Ripple starts to conquer the world from China

[dmatthewstewart]

Lets just be honest with ourselves here...Ripple is not "conquering" anything.

Principals and other investors have had to spend a lot of time fraudulently creating demand (ie posting threads all over offering to pay top dollar for it, taking a loss now hoping it will pay off later). Unfortunately, they do not understand basic economics.

Lets do a test...for the Pro-Ripple crowd.

1) What is the outcome of buying at an artificially inflated cost?

2) If the coin/payment system gains some traction in a certain geographical region, how does that benefit a market without borders? Just having a lot of people take interest is not enough to sustain it. After all, those with the most interest in XRP are artificially inflating the price. So what happens? (Hint: its a multi-step process with more than two steps but les than 4)

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[AmazonStuff]

Ripple will be the network of all networks...

Ripple Bridge Protocol

A bridge protocol is an addition to RTXP that allows payments from Ripple to external networks. For example, the Bitcoin Bridge allows Ripple payments to be sent to any Bitcoin address. Other bridges are being developed, including an email bridge, a SMS bridge, and a bank-account bridge. Ultimately, bridge protocols will allow Ripple payments to be sent to any kind of account.

[bibbit]

2) If the coin/payment system gains some traction in a certain geographical region, how does that benefit a market without borders?

If the system gains good traction in a certain geographical area that is the destination for substantial flows of remittances, then this will encourage those sending the remittances from outside the area to adopt the system as well.

Since China is the thread topic, consider it: China is #2 for remittances at $66 Billion USD per year in 2012 (http://english.cri.cn/6826/2013/08/07/2702s780437.htm discusses this). Ripple in China is also taking off.

Since Ripple has currency conversion built in, a Chinese worker in the US could be paid direct deposit at a US bank, have a effortless ACH transfer to their USD Ripple gateway (Say, snapswap.us or an upcoming one), then use Ripple to send CNY to their family in China, who use either rippleCN or Ripple China as CNY gateways.

Large Chinese uptake of Ripple makes it a no-brainer for ex-pat Chinese nationals to start using the system to send money home. At no point in this process do they need to care about the XRP's capability to "hold value" as a currency for longer than it takes to perform the transaction. If there is a good market for CNY-rippleCN/USD-SnapSwap or CNY-RippleChina/USD-SnapSwap, the conversion might not even pass through XRP as an intermediary.

China is only the #2 remittance market, but there are many others. All are fertile ground for adoption, and growth in one country will prompt growth in others as network effects take hold.    

[DeathAndTaxes]

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.

When the source code is available and it is issued under an open source license with redistribution, modification, and derivative work rights then yes I will consider it an open network.  Of course I don't think that will happen.  OpenCoin is already backing off from having source code available by the end of the year.  OpenCoin sole when to monetize this is to sell off the coins they have given themselves.  An open source version will inevitably spawn a fork/alt which has no premine there will be no open source servers.

[sublime5447]

I dont care if it is open source or not. What kills me is it doesn't do anything it doesn't solve one problem. It is a little reading but i thought the responses by Joel katz (I believe a developer on the ripple project.) where very interesting. Looks to me like even he admits ripple doesnt work.

 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=290914.msg3124372#msg3124372 here is the thread.

here is a quote

Quote from: JoelKatz on Today at 04:46:07 PM
Quote from: sublime5447 on Today at 03:53:44 PM


you are letting you bias against paypal influence your thinking. It might be hard for you to figure out a system to trade bitcoin it wouldnt be a problem for paypal, but would make ripple totally irrelevant.

"Quite the contrary, that would be great for Ripple. Ripple currently has the same problem Bitcoin does -- it's hard to get fiat money into and out of the system because of exactly the problems I'm trying to draw attention to here -- it's hard to mix soft money and hard money systems. If people could easily buy and sell Bitcoins, that would make it much easier for them to get money into and out of Ripple because Bitcoins are hard money."



Does anyone else find this laughable? ripple was sold as an easier way to get bitcoin!

If people can just buy bitcoin they wouldn't have any need for ripple!

Any fool can see that.

[AmazonStuff]

I dont care if it is open source or not. What kills me is it doesn't do anything it doesn't solve one problem. It is a little reading but i thought the responses by Joel katz (I believe a developer on the ripple project.) where very interesting. Looks to me like even he admits ripple doesnt work.

 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=290914.msg3124372#msg3124372 here is the thread.

here is a quote

Quote from: JoelKatz on Today at 04:46:07 PM
Quote from: sublime5447 on Today at 03:53:44 PM


you are letting you bias against paypal influence your thinking. It might be hard for you to figure out a system to trade bitcoin it wouldnt be a problem for paypal, but would make ripple totally irrelevant.

"Quite the contrary, that would be great for Ripple. Ripple currently has the same problem Bitcoin does -- it's hard to get fiat money into and out of the system because of exactly the problems I'm trying to draw attention to here -- it's hard to mix soft money and hard money systems. If people could easily buy and sell Bitcoins, that would make it much easier for them to get money into and out of Ripple because Bitcoins are hard money."



