http://ripplescam.org/

[drawingthesun]

A question I have asked many times, but never answered is how many ripples have the core team sold for Bitcoin??

http://riptalk.org/index.php?topic=36.0

This is not that convincing, what product have they delivered to the world?

I am not presenting a "infantile" argument. Satoshi delivered far more to this world than ripple ever will, yet he did not pre-mine one coin and is still a multi-millionaire.

Claiming that my assertion is "infantile" is a defensive move. Why not just get a answer? The network only exists in one closed place, there is no openness about the network, and the only reason ripples have value is because they gave them away in such small denominations to create artificial demand where the supply is insanely large in comparison.

Now for something I might easily be wrong about: I assume Alex Zee and Red hold far more XRP than the 50,000 XRP given out for free. Am I wrong?

[drawingthesun]

Open source the network already.

That's another thing I don't understand. Why are you so anxious for them to open the source ASAP?

They opened most of it and gave damn good reasons not to open the server yet. So what's your hurry?

Now I may be wrong again, but the reason I think they have not opened the network is that they want to sell as much Ripple as possible before the system goes live out to the world. That's my conspiracy.

Also Satoshi set his creation free after discussion, but its not like he started mining first

[nyusternie]

Hey its all good i'm just raising awareness.

All I know is that the founder of Gox is behind ripple and that the ripple company is backed by venture capital. They seem like shady people that have made no effort to open source the entire network. They conveniently release ripples and allow for a exchange of ripples for Bitcoin even before their network is up and ready.

Also they have stated they intend to fund their company and development by selling their stash of ripples (XRP), so in that way it is a store of value.

Just smells bad.

Gox is shady and so is ripple, let them prove that they are not.

Open source the network already.

http://tcrn.ch/YNGjfi
just discovered the vc angle a couple days ago, which does lead me to believe that they are very motivated by PROFITS.
any good vc will require a guaranteed exit to recover their investment.
how can opencoin guarantee roi to their investors AFTER the source is released (and potentially forked into something incompatible w/ XRP).
if they can lay out a business model that allows for sufficient profit as well as an open sourced server, i'd LOVE to hear about it.

some transparency into their end-game would do a great deal in calming the skeptics

[Red]

All I know is that the founder of Gox is behind ripple and that the ripple company is backed by venture capital.

The founder of Gox was previously the founder of eDonkey2000. Hey's paid his dues in P2P systems.

They conveniently release ripples and allow for a exchange of ripples for Bitcoin even before their network is up and ready.

You can't use Ripple to do anything without having ripples in your account. That is exactly the same as with BitCoin. There is no place convenient to buy Ripples yet, so they give some out free.

Also they have stated they intend to fund their company and development by selling their stash of ripples (XRP), so in that way it is a store of value.

They don't want to sell Ripples to YOU. They want to sell Ripples to Amazon.com in exchange for them benefitting from instant free payments from you in Dollars, Euros, etc.

Just smells bad.

Gox is shady and so is ripple, let them prove that they are not.

Open source the network already.

I can send you some Ripples and maybe you can Buy a Clue.

[Alex Zee]

I am not presenting a "infantile" argument. Satoshi delivered far more to this world than ripple ever will, yet he did not pre-mine one coin and is still a multi-millionaire.

Oh my god, I don't even know where to start... Would you mind educating yourself first about the issues you are trying to "debate"?

How is sitting alone in his basement, mining coins with difficulty 1 is not pre-mining?

And existing (and working) Ripple network, on which at least a year of thinking and coding has been spent, is of course "nothing". Ungrateful bastards, want our BTCs for nothing. Well, don't buy the ripples then.

Now for something I might easily be wrong about: I assume Alex Zee and Red hold far more XRP than the 50,000 XRP given out for free. Am I wrong?

Oh, yeah, my 17 385 ripples (rfN2xpxWZcSsbeEL13m1hKFGDzp82o14gS - that's one thing good about Ripple - complete transparency) is sure a hell of a buy-off.  It's about what, the whole 77 bucks.

Now excuse me, gentlemen, I am going to go buy myself a yacht.

[drawingthesun]

I am not presenting a "infantile" argument. Satoshi delivered far more to this world than ripple ever will, yet he did not pre-mine one coin and is still a multi-millionaire.

Oh my god, I don't even know where to start... Would you mind educating yourself first about the issues you are trying to "debate"?

How is sitting alone in his basement, mining coins with difficulty 1 is not pre-mining?

