You know what? They forced participants to ID with FACEBOOK. FACEBOOK!!!! Those participating would have to have locked their BTC holdings AND their Stellar wallets to their ID forever.
Who doesn't have fake Facebook accounts? You could even create a new account through Tor!
I got my XLM for free, I sell some once in a while (a lot more often the past few days!), and I never bought them (although I regret not buying them 3 months ago for a 50-fold increase in value). I know I'm biased towards XLM, their bribe worked well on me
Ripple is the Federal Reserve of crypto
While on the subject: I totally don't get the hype with Ripple (or most of the altcoins with high market cap for that matter). Ripple is a centrally controlled CORPORATION that owns the majority of it's coins. How can this be worth $128 billion now? That means the company owns $200 billion in Ripple, that's ludicrous!
The people in charge of Ripple can monitor, freeze, and reverse your transactions.
Ripple is a cryptocoin, but that's where it ends. It is
nothing like Bitcoin, but just like nobody seems to care that Ethereum hardforks whenever the few rich guys in power need to get back their money (The DAO made them instantly abandon "code is law"), nobody seems to care that Ripple is centrally controlled.
"Banks use it" is not an argument to throw your money at it, it should be the other way around! Banks don't need you to become rich, banks want your money, and banks are very good at making sure they get it!
What's strange is that a lot of these centralized currencies are listed on coinmarketcap and are discussed on decentralized ledger forums. There is nothing in the future of centralized currencies.
I wouldn't even be against a centralized cryptocurrency, as long as it's open and public. A corporation that owns the majority of the coins doesn't fit my image of an ideal currency.
Ripple co-founder and former CEO Chris Larsen holds 5.19 billion XRP as well as a 17 percent stake in the company, according to a recent Forbes report. Given that Ripple is currently holding 55 billion XRP in escrow, Larsen is now worth at least $39.8 billion — and that’s not accounting for the value of the company itself apart from its XRP holdings.They own a real stake in the company, you own pre-mined tokens that were created from thin air. Good luck.
I've always said altcoins (and later ICOs and now forks) are created for one reason: getting your money! They missed out on Bitcoin, create something new, hype it, and boom, people start throwing money at them.
By the time the guy owns $39.8 billion dollar, he doesn't care about any of the fundamental reasons to choose cryptocurrencies anymore. It's the 1% of the 1% of the 1% that owns 8% of total crypto market cap!
For me i got tons of Stellar at $0.20 when I learnt that it was same Mt. GOX & Ripple guy that developed Stellar.
~
#SAVAGE!
It's amazing how people just ignore the fact that it is indeed the Mt. Gox guy who has his next money maker!
Take a look at the orange line (Ripple's Bitcoin value) in this picture:
Can anybody come up with even just one reason why it shouldn't crash again like it did many times? Why do people keep telling themselves it must be different this time?
Its a shitcoin with only one vague good news, that IBM will do projects with the coin. Nothing more.
I never understand why people start buying a coin when a big corporation has "some" plan with it. Even if IBM is going to use Stellar, they won't be spending any money on buying their coins, so there is absolutely no reason for the coin price to go up.
