Ripple Q & A @ Joel Katz and Ripple inc.

[sublime5447]

Disclaimer *I have never used ripple and have found it to be confusing, I dont know the details of how the system works.*


Joel I have a few questions for you and the development team. I know that you know I have been somewhat hostile toward ripple and to be honest you personally, but i want to clear the air and talk about this project and discuses how it is implemented, its attributes and shortcomings. I do admire the project if for no other fact than that you boys realize that money is and has always been an IOU. Many PhD's of economics don't understand the credit theory of money and even more financial advisers, so kudos to you on that. Money is and has always been a promise. I dont know if you are aware that I have been selling coins for the last year for reversible methods? I think of it as buying and selling trust, I believe that the only way for bitcoin to work is through a trust network. Which is very much in line with what i understand of the Ripple network. So here are a few questions that I have, and please anyone that has input feel free to interject.

*First how can a centralized institution ever be secure? We have seen the problems that bitcoin has encountered and watched bitinstant, liberty reserve and Mt Gox all cave under the regulatory pressures from the US government. What would make ripple any different? It is all in one spot if they wanted to shut you down it wouldnt be much of a problem they just show up at your office and pull the plug.

*How can we trust Ripple? You own the servers and issue the currency. How could we ever know that there is not a backdoor that would allow the dev. to create currency at will?

*Why cant you import trust? One of the most aggravating things for me when i decided to join the bitcoin community is that no one would look at outside factors in gauging my trustworthiness. The ass hats in OTC gave me an insanely hard time and wouldnt accept any information that I provided to support my reputation. The best indication of future behavior is past behavior. If you want to build a trust network then people should be able to import trust from other sites. I trust someone who has 5000 online ebay sales with 100 percent positive feedback. Why couldnt you import that trust and let people choose to accept or deny it?

*Why dont you offer ID verification? Someones willingness to Id goes a long way in establishing their credibility. Anonymity and trustworthiness do not go together

*Isnt the only real benefit to ripple over the trust system here on bitcoin talk is that it allows you to borrow from people who trust people that you trust?

*You have said that the problem with ripple at the moment is the same problem BTC has in that it is very difficult to get fiat in and out of the system, Why? If it is a system based on trust why wouldnt you let people import any kinds of funds they like. Why not let people import debit card, credit card and PP funds? Label the type of funds and let people choose if they are willing to transact for them?

*Who owns it and what are their motives? What is the mission statement?

*Dont you think that instead of using ripple if you let each user have their own currency the system would work much better? For instance I would have Chris North coins and You would have a Joel Katz coins and based on your assets and credibility the valuation would change? That way instead of blindly trusting people that the people I trust trust, instead there would transparency. The way that is set up now doesnt take into account that some people are a better judge of credibility than others. I dont want to trust people just because you do you might not be any good at assessing trustworthiness.


*My goal with digital currency is to defund the governments of the world, I have lost faith in the idea of bitcoin because i dont see any real advantages that it offers that will appeal to the masses. I realize it has some benefits but the average person is not gonna go out and start using coins. They dont know or care about the monetary system. The reasons to use bitcoin is not important to the average person. For it to gain widespread adoption it has to be better than what is already in place and it simply isn't and I dont really see how it can be. How can ripple change that?

*If someone is my trust network establishes a lot of trust then borrows from everyone in the network and cuts and runs can I lose out?

I have more questions and suggestions but I think this is a good start.    
    



    

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[JoelKatz]

*First how can a centralized institution ever be secure? We have seen the problems that bitcoin has encountered and watched bitinstant, liberty reserve and Mt Gox all cave under the regulatory pressures from the US government. What would make ripple any different? It is all in one spot if they wanted to shut you down it wouldnt be much of a problem they just show up at your office and pull the plug.

That won't do anything. The software is out there. Right now, we do run all the validators that people use, but if we disappeared, others would do so. One of our top priorities now is to distribute the set of validators and set up an infrastructure to make that self-regulating and decentralized.