And existing (and working) Ripple network, on which at least a year of thinking and coding has been spent, is of course "nothing". Ungrateful bastards, want our BTCs for nothing. Well, don't buy the ripples then.

Now for something I might easily be wrong about: I assume Alex Zee and Red hold far more XRP than the 50,000 XRP given out for free. Am I wrong?

Oh, yeah, my 17 385 ripples (rfN2xpxWZcSsbeEL13m1hKFGDzp82o14gS - that's one thing good about Ripple - complete transparency) is sure a hell of a buy-off.  It's about what, the whole 77 bucks.

Now excuse me, gentlemen, I am going to go buy myself a yacht.

Haha, like I said I was probably going to be wrong about you and Red holding a lot of ripples, I just can't fathom why you protect it so much.

Satoshi gave a lot of people in the crypto community a chance to join in, and he had to continue mining when no one else was otherwise the network would have died.

As far as I can see the only way for the ripple team is to simply sell ripples for Bitcoins to the people that want to use the network. But 50,000 ripples for 1 Bitcoin is way to steep, when 1 developer alone holds a billion of them.

BTW, if you buy that yacht and ever sail by Perth, I'll invite you out for coffee.

[Red]

Now for something I might easily be wrong about: I assume Alex Zee and Red hold far more XRP than the 50,000 XRP given out for free. Am I wrong?

Laughing My Ass OFF! I was begging for XRP on this day before yesterday! That's when I learned about Ripple!

I have 20554.9999 XRP

555 from a Ripple founder, because I asked him nicely. I was impatient.
My free 20000 from the free XRP post came a day later.

[drawingthesun]

All I know is that the founder of Gox is behind ripple and that the ripple company is backed by venture capital.

The founder of Gox was previously the founder of eDonkey2000. Hey's paid his dues in P2P systems.

Many people into P2P are sell outs, look at Sean Parker.

Also a lot of people believe Gox is rigging the Bitcoin market.

They conveniently release ripples and allow for a exchange of ripples for Bitcoin even before their network is up and ready.

You can't use Ripple to do anything without having ripples in your account. That is exactly the same as with BitCoin. There is no place convenient to buy Ripples yet, so they give some out free.

The main use of the ripple network is to sell your Bitcoins for ripples. Its a conflict of interest as the stash of pre-mind ripples is so large. The quicker the ripple system is legitimately used the better.

Also they have stated they intend to fund their company and development by selling their stash of ripples (XRP), so in that way it is a store of value.

They don't want to sell Ripples to YOU. They want to sell Ripples to Amazon.com in exchange for them benefitting from instant free payments from you in Dollars, Euros, etc.

I have never heard this, if this is true then that's really awesome. I certainly see it as less of a scam if this is true.

Just smells bad.

Gox is shady and so is ripple, let them prove that they are not.

Open source the network already.

I can send you some Ripples and maybe you can Buy a Clue.

I already have my free stash of ripples. The quicker I can use them for a real purpose the better!

[drawingthesun]

Now for something I might easily be wrong about: I assume Alex Zee and Red hold far more XRP than the 50,000 XRP given out for free. Am I wrong?

Laughing My Ass OFF! I was begging for XRP on this day before yesterday! That's when I learned about Ripple!

I have 20554.9999 XRP

555 from a Ripple founder, because I asked him nicely. I was impatient.
My free 20000 from the free XRP post came a day later.

Haha this is actually funny, I said I was probably wrong, I really wanna know which guy is holding a billion XRP though, so I keep trying to find out.

[JoelKatz]

any good vc will require a guaranteed exit to recover their investment.

No, that would be an idiot who would miss out on every opportunity that wasn't safe. Nobody had any idea how Facebook would make any money. Nobody had any idea how Twitter would make any money. I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that you've never talked to an actual VC person. If you have, they were crappy. We're talking about the people who are looking for the next PayPal because they *built* PayPal.

how can opencoin guarantee roi to their investors AFTER the source is released (and potentially forked into something incompatible w/ XRP).
if they can lay out a business model that allows for sufficient profit as well as an open sourced server, i'd LOVE to hear about it.

We're swinging for the fences. A long shot. A possible home run but also possibly a strike out. We're trying to change the world. Really.

I know you'll find this hard to believe, but I met with a lot of our investors. They're genuinely motivated at least as much by the prospect of disruption for good as they are by the prospect of making money.

[Alex Zee]

Satoshi gave a lot of people in the crypto community a chance to join in

So as Ripple folks. They gave away a lot in the giveaway topic.

