Ripple starts to conquer the world from China

[AmazonStuff]

Actually whoever invests in ripple now is making a huge mistake.

Ripple is not just a alt-coin, it's a payment system that makes easier for people in countries with rigid bank regulations to move their money, so I really think that OpenCoin made a good move, it's like they asked me for advice

can You point me to an URL to get more info about their payment system? can I use them to get payments in BTC and do Pay outs in BTC for my website?

Read this pages for Ripple merchants:
https://ripple.com/partners/

thanks I have read it. ok sounds good but is there some one who has already used it and can give some feedback?

cheers

I haven't been using Ripple as a merchant, so I can't talk about that side of Ripple.

On the other side, I think you don't need to become a Ripple merchant at all, your bitcoin enabled website is just fine.

You just need to offer your services to Ripple community, because every Rippler can make a direct payment to any bitcoin address from his Ripple wallet via something called "Bitcoin Bridge". Basically, every Rippler is actually Bitcoiner too

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[erk]

You just need to offer your services to Ripple community, because every Rippler can make a direct payment to any bitcoin address from his Ripple wallet via something called "Bitcoin Bridge". Basically, every Rippler is actually Bitcoiner too

Just what we need, a centralized interception of Bitcoin transactions too. Was Ripple designed by the NSA?

[yvv]

You just need to offer your services to Ripple community, because every Rippler can make a direct payment to any bitcoin address from his Ripple wallet via something called "Bitcoin Bridge". Basically, every Rippler is actually Bitcoiner too

Just what we need, a centralized interception of Bitcoin transactions too. Was Ripple designed by the NSA?

We totally agree.

http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/tin-foil-hat.jpg?f9d891

[murraypaul]

- an automatic distributed currency exchange is complete vaporware. It will require a lot more than technology to work, e.g. like liquidity.

Nobody is debating the necessity of liquidity in Ripple in order to perform currency exchange.

- debt valuation depends on the debtor, just compare mtgox and bitstamp USD credits now and you understand how this must be handled inside a Ripple scheme. If you were to exchange currency you trade credits with one debtor with credits for another debtor. Here is the econ theoretic argument - any tuple of debtors in such a transaction creates its on market, so the credits are not fungible. Liquidity will be very thin.

Again, I agree with you that liquidity is a huge issue. But if there is liquidity, I'm sure the balances for the most trusted gateways will be worth about the same. Ripple is trying to federate the existing banking system. Nobody today ever says: " It sucks that my Bank of America USD is worth less than my Citibank USD".

Really?
How about: "It sucks that my Bank of Cyprus EUR is worth less than my Bank of Germany EUR"
Seems like I have heard people say that.
The value of an IOU is proportionate to the trustworthiness of the issuer.
Any system that ignores that is broken by design.

[ElectricMucus]

- an automatic distributed currency exchange is complete vaporware. It will require a lot more than technology to work, e.g. like liquidity.

Nobody is debating the necessity of liquidity in Ripple in order to perform currency exchange.

- debt valuation depends on the debtor, just compare mtgox and bitstamp USD credits now and you understand how this must be handled inside a Ripple scheme. If you were to exchange currency you trade credits with one debtor with credits for another debtor. Here is the econ theoretic argument - any tuple of debtors in such a transaction creates its on market, so the credits are not fungible. Liquidity will be very thin.

Again, I agree with you that liquidity is a huge issue. But if there is liquidity, I'm sure the balances for the most trusted gateways will be worth about the same. Ripple is trying to federate the existing banking system. Nobody today ever says: " It sucks that my Bank of America USD is worth less than my Citibank USD".

Really?
How about: "It sucks that my Bank of Cyprus EUR is worth less than my Bank of Germany EUR"
Seems like I have heard people say that.
The value of an IOU is proportionate to the trustworthiness of the issuer.
Any system that ignores that is broken by design.

The balances in the Cyprus accounts just shrunk, it's not like the actual Euros are worth less, there are just less of them.

AFIK the ripple protocol allows you to assign quality factors to your own trust lines to compensate for that risk.

[elm]

is there a merchant who is using ripple for BTC payments? and can shed some light because I am still in the dark. any help is very much appreciated

[QuantPlus]

- an automatic distributed currency exchange is complete vaporware. It will require a lot more than technology to work, e.g. like liquidity.

Nobody is debating the necessity of liquidity in Ripple in order to perform currency exchange.

- debt valuation depends on the debtor, just compare mtgox and bitstamp USD credits now and you understand how this must be handled inside a Ripple scheme. If you were to exchange currency you trade credits with one debtor with credits for another debtor. Here is the econ theoretic argument - any tuple of debtors in such a transaction creates its on market, so the credits are not fungible. Liquidity will be very thin.

