Why Ripple™ is against everything Bitcoin

[Welsh]

I know TradeFortress a bit from experiences on the forums and he seems to me to be a smart and agreeable guy. I'm shocked by his actions. But could posting a silly blurb allover the place really hurt Ripple? It would just result in more publicity, which would probably end up being good for Ripple. I think the vision for Ripplescam.org could be an attempt at eventually making money by piggybacking off of Ripple's success, rather than a true attack on Ripple. Nothing about it is convincing to me.

I see it completely the opposite.

Ripple is trying to piggyback off Bitcoin's success.

That's why we see them all over this forum.

Literally all over the forum.

I'm always seeing people getting scammed with trading between both of the currencies.
But, the link that tradefortress is advertising, actually has some good valid points.
A lot of people don't like to be told wrong, most users who disagree with this s because they have been using ripple and have 'a lot' of ripples, everyone wants success if they have a decent amount.
Then they completely ignore some of the statements in that post and have no valid argument to back up their opinion.
Of course, everyone is entitled to there own opinion.

[1715392277]

1715392277

[1715392277]

1715392277

[1715392277]

1715392277

[mmeijeri]

Once Ripple is given the legal approval, what would stop Google to create its own Ripple?

What would stop commercial banks to create their own modified version of Ripple? I suppose it would be a natural move. All European banks as gateways of the new network. The European Central Bank would issue real euros, not IOUs...

If either of these two happens, it will be a step forward.

[CurbsideProphet]

I was part of Prosper from the very beginning.  I met Chris Larsen in Honolulu at the very first Prosper convention and still keep in touch with numerous ex-prosper lenders.  It was a fantastic failure for lenders.  So far as I can tell, Ripple has not learned from these mistakes as it bases its model on unsecured debt leading to significant counterparty risk.  The fundamental problem with Prosper.

Part of evaluating a for-profit company is evaluating the strength of its management and this is what causes me great concern.  Tread carefully.

[mmeijeri]

So far as I can tell, Ripple has not learned from these mistakes as it bases its model on unsecured debt leading to significant counterparty risk.

I think lending is mostly tangential to Ripple, which is mainly about payment. Sure there are trust lines, but they exist to facilitate payments and are not intended as long term loans. At least, that's what it looks like to me.

[CurbsideProphet]

So far as I can tell, Ripple has not learned from these mistakes as it bases its model on unsecured debt leading to significant counterparty risk.

I think lending is mostly tangential to Ripple, which is mainly about payment. Sure there are trust lines, but they exist to facilitate payments and are not intended as long term loans. At least, that's what it looks like to me.

You may very well be right, I'm just saying given my past experience, I'm skeptical.  Ripple will have the opportunity to prove me wrong but right now I am not an investor other than the free xrp they dolled out.

[cypherdoc]

So far as I can tell, Ripple has not learned from these mistakes as it bases its model on unsecured debt leading to significant counterparty risk.

I think lending is mostly tangential to Ripple, which is mainly about payment. Sure there are trust lines, but they exist to facilitate payments and are not intended as long term loans. At least, that's what it looks like to me.

As I go through this thread and your comments, your arguments  are literally all over the place.

And it's not entirely your fault as opencoin has not done a good job explaining their own position.

But seriously.

[mmeijeri]

But seriously.

Did you have an argument? All my posts have been perfectly logical.

[Sukrim]

I don't see Ripple (in the OpenCoin implementation) to be "against everything Bitcoin" - it is just the other alternative on how to create non-governmental money:

You can either create assets that have 0 value (--> Bitcoins/other Altcoins/Diablo III gold), make them tradeable and hope they get used as money for various reasons OR
you introduce 3rd party trust and allow people to trade debts of certain assets in amounts that they are comfortable with (--> Ripple/gift cards/Hawala).

There is no way other than being a central bank to issue "real" USD instead of USD IOUs for example - maaaybe the cash money in your purse could be viewed as "real" but even there it could be quite hard to make sure they are not counterfeits and instead of counterparty risks you have physical risks.

If you want to track something that already exists (and this could very well be working hours, DVDs from your collection or pencils instead of USD), you need something like Ripple that is a kind of promise/contract that is offered to the network for you to deliver upon later.
If you want something completely new, this has no value attached and only floats because it creates a bubble. The stability of that bubble depends on the trust of people in that asset and this trust can be built by factors like fungibility, uniqueness etc.

I don't see a third way right now, how to create something that has properties of money (like Bitcoin) BUT also has some backing (like Ripple IOUs that have between 0%-100% backing, hopefully in most cases the latter) BUT can still be created/handed out decentralized (via PoW, PoS, hash of your SSN or whatever else).