But 50,000 ripples for 1 Bitcoin is way to steed, when 1 developer alone holds a billion of them.

Would you please stop counting money in somebody else's pocket? What do you care?

It's 4.4 million dollars at current price, assuming he can sell them all.

I know, "ONE BILLION of something" sounds ridiculously big, but $4.4 M somehow aren't.

[Red]

Haha this is actually funny, I said I was probably wrong, I really wanna know which guy is holding a billion XRP though, so I keep trying to find out.

Laughing my ass off at the irony. Let me sell you that Clue. Maybe you should go to the Ripple website and look up the name he posts under here!!!

Rolling on the Floor!

[drawingthesun]

Satoshi gave a lot of people in the crypto community a chance to join in

So as Ripple folks. They gave away a lot in the giveaway topic.

But 50,000 ripples for 1 Bitcoin is way to steed, when 1 developer alone holds a billion of them.

Would you please stop counting money in somebody else's pocket? What do you care?

It's 4.4 million dollars at current price, assuming he can sell them all.

I know, "ONE BILLION of something" sounds ridiculously big, but $4.4 M somehow aren't.

Yeah I guess 4.4 million isn't actually that much, I just want people to know what they are buying into then they hand over Bitcoin for ripple.

I think a lot of users don't realize that ripple is a massive pre-mine. I was talking with one advocate a while back that said ripple has been in creation since before Bitcoin existed, which is true except the old ripple didn't have a inbuilt pre-mine crypto currency. There seems to be a lot of misinformation driving up the price of ripples, as if they are scarce. When they are artificially scarce, kind of like De Beers.

[Alex Zee]

...driving up the price of ripples...

Ok, that's enough for me, I'd rather go do something productive, instead of arguing with clueless people.

Need to paint my imaginary yacht.

[Red]

I think a lot of users don't realize that ripple is a massive pre-mine. I was talking with one advocate a while back that said ripple has been in creation since before Bitcoin existed, which is true except the old ripple didn't have a inbuilt pre-mine crypto currency. There seems to be a lot of misinformation driving up the price of ripples, as if they are scarce. When they are artificially scarce, kind of like De Beers.

You are pretty f***ing CLUELESS!
https://github.com/JoelKatz

Seen that name lately? Might want to scroll back a little bit...

[Red]

You know what's a scam about Ripple?

It won't save the names I put in my address book?  I mean WTF! What a total Scam! 

[drawingthesun]

Thanks guys. You are certainly devote.

[nyusternie]

thanks for the reply Joel, i really appreciate it. and i want to go on record as stating that i DO NOT consider ripple to be a scam in any way (its very unfortunate that any debate gets this tag). however, i DO believe that XRP was in fact designed to be used as a CURRENCY (regardless of how many times people say otherwise), not simply as a means of spam-prevention.

Nobody had any idea how Facebook would make any money. Nobody had any idea how Twitter would make any money.

i am certain there were MANY ideas on how fb & twitter would eventually make money (ads being the most obvious). and those were clearly CENTRALIZED networks (with a single master); ripple claims that it will not be (and its why i have doubts that the source will be released any time soonish...)

I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that you've never talked to an actual VC person. If you have, they were crappy. We're talking about the people who are looking for the next PayPal because they *built* PayPal.

i HAVE spoken to many vcs (back in the dot-com boom era) and their very FIRST question was always "what is your planned exit strategy?". this is where i'm confused. its been stated that opencoin will SELL xrp, but then they also state that xrp is NOT a currency (and has no monetary value). how does that work?

I know you'll find this hard to believe, but I met with a lot of our investors. They're genuinely motivated at least as much by the prospect of disruption for good as they are by the prospect of making money.

i do find that hard to believe, as i've never heard of a benevolent vc who wasn't primarily concerned with roi. that's not to say they don't exist; i just don't believe Andreessen Horowitz is one of them

We're swinging for the fences. A long shot. A possible home run but also possibly a strike out. We're trying to change the world. Really.

yes you are indeed; and i wish you and your team the BEST of luck in the success of this venture. i have the utmost confidence in the ripple model. i've spent a "good" amount of time exploring its inner workings and its fantastic, truly! ; i WANT to believe in ripple and i WANT to support it, but i have significant doubts that it will can succeed in its current form that opencoin has established.

[JoelKatz]

thanks for the reply Joel, i really appreciate it. and i want to go on record as stating that i DO NOT consider ripple to be a scam in any way (its very unfortunate that any debate gets this tag). however, i DO believe that XRP was in fact designed to be used as a CURRENCY (regardless of how many times people say otherwise), not simply as a means of spam-prevention.