Again, I agree with you that liquidity is a huge issue. But if there is liquidity, I'm sure the balances for the most trusted gateways will be worth about the same. Ripple is trying to federate the existing banking system. Nobody today ever says: " It sucks that my Bank of America USD is worth less than my Citibank USD".

Really?
How about: "It sucks that my Bank of Cyprus EUR is worth less than my Bank of Germany EUR"
Seems like I have heard people say that.
The value of an IOU is proportionate to the trustworthiness of the issuer.
Any system that ignores that is broken by design.

The balances in the Cyprus accounts just shrunk, it's not like the actual Euros are worth less, there are just less of them.

AFIK the ripple protocol allows you to assign quality factors to your own trust lines to compensate for that risk.

I just logged on to Ripple for 1st time in 2 months.
It looks like there's been ZERO progress.

On github there are 234 open Bug Reports...
If your money disappears you just become another "Bug". What fun.

https://github.com/ripple/ripple-client/issues?state=open

You still cannot produce a Tax Compliant trading report...
Via History Page or any other manner...
I remember the Devs being mystified why any trader would need detailed records...
Hippies don't pay taxes, I suppose.

I used the API and it's a joke...
To get a transaction... a DB record is JSON stringed and dumped on the Net...
Every transaction requires a 2,500 string be converted twice...
And *** no transaction is guaranteed to be available ***...
It depends if there is a server willing to send you information.

People take money super-seriously...
People send money to feed their families and pay for cancer surgery...
For many people transmitting money is a life and death matter...
That, baby, is worth $20 or whatever.

The people at OpenCoin have no respect for this...
To the hippy devs at Ripple money is an esoteric concept in their cool code.

Western Union takes money very, very seriously...
And have a massive Security Department... not a Cryptology Fetish.

Reuters has been selling out-of-the-box sub 1 millisecond trading for 5-6 years...
The laughable Ripple network is something Reuters might have been doing in the mid 90s.

Sorry, but 2 months ago I decided Ripple was doomed... and it worse looks now.

[murraypaul]

The balances in the Cyprus accounts just shrunk, it's not like the actual Euros are worth less, there are just less of them.

Currency controls prevent the free movement of Euros out of Cyprus.
Euros in other countries are not so restricted.
As a practical matter, Euros in Cyprus have less utility than those outside of it, and therefore less value.

[kneim]

The balances in the Cyprus accounts just shrunk, it's not like the actual Euros are worth less, there are just less of them.

Currency controls prevent the free movement of Euros out of Cyprus.
Euros in other countries are not so restricted.
As a practical matter, Euros in Cyprus have less utility than those outside of it, and therefore less value.

It's a similar effect as with Mt.Gox now.

Someone could go there with no EUR but enough BTC, change BTC to EUR on a good rate, make a cheap holiday, and come back with some cash in the pocket. Cyprus is nice for making holidays, and it would help them.

[EskimoBob]

Where can I trade this stuff for PPC, LTC or BTC?

[ElectricMucus]

I just logged on to Ripple for 1st time in 2 months.
It looks like there's been ZERO progress.

On github there are 234 open Bug Reports...
If your money disappears you just become another "Bug". What fun.

https://github.com/ripple/ripple-client/issues?state=open

From a software development standpoint this is actually a good thing. It means people are actually beta-testing it and reporting what they find out. And if you look at the amount of Closed reports it seems they are actually fixed!

[Villem Anton]

Very funny how opencoin supporters very much seems like shills, as they show zero level of critical thinking!

Not wanting to repeat my previous points, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=287065.msg3102946#msg3102946,
I want to stress that millennia old knowledge about debt is ignored here;

* Debt is not fungible but dependent on debtor. The "gateways" are not merely like IP routers, but debtors and thus backers of a risk valued asset.

This has several consequences. The "rippling" of debt has to take into account the change in risk, and the risk has to be compensated for with interest, or similar construct. Debt needs intimate knowledge between creditor to debtor to be efficient in risk valuation. The fact that a third of ever existing BTC exchanges have vanished for one or other reason, tells you that basing a currency on credit extended to gateways exposes users to crazy risk. Put another way, gateways are the perfect scam point in the system.

Gateways are also a choke point for the can of worms called regulation, as they in effect, are deposit banks.

[nameface]

Where can I trade this stuff for PPC, LTC or BTC?

If you want to trade XRP for BTC you can do that in ripple very easily. There used to be some liquidity in LTC, I don't know if there is much now... For PPC you must trade XRP for BTC and send to a trading site (like BTC-E).

I just logged on to Ripple for 1st time in 2 months.
It looks like there's been ZERO progress.

