Why Ripple is Superior to Bitcoin...

[LaggedOnUser]

Also, I read that Satoshi could profit enormously from Bitcoin as well.  His share of Bitcoins has been estimated at 1 million coins.  That's not chicken feed.

And if it's true that Jed McCaleb is Satoshi, then he's about to bump that chicken feed up quite substantially.  

LOL... that's fine with me. 

[bitaccumulation]

+2

I wish you guys would stop with the circle-jerk and help me understand how Bitcoin plans to become a mainstream currency.

[LaggedOnUser]

I thought OP raised some good points.

Replace Ripple with USD and Opencoin with FED.

For me Ripple is a step back to Bankocraty, we'll see the progress ONLY when the sources become public. That's what my 1st reply was about.

+1

+2

It's not that hard to open source something.  If they say they are going to open-source it, they probably will.  Bitcoin took a couple of years to develop before its release as well.  Just give it some time.

[Caesar V]

Was that for me ceasar?

No, OP.

[yvv]

Also since its limited to 100 billions, the number of accounts is limited too because they need a "reserve", and it will not get mass adoption.

At 100xrp reserve currently, you can make a billion of accounts. And they can lower the reserve again if xrp value continue to raise.

[btc4ever]

Simple.  Start a pizza business that accepts bitcoins.    Or convince your local establishment.

Or take the lazy route, and order your pizza online but pay with bitspend.net, or similar service.    ;-)

[yvv]

But isnt one of the major things that is great about bitcoin the fact that banks dont have anything to do with it?

It is only in dreams of bitcoiners. Miners sell bitcoins for real money to pay their bills. Bitcoin fans buy bitcoins for real money to get screwed by day trading. Each cash in or cash out to exchange go through bank.

[Come-from-Beyond]

+2

I wish you guys would stop with the circle-jerk and help me understand how Bitcoin plans to become a mainstream currency.

Bitcoin has many issues, agree. Make Ripple's back-end open-source and it will FTW.

[LTCesk]

But isnt one of the major things that is great about bitcoin the fact that banks dont have anything to do with it?

It is only in dreams of bitcoiners. Miners sell bitcoins for real money to pay their bills. Bitcoin fans buy bitcoins for real money to get screwed by day trading. Each cash in or cash out to exchange go through bank.

Yeah thats true...

[melvster]

"they are already used to (by partnering with banks and other financial services)"
now I am pretty new to all of this and dont really know what I am talking about. But isnt one of the major things that is great about bitcoin the fact that banks dont have anything to do with it?

That is one of the great things about Bitcoin.  You can be your own bank.  This is useful in the same way it would be useful to have a vault under your house to store gold and a Star Trek transporter to send that gold to whomever you wanted to instantly.   Very useful.

However, as an everyday way of making payments to other people, not very useful (unless you already have tons of them and your friends and vendors have tons of them).   In order to buy a pizza with Bitcoin, I need to find a merchant that accepts Bitcion, and then I need to find a way to get my money to an exchange (at a fee), then buy Bitcoin on that exchange (at a fee).    That's a lot of work and expense to buy a pizza.   Now I might be ideologically inclined to go through that work, but most people won't be.  Most people are going to whip out their debit card and make a payment to the pizza guy with their fiat currency.   That simple.

Whatever the legal tender of the land is, is what people will use, unless their is a reason not to (ie - transactions that are illegal with the legal tender, etc.).  The only way to get a new currency to move with existing currencies is to make the addition of those currencies TRANSPARENT to the majority of the people involved (not the hard-core people like Bitcoiners).   This is what it will take for mass adoption.   To avoid this issue is folly.

Wrong way round.  With bitcoin you can operate the warehousing function of a bank, but not the more important money creation function.  With ripple you can be your own bank by creating IOUs that are backed by something.  Whether anyone would want to use it is a different matter.  You can *almost* do this in bitcoin, but it's very tricky.  Bitcoin and ripple in theory should be complimentary ... in theory ...

[yvv]

and they can make another ton of 100 billion xrps..

They would need to start a new ledger for this. It is not improbable.

[melvster]

and they can make another ton of 100 billion xrps..

They would need to start a new ledger for this. It is not improbable.

why couldnt there be a new reward on a ledger entry crediting opencoin with a second 100 bn, if they achieved consensus in the unique node list?

[bitaccumulation]

Open-source, closed-source.  Who cares?

This automatically disqualifies anything you might have written about that.

You fail to understand why it is vital for an distributed currency to be opensource, and you also fail to understand that if a company states something, he'd better not be lying.

You fail to understand that I'm talking about IDEAS and you are talking about particulars.

The entire IDEA of Ripple is a better execution of an alternative currency because it is inclusive of CURRENT currencies and can be used as a payment system for those currencies, and the adoption of the "trust free" currency is secondary.

What about this don't you understand?

