Don't trust ripple! It's a get rich quick scheme for the creators.

[mmeijeri]

Yep - I agree. Too many people focus on xrp

Yeah. I suspect that's because some people fear it will thwart their own plans to strike it rich with BTC they amassed back when mining was still easy. I'm not so sure the competition with XRP will in fact outweigh the synergy from the Ripple exchange system, but perhaps they are. Personally, I think the odds of at least one of the two currencies, and quite possibly both, being successful will be greatly improved by the advent of the Ripple trading system.

[glitch003]

- Closed source
- Created by a profit driven entity
- Centralised
- Still unclear, ambiguous and complicated
- Creators have given themselves 80% of the money supply just because they felt like it. No specific announcements what's going to happen to these 80 billion XRP other than some vague mumblings about giving some more away
- A multitude of suspicious accounts on this forum that are extremely 'pro-Ripple' and were created after Ripple started their XRP giveaway

They've actually given themselves 100% of the money supply since there is no mining.  Of the 100 billion XRP total, 20 billion (!) are kept by the founders, forever, with no strings attached.  The other 80 billion are to be "distributed" by OpenCoin Incorporated as they see fit.  So basically, they will give it to their friends, people they like, projects they find useful, and also plenty of random people like in the Ripple Giveaway thread here on bitcointalk.org.



I just want to be clear about something.  I'm not saying the idea of Ripple is bad, I'm saying that the XRP currency part of it is a scam.  What is the purpose of XRP?  It's for "anti-spam" but why wouldn't they just use captchas for anti-spam like every other major website on the internet?  They could also use the proof-of-work algorithm for anti-spam purposes, where everyone's computer has to generate a token which takes computing power and makes creating many tokens very costly. 

The original purpose of the HashCash algorithm was to prevent spam and abuses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-work_system  Why create a whole new currency when you could just use scrypt with a sufficient difficulty or Hashcash with a sufficient difficulty? 



The only reason to create XRP, a premined coin, is to get rich quickly.  That is why it's a scam. 

[pekv2]

I was wondering what ripple was till I read the OP. Closed source aye? pff, fuck that. No wonder I stayed away from it just by the name of it and how many people were advertising it, people making accounts or taking accounts out of hibernation for ripple. Bitcoin & Litecoin.

[Terpie]

Well, I'd say it's a good reason not to hold large amounts of XRP or IOUs for now, not an argument against using Ripple as an exchange between BTC and fiat currencies, or as a mechanism to make fiat payments through your trust network.

Yep, that's exactly right. In your wallet you can set the trust lines to whatever you think is appropriate. If you just want to fool around you could extend trust to Bitstamp only for small amounts like $120 in USD or 1 BTC. You don't have to buy XRP to use the other features of Ripple.

So XRP sucks... but we can use the other features, which are effectively a shitty version of Paypal? Gateway trust accounts are centrally-controlled single-point of failures where you can claim your assets out of the Ripple system, right? I just don't see any reason to start using Ripple until it is open-sourced.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

It gets even worse. Say you trust MtGox for 50k (you have 50k balance in "USD [tiny print: mtgox IOUs, not actual dollars]"), and you trust MyExchange for 10k. You have 0k balance in MyExchange IOUs.

You wake up one day and see MyExchange's owner ran. No worries, right, you had no exposure to MyExchange, right?

5 minutes earlier, you acted as a "liquidity provider", and exchanged 10k of MtGox USD IOUs for MyExchange USD IOUs. For no fee. With zero indication. And the owner of MyEx now has your Gox IOUs.

[mmeijeri]

So XRP sucks...

I wouldn't say it sucks, I have high hopes for it, but it all depends on whether OpenCoin releases the source code and manages the process of distributing XRP well. It would seem to be in their interest to do so, but only time wil tell.

but we can use the other features, which are effectively a shitty version of Paypal?

Not 'shitty' at all. You don't even have to use gateways at all if you are willing to rely on your trust graph. Settlement could be done purely in BTC and cash if that's what you wanted. And even if you do use a gateway, you don't have to settle every transaction.

Gateway trust accounts are centrally-controlled single-point of failures where you can claim your assets out of the Ripple system, right? I just don't see any reason to start using Ripple until it is open-sourced.

Gateways are professional issuers of IOUs, but anyone can act as an ad-hoc issuer with their friends. It extends the reach of anonymous cash transactions.

[markm]

It gets even worse. Say you trust MtGox for 50k (you have 50k balance in "USD [tiny print: mtgox IOUs, not actual dollars]"), and you trust MyExchange for 10k. You have 0k balance in MyExchange IOUs.

You wake up one day and see MyExchange's owner ran. No worries, right, you had no exposure to MyExchange, right?

5 minutes earlier, you acted as a "liquidity provider", and exchanged 10k of MtGox USD IOUs for MyExchange USD IOUs. For no fee. With zero indication. And the owner of MyEx now has your Gox IOUs.

If you trust someone with 10k and they run off with it maybe you just misplaced your trust or put too high a number on it?

What for were you trusting them that much anyway if you have none of their IOUs? Presumably you hoped to act as liquidity provider and had set up in such a way you would get some kind of fee or something? Otherwise why the heck all that trust in the first place?

-MarkM-

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

It gets even worse. Say you trust MtGox for 50k (you have 50k balance in "USD [tiny print: mtgox IOUs, not actual dollars]"), and you trust MyExchange for 10k. You have 0k balance in MyExchange IOUs.

You wake up one day and see MyExchange's owner ran. No worries, right, you had no exposure to MyExchange, right?