On github there are 234 open Bug Reports...
If your money disappears you just become another "Bug". What fun.

https://github.com/ripple/ripple-client/issues?state=open

From a software development standpoint this is actually a good thing. It means people are actually beta-testing it and reporting what they find out. And if you look at the amount of Closed reports it seems they are actually fixed!

I 100% agree. The fact that Ripple has bugs in it is a negative that is far outweighed by the fact that these bugs are being found and fixed at a rapid pace.

Also, there are almost zero significant cases of people's money dissapearing. Of course like Bitcoin there are people who lose their keys, but I follow Ripple very closely and I can't think of any unresolved 'fishy' losses. Not bad, almost 25,000 Ripple accounts, virtually no losses.

[Sukrim]

If the distribution of XRP and the conduct of OpenCoin is a problem, at least the world will have their technology.

No they won't the transaction server is closed source and only runs on OpenCoin owned hardware.  

Incorrect. Ripple runs on ~100 servers now.

Provide a link to the download.

Well, the code is here: https://github.com/ripple/rippled - you can't access it though if you don't have the necessary credentials (that do NOT include being an OpenCoin employee...).

I know for a fact that rippled does NOT run only on OpenCoin owned hardware. I could easily prove that by for example posting a recent commit hash or a hash of a binary created from source. I definitely wouldn't recommend anyone though to "leak" the source code though, as it still needs polishing and some refactoring (although it seems to continue on a steady pace).

If the distribution of XRP and the conduct of OpenCoin is a problem, at least the world will have their technology.

No they won't the transaction server is closed source and only runs on OpenCoin owned hardware.  

Both statements are false.

Yet you admit in the next post that the transaction server IS closed source and only available to approved lackeys of OpenCoin.  Replaced "owned" with "approved".  Nobody runs the closed source binaries with OpenCoins experess permission.  Permission which can be revoked at any point in the future for any reason. 

Closed source and absolute central control of the network.   Ripple is PayPal 2.0.

How many people external to PayPal have full access to PayPal's server code?

Rippled sources are not THAT hard to come by, have you actually asked for early access with a good reason? Also I am not aware of any NDAs etc. that are being signed when gaining access to rippled sources, maybe someone else can help you there...

Permission which can be revoked at any point in the future for any reason. 

By the way, how do you plan to revoke sources from 100 of groups which have them now?

Simple.  Release a new version which drops connections from servers older than prior version.  Revoke access to the proprietary closed source binary to those you no longer want to run the server.

Guess what, people would release the code for the latest version they had access to then. OpenCoin provides source code, no pre-compiled binaries. Build instructions are here: https://ripple.com/wiki/Rippled_build_instructions

Hundred different groups have rippled sources. What is a problem with bugfixes, improvements and enhancements?

No they don't.  The ripple server (rippled) is released as binary only.  Nobody has a copy of the source code except OpenCoin, Inc.   Even if someone did it would be no different than stealing source code from Microsoft.  It continues to remain the property of the owner and that owner could seek legal action against those who fraudulently use, modify, or distribute it.  If OpenCoin went bankrupt before releasing the source code under an open source license the assets of OpenCoin could be bought by another company say PayPal for the sole purpose of killing the project.

This is simply wrong, rippled is released as source code only. Dozens, if not hundreds of people external to OpenCoin have access to this source code, in various legislations. Good luck in hunting them down or even finding out who uploaded an archive of a .git folder on a filedump website.
I agree that it would still be risky to develop this code any further, but at least it would still run and could be used for re-implementations.

The other thing people miss: XRP = Market Making Currency...
If the network is ever scaled up...
The most favorable exchange price will always flow through XRP...

Trading XRP has huge risks involved (even more than trading BTC and these can be already quite volatile), I doubt that there will be big liquidity providers using XRP trades in the longer run. This is paired with an entity that is known to be willing to sell its stash (unlike Satoshi who is controlling a large part of all available BTC but has disappeared). If you want to play the big investor and market maker, you should definitely stay within BTC territory and not mess with XRP.

Sukrim, I alwais appreciate your posts but here I have to strongly disagree: XRPs are the fuel of the ripple network. Every gateway must have a strong market between his IOUs and XRP if it wants his IOUs to be liquid and exploit the potential of the federate protocol (managing a single market a gateway can link its currency to every other currency in the ripple network, instead of dealing one by one with thousands of gateways and different tokens)

This difference in usage between XRP and BTC should be pointed out. Bitcoin has an ideological push as "currency for the people" (regardless of the fact that we believe in it or not) that XRP hasn't, because it's not designed for that purpose.
Shouldn't be so hard to think at XRP as a "business" currency, useful for entrepreneurs, market makers and investors (the reckless ones ) while the Ripple Network is for the people, even and especially bitcoiners.