*How can we trust Ripple? You own the servers and issue the currency. How could we ever know that there is not a backdoor that would allow the dev. to create currency at will?

Every ledger is signed by every validator every few seconds. Every ledger includes a tree that justifies any changes in the main portion of the ledger. If someone's XRP balance increases, there must be a metadata entry justifying that change, or everyone in the world has proof Ripple has, through bug, subterfuge, or glitch, violated the rules.

Every ledger has two halves, a state half and a change half. Any changes to the state half (other than trivial changes to indexing and so on) must be justified by a signed transaction in the change half. If not, everyone will have proof that Ripple violated its invariants somehow. Any change that "disadvantages" someone must be justified by a transaction they signed. Any increase in XRP must be justified by a matching decrease (there is no way to create additional XRP beyond what exists in the genesis ledger). And so on.

We had to design the system so that people could trust it even after it was decentralized. We have no secrets. The source code is available. If we got anything wrong, we'll do our best to fix it.

*Why cant you import trust? One of the most aggravating things for me when i decided to join the bitcoin community is that no one would look at outside factors in gauging my trustworthiness. The ass hats in OTC gave me an insanely hard time and wouldnt accept any information that I provided to support my reputation. The best indication of future behavior is past behavior. If you want to build a trust network then people should be able to import trust from other sites. I trust someone who has 5000 online ebay sales with 100 percent positive feedback. Why couldnt you import that trust and let people choose to accept or deny it?

Speaking for myself personally, I think community/personal credit may be Ripple's killer app over the long term. But we don't quite understand how to manage it yet. Hopefully the community will help us figure out the best way to do this.

*Why dont you offer ID verification? Someones willingness to Id goes a long way in establishing their credibility. Anonymity and trustworthiness do not go together

That is definitely planned. We're working on a decentralized ID verification scheme.

*Isnt the only real benefit to ripple over the trust system here on bitcoin talk is that it allows you to borrow from people who trust people that you trust?

No. Ripple has many other benefits, such as direct access to market makers for cross-currency payments and the ability to shift balances without having to go to or through the issuer.

*You have said that the problem with ripple at the moment is the same problem BTC has in that it is very difficult to get fiat in and out of the system, Why? If it is a system based on trust why wouldnt you let people import any kinds of funds they like. Why not let people import debit card, credit card and PP funds? Label the type of funds and let people choose if they are willing to transact for them?

We'd love for people to do those things! Anyone can introduce arbitrary assets onto the Ripple network and everybody gets to choose which assets they consider valuable. That's what it's for.

*Who owns it and what are their motives? What is the mission statement?

I'm not sure what you're asking. If you mean the Ripple protocol, nobody. If you mean the Ripple network, all the participants own their respective devices. We have no desire to control or own the protocol or the network.

*Dont you think that instead of using ripple if you let each user have their own currency the system would work much better? For instance I would have Chris North coins and You would have a Joel Katz coins and based on your assets and credibility the valuation would change? That way instead of blindly trusting people that the people I trust trust, instead there would transparency. The way that is set up now doesnt take into account that some people are a better judge of credibility than others. I dont want to trust people just because you do you might not be any good at assessing trustworthiness.

That's what Ripple does. Anyone can issue an asset. Anyone can agree to accept any asset they want. The whole point of Ripple is to make payments work *without* any transitive trust.

Let's say you have a bank and I have a bank. You trust your bank to hold you money. I trust my bank to hold my money. If I want to pay you $50, I write you a check for $50. You don't trust me or my bank, but because that check allows your bank to owe you $50 more, you consider me to have paid you $50. You don't trust anyone but your bank. I don't trust anyone but mine. In the middle, either people who trust both banks, someone who is willing to trade dollars for XRP, or some other path makes the payment work. That's Ripple's big idea.