[nameface]

If Ripple is successful, the analogy of BTC as "a better gold" and XRP as "a better dollar" seems about right. Anyone can still use and build on Bitcoin, while simultaneously, the Ripple payment processing system will be way better than anything that exists today. Some people aren't making the leap that Ripple is a protocol.

I laugh at people who think a company paying people or building in incentives for the developers of their technology is wrong. Some Pro-Bitcoin Anti-Ripple (P-BAR?) people are missing part of their brain.

Ripple isn't hiding information about the general distribution scheme for XRP. Their pages are clear (albeit completely lacking of a planned distribution model). They haven't released their source, but they never claimed they'd have released it by now either.

Many P-BARs earlier in this thread talk like know what is "right". They sound like a bunch of kids who, despite their talents, have yet to learn shit about shit. Instead of whining until people start putting you on ignore, try tapping into what's really happening. 1M loudmouths punks < 1 serious person with a vision.

Those who will make an impact are those who increase functionality and forward momentum. This is all about creating a system that works. Bitcoin and Ripple have great momentum, and are designed to work together. This may sound crazy, but I have a theory that Satoshi Nakamoto is one man who disappeared from Bitcoin to work full-time on Ripple and that both technologies are part of one holistic vision. Disprove me!

The transactional currency market of the web is SO BIG that you shouldn't expect it all to go to Bitcoin in some sort of explosion of currency anarchy. Who cares that Ripple is more of an "establishment play"? This is surely more of a blessing than a curse to crypto-currency.

Ask yourself a question: Do the hordes of soon-to-be newb users know or care about mining? The idea of scarcity and a fixed money supply will resonate with smart people. The idea that they cannot create money out of thin air with a computer will not deter them from becoming Ripple users.

Reading this thread just made me so long on both Bitcoin and Ripple. This is going to be amazing.

[CurbsideProphet]

The problem is if you go through a third party, you don't know how much debt they've created.  You can set a limit on how much you trust someone but there's no way to know how big of a leveraged position they're playing in aggregate.  In other words, there's a fundamental lack of transparency.  There's no point in Ripple if this is the case as we're back to the fundamental problem with current governments that we're trying to escape.

[Alex Zee]

Many P-BARs earlier in this thread talk like know what is "right". They sound like a bunch of kids who, despite their talents, have yet to learn shit about shit. Instead of whining until people start putting you on ignore, try tapping into what's really happening. 1M loudmouths punks < 1 serious person with a vision.

Great post. Too bad that no amount of rational arguments will be heard by the P-BARs

[mmeijeri]

The problem is if you go through a third party, you don't know how much debt they've created.  You can set a limit on how much you trust someone but there's no way to know how big of a leveraged position they're playing in aggregate.  In other words, there's a fundamental lack of transparency.  There's no point in Ripple if this is the case as we're back to the fundamental problem with current governments that we're trying to escape.

Do you mean that this would be a problem even if we transitioned to all-crypto and used Ripple for peer to peer lending?

[justusranvier]

The problem is if you go through a third party, you don't know how much debt they've created.  You can set a limit on how much you trust someone but there's no way to know how big of a leveraged position they're playing in aggregate.  In other words, there's a fundamental lack of transparency.  There's no point in Ripple if this is the case as we're back to the fundamental problem with current governments that we're trying to escape.

That's a problem that has to be addressed outside of Ripple itself. One possible solution is to only extend trust to people who you know, and who you trust to provide you with accurate information about their personal balance sheet.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

The problem is if you go through a third party, you don't know how much debt they've created.  You can set a limit on how much you trust someone but there's no way to know how big of a leveraged position they're playing in aggregate.  In other words, there's a fundamental lack of transparency.  There's no point in Ripple if this is the case as we're back to the fundamental problem with current governments that we're trying to escape.

That's a problem that has to be addressed outside of Ripple itself. One possible solution is to only extend trust to people who you know, and who you trust to provide you with accurate information about their personal balance sheet.

That is called Bitcoin. It's already trust free.

[justusranvier]

That is called Bitcoin. It's already trust free.

Until the entire world is using Bitcoin as their primary currency we will need liquidity between it and legacy currencies. I think Ripple could provide one of the pieces necessary to to build a system that helps with that.

[CurbsideProphet]

The problem is if you go through a third party, you don't know how much debt they've created.  You can set a limit on how much you trust someone but there's no way to know how big of a leveraged position they're playing in aggregate.  In other words, there's a fundamental lack of transparency.  There's no point in Ripple if this is the case as we're back to the fundamental problem with current governments that we're trying to escape.

That's a problem that has to be addressed outside of Ripple itself. One possible solution is to only extend trust to people who you know, and who you trust to provide you with accurate information about their personal balance sheet.