Does anyone else find this laughable? ripple was sold as an easier way to get bitcoin!

If people can just buy bitcoin they wouldn't have any need for ripple!

Any fool can see that.

You are mixing Ripple network with XRP, those are two separate entities, read my previous post and you will see why it will be easier to buy btc via Ripple network.

[sublime5447]

what now? link? This is the first I am hearing of this XRP is not the symbol for ripple? 

[hennessyhemp]

Ripple and Bitcoin are both still very early on in their development...like Apple in the 80's.  Joel Katz has stated he would consider it a personal failure if they do not release some of the code to be available as open source before the end of the year (if memory serves...someone else can probably find you the thread where he said that).

My take is XRP is hanging in the background for now until Liberty Reserve and BTC legal issues are clarified prior to really making it a big deal (especially with investors on US soil).  The Ripple network is a pretty cool concept, and they've done a beautiful job putting it together.  I think Ripple may fill in where BTC and Paypal fall short...or at least that is the intention.  

I do think it is prudent to recognize the misrepresentation of the concept as Open source using the "OpenCoin" moniker.  That is downright misleading until source code is view-able on github.  I have my doubts and my hopes, but in the end...Google is behind some of it, so I feel strongly it will be more than it is now, soon.

what now? link? This is the first I am hearing of this XRP is not the symbol for ripple?  

I believe he is trying to make the distinction that you don't necessarily need xrp to use Ripple's network...at least that's the theory.

[sublime5447]

Ripple and Bitcoin are both still very early on in their development...like Apple in the 80's.  Joel Katz has stated he would consider it a personal failure if they do not release some of the code to be available as open source before the end of the year (if memory serves...someone else can probably find you the thread where he said that).

My take is XRP is hanging in the background for now until Liberty Reserve and BTC legal issues are clarified prior to really making it a big deal (especially with investors on US soil).  The Ripple network is a pretty cool concept, and they've done a beautiful job putting it together.  I think Ripple may fill in where BTC and Paypal fall short...or at least that is the intention.  

I do think it is prudent to recognize the misrepresentation of the concept as Open source using the "OpenCoin" moniker.  That is downright misleading until source code is view-able on github.  I have my doubts and my hopes, but in the end...Google is behind some of it, so I feel strongly it will be more than it is now, soon.

what now? link? This is the first I am hearing of this XRP is not the symbol for ripple?  

I believe he is trying to make the distinction that you don't necessarily need xrp to use Ripple's network...at least that's the theory.

It is a trust network as I understand it right? Trust: 19: -0 / +23(23 I already have one of those.

[ronimacarroni]

Can anyone tell me how this thing works?
I looked at the wikipedia article and it basically says its a debt based cryptocurrency that you can trade for social points.
Like wtf if that supposed to mean.

[sublime5447]

No one cant tell you how it works because it doesn't. i think it boils down to a trust network.

[yvv]

No one cant tell you how it works because it doesn't. i think it boils down to a trust network.

It works, very simple way. Currently very unstable though. Just try it, it does not cost too much.

[Sukrim]

Can anyone tell me how this thing works?
I looked at the wikipedia article and it basically says its a debt based cryptocurrency that you can trade for social points.
Like wtf if that supposed to mean.

No one cant tell you how it works because it doesn't. i think it boils down to a trust network.

You can look through Ripple's wiki (https://ripple.com/wiki/Main_Page) and yes, it does work.

Anyways, the main analogue that I usually use for Bitcoin is gold (something that has very little value in itself but that is useful for store of wealth because it is perceived by others the same).
For Ripple I usually use the banking network (= you have an account at your home bank and can receive ACHs from any other bank in the world that in the end gets added to your balance on your account. This balance is money that is DEBT from your bank towards you, also called "IOUs" ("I owe you"s)).

In Ripple you would have an account at a gateway, which is a money processor that can pay you money that you receive in your Ripple account and take money and credit it to your ripple account. Whenever someone on Ripple sends you money, in the end it will be converted to a balance of IOUs that you accept (typically the ones from your gateway, as you know these can be redeemed).

Trust lines in Ripple are used to tell the network which IOUs you accept and to which amount. This is not really modelled in the example, but you could for example think of a scenario where you might open a second bank account, once you have one filled with 100k USD, to always be FDIC insured - so your implicit limit towards one bank would be 100k USD. Ripple makes these limits explicit.

The biggest problem for OpenCoin as operators of this network is now, how to earn money from this without limiting users what they can do with it. In the bank network, banks simply charge fees in their own IOUs (e.g. you have to pay 10 cents per ACH) and pay the international networks (e.g. SWIFT or SEPA) some basic fee. This would mean that OpenCoin would need to charge each gateway all around the world some money that in the end needs to somehow end up on THEIR bank account (probably in USD) as they want to eat too.