[bitaccumulation]

That is one of the great things about Bitcoin.  You can be your own bank.  This is useful in the same way it would be useful to have a vault under your house to store gold and a Star Trek transporter to send that gold to whomever you wanted to instantly.   Very useful.

Wrong way round.  With bitcoin you can operate the warehousing function of a bank, but not the more important money creation function.  With ripple you can be your own bank by creating IOUs that are backed by something.  Whether anyone would want to use it is a different matter.  You can *almost* do this in bitcoin, but it's very tricky.  Bitcoin and ripple in theory should be complimentary ... in theory ...

OK.  Bank Vault instead of Bank.  Are you happy?   Not sure what your argument is.

Ripple is a distributed payment system involving IOUs (which is exactly what we use now in our daily lives).   If it takes off as a payment system then the only trust-free internal currency (xrp) will be very valuable.  They are using payment system adoption as the route to trust-free currency adoption.  Bitcoin is doing the reverse.

[LeTanque]

Opencoin says Ripple is open-source, but there are no sources in public. They should replace all "open" with "close", until that Ripple is scam.

The client is open source ... the server is in beta

Ripple and bitcoin solve different problems, ripple is clearing.  Bitcoin is the reserve currency of the internet.

Both are needed.

The jury is out on opencoin's implementation.  

But it's probably the best implementation to date.

Well said. Everyone focuses on closed source.

To quote an analogy I used before. Ripple is choosing to build the plane before they fly it.

[Come-from-Beyond]

Well said. Everyone focuses on closed source.

To quote an analogy I used before. Ripple is choosing to build the plane before they fly it.

We can play with wording till the end of times. In essence: Ripple is closed-source and this outbalances all its advantages.

[flound1129]

However, as an everyday way of making payments to other people, not very useful (unless you already have tons of them and your friends and vendors have tons of them).   In order to buy a pizza with Bitcoin, I need to find a merchant that accepts Bitcion, and then I need to find a way to get my money to an exchange (at a fee), then buy Bitcoin on that exchange (at a fee).    That's a lot of work and expense to buy a pizza.   Now I might be ideologically inclined to go through that work, but most people won't be.  Most people are going to whip out their debit card and make a payment to the pizza guy with their fiat currency.   That simple.

That Bitcoin debit cards are not yet available is not a fault of the currency, it just means that nobody has set up a Bitcoin debit card service yet.

It's completely doable.

[bitaccumulation]

That Bitcoin debit cards are not yet available is not a fault of the currency, it just means that nobody has set up a Bitcoin debit card service yet.

It's completely doable.

You are sidestepping the issue.  Having a Bitcoin debit card would still involve people moving USD (or other currencies) into Bitcoin in order to put the Bitcoin on the card.   Why bother?  Just buy the pizza with USD.  Done.

Until this issue addressed, the only people who will be paying with Bitcoin are miners, early adopters, and idealists who already have them.   And yes, you will find vendors that will accept them using services that turn them immediately into their local currency because who would want to turn away business?  And of course, some vendors might want to hold on to some of the BTC for speculative reasons.   However, none of that makes it a mainstream currency or anything close to it.

Mainstream usage will start with a payment system that doesn't interfere with the existing one (or makes things a lot easier).   From there, adoption of alternate currencies will flourish.  That's my view on this.  I'm happy to consider other views though, I just haven't heard any yet.

[lexico]

If their page gets down all the ripple system is dead. simple as that. Also since its limited to 100 billions, the number of accounts is limited too because they need a "reserve", and it will not get mass adoption.
And nobody knows if they can make another ton of 100 billion xrps if they want since its closed-source...

Not one of you has addressed how Bitcoin is going to become a payment system.   Ripple DOES address this FIRST.  xrp will only take off in value once the payment system takes off.

You CAN'T USE BITCOIN until you exchange your regular money to get it.  Why would someone do that to buy a pizza?

Answer this question and let me know how Bitcoin plans on addressing these problems.

Ripple on the other hand DOES address these issues.  

If Bitcoin has something that will address these issues in the near future, I'd be happy to reverse my opinion.  I don't see any answers other than people don't like that Ripple is closed source, they don't like that a company pre-mined 100,000,000,000 of that system's currency, or that they are worried their might not be enough currency to create an account for everyone in the world.  

Are you guys for real?

I'm all about solutions.  Tell me how Bitcoin fixes (or plans to fix) the issues I illustrated in my OP.

Why don't you answer these fair questions? 
does it hurt too much to think about things like 'If their page gets down all the ripple system is dead. simple as that.' ?

and besides it does matter that it is closed source, since there is absolutely no proof of security if no-one can review it. that alone sets of the alarm bells over here (*scam* *scam*)

[Come-from-Beyond]

Colored bitcoins would add some Ripple features, but recent update makes it much more difficult to implement.