And this perspective, in my point of view, could solve many of the misunderstandings we see here at bitcointalk.

I'm still working on my market analysis code but I'm not too sure if even now IOUs have to have the strongest paths + liquidity towards XRP. I would suspect liquidity towards USD.Bitstamp and BTC.Bitstamp is at least as important as towards XRP at the moment, if not the most important factor for an IOU. Gateways don't have to (after some initial difficulties maybe) deal with other gateways at all, as liquidity problems can be detected and filled easily by bots for example. I agree with the "XRP is more for the risk loving people who like to trade and code bots while IOUs are useful for the 'users'" though.

Where can I trade this stuff for PPC, LTC or BTC?

DividendRippler offers easily redeemable BTC, NMC, TRC (whatever they are?) and LTC IOUs, their website makes it quite easy to automate things. After you set up your redemption addresses there, all you need to do is to send money to their address and specify which currency should be paid out and which of your IOUs or XRP should be used as input.

PPC seem to be rare enough that nobody set up a gateway (yet), so your best shot might be getting BTC (or something else with high liquidity towards PPC) and trading these.

[r3wt]

I just logged on to Ripple for 1st time in 2 months.
It looks like there's been ZERO progress.

On github there are 234 open Bug Reports...
If your money disappears you just become another "Bug". What fun.

https://github.com/ripple/ripple-client/issues?state=open

From a software development standpoint this is actually a good thing. It means people are actually beta-testing it and reporting what they find out. And if you look at the amount of Closed reports it seems they are actually fixed!

LoL, you my friend are far to hilarious to put on the ignore list.

[Sukrim]

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues - 407 open issues... is this now better or worse?

I am not aware of a lot of people losing access to their funds - one case would be https://github.com/ripple/ripple-client/issues/629 for example where someone created a NEW wallet with the same seed (Username + Password), overwriting an existing one that wasn't backed up as well.

If your money disappeared, please post your Ripple address, then I can check what was going on. Otherwise I call this just FUD, similar to the stuff that DeathAndTaxes tries to pull off here, stating things like "rippled is only distributed as binary" which are simply wrong.

[guugll]

i was under impression Ripple is a bad joke?
why you people still waste your time with that 100% scam coin?

[Sukrim]

I just hope people around here are open enough to accept or at least re-evaluate Ripple once it is opened up (whenever that is) to the public. There are just a lot of misconceptions about them.

Also a huge amount and volume of Bitcoin transactions takes place in centralized, truly closed-source (and they are NEVER even claiming to open up!) and profit oriented IOU issuer's proprietary accounting tools. I find it kinda strange that OpenCoin generates so much mistrust, while others (who pull off even weirder stuff --> Mastercoin) seem to be more welcomed. It looks like "Ripplers" then seem to be of the impression that "Bitcoiners" are afraid because obviously Ripple is the better system and could potentially drive Bitcoin out of the market. On the other side there is usually a lot of mistrust since Ripple does not only claim to be a working distributed exchange (which it is!) but also that there is a currency implemented that is used to fund a company instead of just taking a fixed cut (something that is not really possible for distributed exchanges...) from trades.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Also a huge amount and volume of Bitcoin transactions takes place in centralized, truly closed-source (and they are NEVER even claiming to open up!) and profit oriented IOU issuer's proprietary accounting tools. I find it kinda strange that OpenCoin generates so much mistrust, while others (who pull off even weirder stuff --> Mastercoin) seem to be more welcomed. It looks like "Ripplers" then seem to be of the impression that "Bitcoiners" are afraid because obviously Ripple is the better system and could potentially drive Bitcoin out of the market. On the other side there is usually a lot of mistrust since Ripple does not only claim to be a working distributed exchange (which it is!) but also that there is a currency implemented that is used to fund a company instead of just taking a fixed cut (something that is not really possible for distributed exchanges...) from trades.

Someday there may be Bitcoin banks too but the difference between Bitcoin and the existing banking system is you can "opt out".  You don't have to use exchanges, and you don't have to use future Bitcoin banks.  The core network remains open and anyone can choose to be a node.  With Ripple the entire network is proprietary, closed source, and centrally controlled.  Nodes only run closed source code owned by OpenCoin, Inc and operate with the express limited permission of the owner.   There is no way to "opt out" other than never use it.  

[Sukrim]

So once the code is open sourced, you'll admit that Ripple is as open as Bitcoin? After all, anyone then could run their own validator if they are so inclined (though that is not too useful in some cases)...

I'm wondering where you get these statements like "Nodes only run closed source code owned by OpenCoin, Inc and operate with the express limited permission of the owner." from... please quote the section from the LICENSE file that says so as you apparently have different information than I have.