The road that they took (and which is criticised a lot here) is that they introduced an "intermediate" currency - XRP. These are (like Bitcoins) completely arbitrary and worthless, but adhering to certain rules and also useful - so they might have some value. Contrary to BTC, which were designed to be given away as randomly as possible to anyone in the world, XRP were given to OpenCoin and are to be sold or given away from a centralized source. This way, they don't have to care about if someone issues IOUs in some currency that they don't even want (e.g. EUR), because if OpenCoin just took a flat 0.01% fee for example, they would end up with all kinds of different balances, like you having hundreds of tiny bank accounts at hundreds of different banks all with a handful of USD, EUR, GBP, CNY, BTC and whatnot in them.

All in all Ripple is a decentralized exchange, their business model is making money from selling their internal funny money and their product is rippled (the currently not publicly available server software used to verify transactions) and clients and libraries interfacing with rippled (these are open source and available on github).

If you have more concrete questions, please feel free to ask, maybe in a seperate thread, as this one is more about Ripple being used more and more in China.

[AmazonStuff]

Easiest Ripple definition:
Ripple Network -  Any Currency Exchange P2P Network
XRP - liquidity based currency

[sublime5447]

"Any Currency Exchange P2P Network" 

I buy and sell P2P everyday. I am not part of the ripple network.

[Sukrim]

I guess (s)he meant: "A P2P network where you can exchange arbitrary/any currencies"

[bibbit]

Can anyone tell me how this thing works?
I looked at the wikipedia article and it basically says its a debt based cryptocurrency that you can trade for social points.
Like wtf if that supposed to mean.

No one cant tell you how it works because it doesn't. i think it boils down to a trust network.

It does involve trust, in the same way that trading on a Bitcoin exchange involves trusting the exchange.

Start by considering how Bitcoin exchanges involve trust, and then build from there. JoelKatz said it really well on the Ripple forum in December 2012 (why exchange rates in the example are dated):

Think about how existing Bitcoin exchanges work. I deposit $100 in the exchange, and the exchange now owes me $100. You deposit 8 Bitcoins in the exchange, and the exchange now owes you 8 Bitcoins. To do the actual exchange, you and I exchange IOUs. Now the exchange owes you $100 and owes me 8 Bitcoins. We both redeem our IOUs, and I have exchanged dollars for Bitcoins and you have exchanged Bitcoins for dollars.

You have a deposit step, an exchange, and then a withdrawal step. The actual *exchange* is an exchange of IOUs.

The difference is that Ripple functions as a distributed exchange, so that the parties in the trade can trust different exchanges (gateways) while not needing to trust the exchange (gateway) that is trusted by their trading partner. If there is either a trust pathway between their respective gateways, or a conversion pathway through XRP, then the transaction can happen.

Not only is the exchange distributed, but you are not limited to the types of currencies supported by their gateway. With Bitcoin, you are limited by what your particular exchange supports. Just like you would trust a Bitcoin exchange to hold a certain amount of your fiat currency and cryptocoins, you would trust a Ripple gateway to do the same. You don't have to expose yourself by trusting unknown or untrusted gateways to use the system.

If you hold all of your Bitcoins yourself, and only pay directly without using an exchange, Ripple might not be for you. However, if you are comfortable trading on Bitcoin exchanges, you have already decided to trust and should be comfortable using Ripple. You just need to find a gateway that you trust. Bitstamp might be a good place to start, since you probably already have an opinion of it if you use Bitcoin.

[sublime5447]

Like I said we already have a distributed exchange where i can trust different entities.

See Trust: 19: -0 / +23(23)

[AmazonStuff]

Like I said we already have a distributed exchange where i can trust different entities.

See Trust: 19: -0 / +23(23)

Saying that Ripple network is a trust network is like saying that swiss knife is a bottle opener, it's better to say that bottle opening is one of it's features. Point is in p2p, as long as Bitcoin Exchanges are websites every single one of them could be closed very fast if bitcoin is declared illegal by some government. On the other hand, if exchanges are integrated into p2p network, just like it's done in Ripple network, it's really complicated for anyone to shut it down, just look at torrent network, it's still alive, every government in the world wants to close it, but no one has the tools for that job. Ripple is the best complementary tool for Bitcoin, if it succeed, it will make Bitcoin bulletproof.

[Sukrim]

Like I said we already have a distributed exchange where i can trust different entities.

See Trust: 19: -0 / +23(23)

a web of trust is maybe a part of a distributed exchange but not all of it. You don't have a balance for example, so you need to look for and set up trades manually + both partners need to be online at about the same time. Also transactions that involve more than one trade are even harder. Lastly, there is not even an order book.

If you use the web of trust here as a distributed exchange, you're gonna have a bad time. It's not even the point of the system here to be an exchange mechanism, it's used to detect fraud and reward people who could be trusted.
Look at my rating for example - I did only few trades here and way before this rating was introduced, so I have little to show even though I'm a part of this community for over 2 years already and traded more bitcoins than some newbies with high ratings.

Trust in ripple does not work like in this forum by the way, a typical user only ever needs to trust a single gateway.