*My goal with digital currency is to defund the governments of the world, I have lost faith in the idea of bitcoin because i dont see any real advantages that it offers that will appeal to the masses. I realize it has some benefits but the average person is not gonna go out and start using coins. They dont know or care about the monetary system. The reasons to use bitcoin is not important to the average person. For it to gain widespread adoption it has to be better than what is already in place and it simply isn't and I dont really see how it can be. How can ripple change that?

One big advantage is that it gives people currency choice. If Ripple takes over the world, you can get paid in local currency and receive dollars. When you buy groceries, you can spend dollars and the grocer receives local currency. That means you don't hold local currency, so your government can't inflate it our from under you. Don't like dollars? Hold gold. Like Bitcoins? Hold them.

*If someone is my trust network establishes a lot of trust then borrows from everyone in the network and cuts and runs can I lose out?

No, you can only lose out if someone you choose to trust defaults on you for an amount equal to or less than the amount you trusted them to hold on your behalf. Payment paths only exist instantaneously while a payment is made. After that, there are only balances on trust lines that people have specifically chosen to create.

[sublime5447]

Do ripple developers have any plans of offering insured transactions? That is what will make this work.  


Is that you or Jerry Garcia?  

Sorry I still have not figured out how to quote properly

"That won't do anything. The software is out there. Right now, we do run all the validators that people use, but if we disappeared, others would do so. One of our top priorities now is to distribute the set of validators and set up an infrastructure to make that self-regulating and decentralized."

How will people get paid for doing that work?

[JoelKatz]

Do ripple developers have any plans of offering insured transactions? That is what will make this work.

No, but there are other people who have that idea. Watch for announcements.

Is that you or Jerry Garcia?

Haha.

Sorry I still have not figured out how to quote properly

It's pretty easy, you just put "quote" before the quote (in square brackets) and "/quote" after it, also in square brackets.

"That won't do anything. The software is out there. Right now, we do run all the validators that people use, but if we disappeared, others would do so. One of our top priorities now is to distribute the set of validators and set up an infrastructure to make that self-regulating and decentralized."

How will people get paid for doing that work?

That would be up to the community to decide. It's certainly possible that without us to back it, Ripple would wither and die. That's probably true right now. But that also will change over time as more and more people have a vested interest in seeing Ripple succeed because it solves problems for them. If Ripple doesn't solve real world problems that real people have, it doesn't much matter if it goes away. If it does, then those people will have an incentive to sustain it.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

We had to design the system so that people could trust it even after it was decentralized. We have no secrets. The source code is available. If we got anything wrong, we'll do our best to fix it.

Ripple isn't and can't be decentralized, it's distributed. For Ripple to work, the majority of the users must have somewhat similar validators in their UNLs.

https://ripple.com/validators.txt

n9KPnVLn7ewVzHvn218DcEYsnWLzKerTDwhpofhk4Ym1RUq4TeGw    RIP1
n9LFzWuhKNvXStHAuemfRKFVECLApowncMAM5chSCL9R5ECHGN4V    RIP2
n94rSdgTyBNGvYg8pZXGuNt59Y5bGAZGxbxyvjDaqD9ceRAgD85P    RIP3
n9LeQeDcLDMZKjx1TZtrXoLBLo5q1bR1sUQrWG7tEADFU6R27UBp    RIP4
n9KF6RpvktjNs2MDBkmxpJbup4BKrKeMKDXPhaXkq7cKTwLmWkFr    RIP5

You can't get rid of OpenCoin and have a functioning Ripple, even the wiki admits that:

If everyone chooses a completely disparate sets of validators the network will be unlikely to reach consensus that a particular version of the ledger is the one true and accurate ledger.

[sublime5447]

 validators in their UNLs?   In layman's terms?

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

validators in their UNLs?   In layman's terms?

Validators verify transactions are valid and resolve double spends. They're like miners in Bitcoin, however instead of mining being "I say X and here's my proof of work to back it up, send my coinbase (block reward) to [address]", it is "I say X and I'm OpenCoin, and I already mined all the XRPs.".

UNLs stand for Unique Node List. Only nodes can have a UNL. They're the list of validators you trust to not defraud or conspire against you.