5 minutes earlier, you acted as a "liquidity provider", and exchanged 10k of MtGox USD IOUs for MyExchange USD IOUs. For no fee. With zero indication. And the owner of MyEx now has your Gox IOUs.

If you trust someone with 10k and they run off with it maybe you just misplaced your trust or put too high a number on it?

What for were you trusting them that much anyway if you have none of their IOUs? Presumably you hoped to act as liquidity provider and had set up in such a way you would get some kind of fee or something? Otherwise why the heck all that trust in the first place?

-MarkM-

You don't have to be the person making this stupid mistake. If anyone in your trust network does (and that can extend to infinity), and you have a chain where defaults occur because of this, then you're affected.

[nyusternie]

after a few weeks working with the open-source client, i really like the fundamentals of the ripple protocol and support the hard-work and continued efforts made by the dev team. but i don't think that is what is being argued in this discussion. in regards to this being a scam, ever since i was informed of this 100b pre-mine, i've kept ripple at an arms distance.

my opinion as to what is most likely to happen is:
1. the developers will keep the source closed until they feel they've profited sufficiently from xrp->btc trades
2. the source will be open-sourced
3. the source will be forked
4. x amount of NEW xrp (or some other 3-letter combo) will be re-distributed wholly & fairly based on some agreed community consensus
5. everyone will be happy

opencoin and the ripple devs are not fools and know damn well that the moment they go open-source there will be a community fork and they will lose everything.

btw - last time i checked xrp were trading at ~1,000 xrp per $1usd, which currently values ripple at ~100 million usd. imo 5% between all parties would have been reasonable & fair and avoided this whole scam issue

[Terpie]

btw - last time i checked xrp were trading at ~1,000 xrp per $1usd, which currently values ripple at ~100 million usd. imo 5% between all parties would have been reasonable & fair and avoided this whole scam issue

It's not quite accurate to use the 100 billion total amount in your market cap calculation, since 99% are essentially in cold storage. It would be similar to using the total BTC (21MM) in a calculation on today's market cap. I think they said they've released over 100M, so even if you give them the benefit of the doubt and claim 1 Billion are in circulation, then that gives a market cap of $1MM. That number makes way more sense since they just took angel funding from a VC.

edit: you're right, though. If they had some fair distribution algo for XRP and only reserved like 5% for themselves, I doubt they would have gotten anywhere near this much push back. Unfortunately, as it stands now, they have reserved 100% for themselves and 'promised' to distribute 50% according to their own whims. I know how much that promise will be worth if they see success prior to complete distribution.

[mr_random]

Don't forget, people who aren't clued up on this Ripple scam are actually spending their hard earned BTC on these XRP, unaware that billions more are going to be dumped onto the market, lowering the price of XRP further. This has already started to happen.

What's the point in buying XRP when so many of the XRP are being held back and aren't in the money supply yet.

[nyusternie]

It's not quite accurate to use the 100 billion total amount in your market cap calculation, since 99% are essentially in cold storage. It would be similar to using the total BTC (21MM) in a calculation on today's market cap. I think they said they've released over 100M, so even if you give them the benefit of the doubt and claim 1 Billion are in circulation, then that gives a market cap of $1MM. That number makes way more sense since they just took angel funding from a VC.

you are right. and i did consider that, however, its still not the same as btc that atm cannot be produced any faster than 25btc every 10min or so. if xrp become very valuable tomorrow, opencoin has no limits on how wide they can open those flood gates.

its cynical yes (and i try not to be), but unless proven otherwise i believe there is a systematic process going on as we speak to make the conversion from xrp->btc. i don't see any other "realistic" means of opencoin et al recouping their investment.

i'll also go on record as stating that their goto excuse rationale that open-sourcing now would lead to hard-forks is technically true, but utterly ridiculous (see every other successful p2p project) -- stick a "currently in alpha" tag on it and keep it movin'

regardless, i really look forward to using ripple, in whatever form it exists, after the unveiling and all the dust has settled

@opencoin et al please view this as constructive criticism from a supporter

[Luckybit]

Ripple is a get rich quick scheme for it's founders.

No one goes into business hoping to get poor      

But seriously, let's set aside emotion for just one moment. If Ripple delivers on all its promises and becomes the world-wide payment system that frees individuals from the traditional financial system, is it so bad that the founders get enriched?

If you truly do believe that everyone is going to use Ripple and that XRPs are going to skyrocket in value, nothing is stopping you from participating - you can buy XRP in bulk right now from Bitstamp (that's what I've done). Seems pretty fair to me.

It's how they would be getting rich not if.

[flound1129]

So the consensus is that investing in xrp is a bad idea - then don't.
It has nothing to do with using ripple - you just need 300xrp to make hundreds of thousands of transactions in whatever currency you choose, including bitcoin. You just need to trust the gateway you use.
xrp is a bad investment by design. you only need a trivial amount of xrp to use ripple.
You don't need to invest in xrp to use ripple.

This doesn't change the fact that Ripple is nothing more than a vehicle to make the founders millions of dollars.

How? xrp are clearly worthless, so how will they become millionaires?

XRP are worthless, yet the stated purpose of them is as an anti-spam measure.  For them to work as an anti-spam measure, by definition, they must have value.  So which is it?  Are they worthless or are they an anti-spam measure?

Give me your ripple address and I'll send 300 for free - enough for a lifetime of use. It's a waste of my time but worth it to make a point.

If you have enough XRP that you can give away 300 just to prove a point, seems like you would stand to make quite a bit if XRP succeeds.