There's really no substantive difference between these views. It's just a matter of what time horizon you look at and how you predict the future given limited information. Will people use XRP as a currency just because they can? Will people avoid holding XRP because they know OpenCoin can release lots of it and crash the market? Or will they expect that it's unlikely that will happen? It isn't a question of design or intention but more one of predicting what cannot be predicted.

If Ripple becomes popular, the price of XRP is fairly stable, and there's little perceived risk of a sudden change in price, people will probably use XRP as a currency. It can be held in Ripple with no counter-party risk, and under those conditions could be useful as a "bridging" currency -- because there's only one XRP, paths to and from XRP could be the best way to make a gateway's balances liquid. But those are a lot of if's. There are people who think that will never happen and people who think it's inevitable. If you think it's inevitable, then XRP is designed to be a currency. If you think it will never happen, then XRP is not designed to be a currency.

i am certain there were MANY ideas on how fb & twitter would eventually make money (ads being the most obvious). and those were clearly CENTRALIZED networks (with a single master); ripple claims that it will not be (and its why i have doubts that the source will be released any time soonish...)

That really doesn't make any sense. If we were going to keep it closed, we would have just said so from the beginning. We could have required people to sign a contract to get the server code and used certificates to authenticate connections. We could have saved a lot of the design hassle of eliminating the requirement that no central authorities be needed. We chose not to do this because we honestly believe that's a losing strategy. Satoshi could have done the same thing with Bitcoin and sold "mining contracts" if he wanted to. But would Bitcoin be where it is today if he had chosen that route?

In what world though, in a business that relies on people to trust that the rules won't change on the whim of a single party, would any sane person start out a new system with such a huge change in the fundamental rules on the whim of a single party?

[nyusternie]

If Ripple becomes popular, the price of XRP is fairly stable, and there's little perceived risk of a sudden change in price, people will probably use XRP as a currency. It can be held in Ripple with no counter-party risk, and under those conditions could be useful as a "bridging" currency -- because there's only one XRP, paths to and from XRP could be the best way to make a gateway's balances liquid. But those are a lot of if's. There are people who think that will never happen and people who think it's inevitable. If you think it's inevitable, then XRP is designed to be a currency. If you think it will never happen, then XRP is not designed to be a currency.

ok, that's pretty much what i thought.
i was merely looking for some acknowledgment of xrp being used as a currency from someone within the ripple inner circle.

i am certain there were MANY ideas on how fb & twitter would eventually make money (ads being the most obvious). and those were clearly CENTRALIZED networks (with a single master); ripple claims that it will not be (and its why i have doubts that the source will be released any time soonish...)

That really doesn't make any sense. If we were going to keep it closed, we would have just said so from the beginning. We could have required people to sign a contract to get the server code and used certificates to authenticate connections. We could have saved a lot of the design hassle of eliminating the requirement that no central authorities be needed. We chose not to do this because we honestly believe that's a losing strategy. Satoshi could have done the same thing with Bitcoin and sold "mining contracts" if he wanted to. But would Bitcoin be where it is today if he had chosen that route?

In what world though, in a business that relies on people to trust that the rules won't change on the whim of a single party, would any sane person start out a new system with such a huge change in the fundamental rules on the whim of a single party?

above all, its the soonish that bothers me the most. as a developer i truly sympathize with giving hard deadlines when you really don't have a reasonable expectation of when something will be delivered; but i cynically translate this as, "we'll release it when a hard-fork is no longer a threat to our profits" (there is no evidence of this, just the way i feel about it)
------------------------------------------

i'd like to just throw out a couple ideas on xrp distribution options:

social networks
facebook, google+, renren and the like would easily allow you to use some credibility scale based on friends, posts, likes, whatever (similar to how you managed the ripplegiveaway here).

android/iphone/fb app
creating a ripple game/app of sorts would allow you to leverage the social graph to spread the word very quickly (probably virally) to a very broad and diverse pool of users.

twitter
using some sort of bot to manage a #RippleGiveaway hashtag.
though, i don't know enough about twitter to offer any details as to how to scale credibility.

obviously mitigating abuse is the priority here, but chances are nothing you do will ever satisfy everyone's definition of fair; however, these ideas would certainly offer a very broad and diverse selection pool upon which to distribute.

~49b left to go
is there already a thread asking for input from the community on a fair system?
should there be?