If you use ripple.com/client, you're not a node, you're just a light client.

[sublime5447]

validators in their UNLs?   In layman's terms?

Validators verify transactions are valid and resolve double spends. They're like miners in Bitcoin, however instead of mining being "I say X and here's my proof of work to back it up", it is "I say X and I'm OpenCoin".

UNLs stand for Unique Node List. Only nodes can have a UNL. They're the list of validators you trust to not defraud or conspire against you.

If you use ripple.com/client, you're not a node, you're just a light client.

Couldnt i just become a verifyer and and say I am opencoin? and if enough people did that wouldn't it become decentralized?

Wouldnt it go from people saying I am opencoin to we are opencoin?

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

validators in their UNLs?   In layman's terms?

Validators verify transactions are valid and resolve double spends. They're like miners in Bitcoin, however instead of mining being "I say X and here's my proof of work to back it up", it is "I say X and I'm OpenCoin".

UNLs stand for Unique Node List. Only nodes can have a UNL. They're the list of validators you trust to not defraud or conspire against you.

If you use ripple.com/client, you're not a node, you're just a light client.

Couldnt i just become a verifyer and and say I am opencoin? and if enough people did that wouldn't it become decentralized?

Wouldnt it go from people saying I am opencoin to we are opencoin?

You can run your own validator, but do you have the private key corresponding to ripple.com/validators.txt?

If your validator doesn't include OpenCoin nodes in it's UNL, you will end up with a fork / different ledger.

If your validator does include OpenCoin nodes in it's UNL, you're simply an extension of OpenCoin's nodes.

In either case, good luck getting people to add your node when the default validators are opencoin and 99+% of Ripple users use ripple.com/client and is unable to choose their own validators.

[JoelKatz]

Ripple isn't and can't be decentralized, it's distributed. For Ripple to work, the majority of the users must have somewhat similar validators in their UNLs.

They must be somewhat similar, that's true. But Bitcoin only works if everyone has the same blockchain and the same rules to decide what constitutes a valid block, but since nobody gets to unilaterally decide what the blockchain is or force a blockchain that violates the rules on others, it's still decentralized. It is absolutely true that for X to use the system to pay Y, X and Y must be on the same ledger. But no entity gets to decide what the ledger is and the ledger can only transition based on defined rules that nobody can unilaterally change.

Whether a system is decentralized or not is a question of how its administrative functions work. By "administrative functions", I mean things that most people cannot do but that some entities have a special power to do. If it's "decentralized" then no single entity or small group of people can unilaterally seize administrative power. Bitcoin is decentralized in this way because it basically has no administrative functions other than changing the rules, and no single entity can change the rules. The community has to agree to change the rules for that to happen. Ripple was designed to be decentralized in this sense, but isn't quite yet because a single entity controls all the validators most people trust. We absolutely agree that we don't want things to stay that way. Once we get distributed validators, then it will be essentially impossible to provide any kind of administrative control without getting a large number of entities to agree.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Ripple isn't and can't be decentralized, it's distributed. For Ripple to work, the majority of the users must have somewhat similar validators in their UNLs.

They must be somewhat similar, that's true. But Bitcoin only works if everyone has the same blockchain and the same rules to decide what constitutes a valid block, but since nobody gets to unilaterally decide what the blockchain is or force a blockchain that violates the rules on others, it's still decentralized. It is absolutely true that for X to use the system to pay Y, X and Y must be on the same ledger. But no entity gets to decide what the ledger is and the ledger can only transition based on defined rules that nobody can unilaterally change.

Are you seriously saying that when OpenCoin unilaterally changed account reserve requirements, which is akin to Federal Reserve tampering with interest rates?

{
    "Account" : "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhoLvTp",
    "Fee" : "0",
    "Sequence" : 0,
    "SigningPubKey" : "",
    "TransactionType" : "SetFee",
    "hash" : "C6A40F56127436DCD830B1B35FF939FD05B5747D30D6542572B7A835239817AF",
    "ledger_index" : 562177,
}

Decentralized - OpenCoin unilaterally changed account reserve requirements.