There's stickies and posts all over this forum stating to, "trust no one."  Also, that's a tremendous amount to ask of someone.  Lets say I trust you up to a $50 IOU.  Are you willing to disclose to me all of your personal financial information for $50?  $100?  Most people will be reluctant to make this sort of information public and even if they do, validating their claims is difficult or expensive (third party audit).

The problem all goes back to peer-to-peer lending, which is what it seems Ripple is despite the duration of the loan.  Peer-to-peer lending is based on unsecured loans and there is ample evidence (including past projects of one of OpenCoin's founders) that this model does not work.  So the question to me then becomes what if we allow for secured IOUs?  So basically you can issue $10,000 in IOUs so long as you have $10,000 in collateral.  That works for me but the problem here is in a decentralized exchange, who holds the collateral?  

Right now what I see in Ripple is a decent business model but with some very large inherent flaws.  Maybe the creators have thought of a way to address these issues, but until I hear about it or understand more, I'm wary.  

[Rampion]

The problem is if you go through a third party, you don't know how much debt they've created.  You can set a limit on how much you trust someone but there's no way to know how big of a leveraged position they're playing in aggregate.  In other words, there's a fundamental lack of transparency.  There's no point in Ripple if this is the case as we're back to the fundamental problem with current governments that we're trying to escape.

That's a problem that has to be addressed outside of Ripple itself. One possible solution is to only extend trust to people who you know, and who you trust to provide you with accurate information about their personal balance sheet.

Trust? The point is to have a mathematically provable system, so you do not need to trust any third party.

IOU's? Debt based? And here we are again feeding a big black hole made of creative accounting and not much more, the same old musical chairs game... Ripple is a p2p expression of all the fucked up things in the debt money financial system Bitcoin was designed to address.

I wonder what Satoshi would say about Ripple.

[justusranvier]

There's stickies and posts all over this forum stating to, "trust no one."  Also, that's a tremendous amount to ask of someone.  Lets say I trust you up to a $50 IOU.  Are you willing to disclose to me all of your personal financial information for $50?  $100?  Most people will be reluctant to make this sort of information public and even if they do, validating their claims is difficult or expensive (third party audit).

The problem all goes back to peer-to-peer lending, which is what it seems Ripple is despite the duration of the loan.  Peer-to-peer lending is based on unsecured loans and there is ample evidence (including past projects of one of OpenCoin's founders) that this model does not work.  So the question to me then becomes what if we allow for secured IOUs?  So basically you can issue $10,000 in IOUs so long as you have $10,000 in collateral.  That works for me but the problem here is in a decentralized exchange, who holds the collateral?

Ripple trust consists of infinitely-levered, unlimited duration revolving credit lines. It's pure financial nitroglycerin and I expect that some people are going to blow up their personal finances with it. That doesn't mean that Ripple is useless though. After all, the reason we started manufacturing nitroglycerin in the first place was exactly because it was so useful.

I don't think anyone would want to, or need to, disclose their personal balance sheets to the entire world. They'd share this information with a handful of close trusted friends and would rely on a social network to make the necessary connections between buyers and sellers (depositors and creditors).

I think it's potentially a fascinating test of voluntarism: give a bunch of regular people access to the same debt creation tools the legacy banking system used to blow up the economies of the developed world, and see if they can do a more effective job of using those tools safely than the professionals did.

[Coinseeker]

I wonder what Satoshi would say about Ripple.

Apparently nothing since he got rich and bailed.  Ok when he gets rich though...hmmm.

[nameface]

The problem is if you go through a third party, you don't know how much debt they've created.  You can set a limit on how much you trust someone but there's no way to know how big of a leveraged position they're playing in aggregate.  In other words, there's a fundamental lack of transparency.  There's no point in Ripple if this is the case as we're back to the fundamental problem with current governments that we're trying to escape.

That's a problem that has to be addressed outside of Ripple itself. One possible solution is to only extend trust to people who you know, and who you trust to provide you with accurate information about their personal balance sheet.

Trust? The point is to have a mathematically provable system, so you do not need to trust any third party.

IOU's? Debt based? And here we are again feeding a big black hole made of creative accounting and not much more, the same old musical chairs game... Ripple is a p2p expression of all the fucked up things in the debt money financial system Bitcoin was designed to address.

I wonder what Satoshi would say about Ripple.

OpenCoin may be in a rush, but Bitcoin isn't. It would be a big boon for Bitcoin if Ripple somehow managed to go all the way mainstream.
If Ripple eventually fails (owing to it being an "expression of everything that sucks" or otherwise), at least it will have shown people some of the benefits of the technology.