that these people will get rich because they control the money supply is anathematic to the principles which make Bitcoin so attractive. However, if you put the emotion aside and analyze Ripple on its technical merits and what it can do for people then it seems pretty clear if they deliver on the promises it will be a revolution in every way as significant as Bitcoin itself. In this light, I have to wonder if maybe OpenCoin deserves to be enriched for creating the first functional competitor to the traditional financial system?

While I initially found it distasteful that they desire to profit by selling all the money they started with, after seeing the problems with the economic structure of Bitcoin development (donation driven) I think that having a for-profit commercial entity whose financial interests are in seeing Ripple succeed and seeing the XRP currency appreciate is better than the profit-less model of Bitcoin. OpenCoin has money for marketing, developing videos, hiring lots of smart people, maintaining an office, having a real CEO, being able to attract investment capital, etc... They even bought out the company "simplehoney" and added its mobile developers to their ranks. Compare this with Bitcoin...

[mr_random]

Misterbigg;
what is your stake in ripple?   You said it was nothing but you spend a LOT of time defending and promoting it.   I will be blunt, this is one of the reason I do not like it.   Because of the Inaba (oops, now I am BFL_Josh) constant promoting.   
With the full court press, you all are giving this right now, it really reminds me of MLM (which to me is very similar to ponzi).    You seem very intelligent but you interest in this is not just a passive defense, you post constantly about it, why?

Yeah I'm not only one then who has noticed this. I asked him yesterday if he was affiliated with Ripple and he said he had 'no official connection to Ripple'.

I'm actually quite suspicious there are some Ripple shills on this forum. The guy who quoted my post in this topic to defend it for example, every single one of his posts is about Ripple and some of them are like freaking essays. I also noticed there was no mention of Ripple on this subforum for ages, it was dead, then out of nowhere this week I saw 3 different topics on the front page all created by new-ish accounts (march or so).

[misterbigg]

Yeah I'm not only one then who has noticed this. I asked him yesterday if he was affiliated with Ripple and he said he had 'no official connection to Ripple'.

I'm actually quite suspicious there are some Ripple shills on this forum. The guy who quoted my post in this topic to defend it for example, every single one of his posts is about Ripple and some of them are like freaking essays. I also noticed there was no mention of Ripple on this subforum for ages, it was dead, then out of nowhere this week I saw 3 different topics on the front page all created by new-ish accounts (march or so).

Like I said I have no official connection to Ripple. I hold Bitcoins and XRPs. That's it!

If you're really familiar with the forums you will of course notice that I have been very active posting on a variety of topics. Nothing really exciting is happening in Bitcoinlandia. There was the SatoshiDICE spam / economically unspendable output stuff but that's blown over. In my opinion Ripple is the next big thing, so this is why I am active in any thread that mentions Ripple.

I will almost always respond in any Ripple thread where I can provide insights and facts based on the information that I have collected. You can see some of my earlier posts where I collected a lot of information. As I said before I shared all of the misgivings given by the OP. You can see that in the older posts. Unlike the trolls / naysayers I stuck with it and kept digging to find out if those fears were unfounded. It still sucks that they gave themselves all the money but that's life. Ripple will be big regardless.

[mr_random]

Like I said I have no official connection to Ripple. I hold Bitcoins and XRPs. That's it!

If you're really familiar with the forums you will of course notice that I have been very active posting on a variety of topics. Nothing really exciting is happening in Bitcoinlandia. There was the SatoshiDICE spam / economically unspendable output stuff but that's blown over. In my opinion Ripple is the next big thing, so this is why I am active in any thread that mentions Ripple.

I will almost always respond in any Ripple thread where I can provide insights and facts based on the information that I have collected. You can see some of my earlier posts where I collected a lot of information. As I said before I shared all of the misgivings given by the OP. You can see that in the older posts. Unlike the trolls / naysayers I stuck with it and kept digging to find out if those fears were unfounded. It still sucks that they gave themselves all the money but that's life. Ripple will be big regardless.

I still stand by my previous posts on the matter. I also think you are underestimating how much the Foundation owning 80 billion XRP has smeared the reputation of the project. I've read that in every single Ripple topic I have opened up on this forum. Don't get me wrong I am all for developers monetising their work and being rewarded for their innovations but that is too greedy for me and a lot of other people.

[Minor Miner]

I think you do understand my point on why this is like a MLM scam coming out of Utah, because it has way too many similarities to them.   And, they always end up well for the "founders", the early bandwagoners and not so good for the foot soldiers.

[misterbigg]

I also think you are underestimating how much the Foundation owning 80 billion XRP has smeared the reputation of the project. I've read that in every single Ripple topic I have opened up on this forum. Don't get me wrong I am all for developers monetising their work and being rewarded for their innovations but that is too greedy for me and a lot of other people.

Not sure what you mean about smearing the reputation. Are you talking about how they co-opted the original ripple-pay system? Where are these threads (I'm very interested in reading them).

I think you do understand my point on why this is like a MLM scam coming out of Utah, because it has way too many similarities to them.   And, they always end up well for the "founders", the early bandwagoners and not so good for the foot soldiers.

Which part is the MLM scam, the XRP currency or the Ripple system? You can use the Ripple system without using the XRP currency, so I don't see how the Ripple system is a scam. As far as the XRP currency goes, besides the initial distribution how are XRPs different than Bitcoins?

[Minor Miner]

Which part is the MLM scam, the XRP currency or the Ripple system? You can use the Ripple system without using the XRP currency, so I don't see how the Ripple system is a scam. As far as the XRP currency goes, besides the initial distribution how are XRPs different than Bitcoins?

besides the initial distribution....   Right there.   XRP. 

[chriswen]

I support ripple too.

I actually don't hoard XRP.  It's a bad idea.  It's not meant to be a deflationary coin like bitcoin.  Ripple is an awesome platform and has enormous utility.

[Shad3dOne]

"Ripple SCAM: You *do not* own BTC or USD, you own debt that will collapse"

..well someone doesnt like Ripple.

Are you spreading trueths again?