Bitcoin will work if I have completely different nodes with someone else as long as we're on the same blockchain. It's not the same with Ripple.

Whether a system is decentralized or not is a question of how its administrative functions work. By "administrative functions", I mean things that most people cannot do but that some entities have a special power to do. If it's "decentralized" then no single entity or small group of people can unilaterally seize administrative power. Bitcoin is decentralized in this way because it basically has no administrative functions other than changing the rules, and no single entity can change the rules. The community has to agree to change the rules for that to happen. Ripple was designed to be decentralized in this sense, but isn't quite yet because a single entity controls all the validators most people trust. We absolutely agree that we don't want things to stay that way. Once we get distributed validators, then it will be essentially impossible to provide any kind of administrative control without getting a large number of entities to agree.

Tell me how I can print 100 billion XRPs.

[JoelKatz]

Are you seriously saying that when OpenCoin unilaterally changed account reserve requirements, which is akin to Federal Reserve tampering with interest rates?

OpenCoin holds a majority of validators right now. I'm sure Satoshi made any number of changes to Bitcoin before it was open source. We genuinely don't want this power because others legitimately perceive it as a risk, and changing this is one of our priorities now. We designed the system to be decentralized and are working to get it there.

Bitcoin will work if I have completely different nodes with someone else as long as we're on the same blockchain. It's not the same with Ripple.

So will Ripple. Nodes you connect to don't effect the data you see. You just need to be on the same ledger. I think our consensus scheme has a lot of advantages over Bitcoin's proof of work scheme, but one thing that is a disadvantage is that you need to maintain (or trust some other people to maintain on your behalf) lists of validators that you are willing to trust not to collude against you. We've been working on ways to make this as painless and secure as possible without compromising decentralization. It is a challenge.

Tell me how I can print 100 billion XRPs.

Tell me how I can choose the Bitcoin genesis block, mining algorithm, or reward schedule. These systems are built under some entity's control and then that entity releases it into the wild such that it can never be imprisoned again.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Whether a system is decentralized or not is a question of how its administrative functions work. By "administrative functions", I mean things that most people cannot do but that some entities have a special power to do. If it's "decentralized" then no single entity or small group of people can unilaterally seize administrative power. Bitcoin is decentralized in this way because it basically has no administrative functions other than changing the rules, and no single entity can change the rules. The community has to agree to change the rules for that to happen. Ripple was designed to be decentralized in this sense, but isn't quite yet because a single entity controls all the validators most people trust. We absolutely agree that we don't want things to stay that way. Once we get distributed validators, then it will be essentially impossible to provide any kind of administrative control without getting a large number of entities to agree.

Decentralization is not a boolean. When you have "11 out of 20 entities" must agree (or 1 out of 1 entities like now), is that really decentralized when you compare it to Bitcoin's "6601 out of 13200 entities" must agree?

For distributed validators, people must be able to choose their own validators. Do you agree? Will the Ripple web client provide an interface to choose validators?

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Tell me how I can print 100 billion XRPs.

Tell me how I can choose the Bitcoin genesis block, mining algorithm, or reward schedule. These systems are built under some entity's control and then that entity releases it into the wild such that it can never be imprisoned again.

The Bitcoin genesis block was intentionally unspendable - it is not added to the list of outputs, and Bitcoin clients will reject any transactions that tries so.

Please make your genesis XRPs unspendable, or stop comparing apples to oranges. Your ending sentence is irrelevant as I have never challenged that aspect.

[JoelKatz]

Decentralization is not a boolean. When you have "11 out of 20 entities" must agree (or 1 out of 1 entities like now), is that really decentralized when you compare it to Bitcoin's "6600 out of 13200 entities" must agree?

I agree. Ripple was designed to be decentralized and is not really all the way there yet.

The Bitcoin genesis block was intentionally unspendable - it is not added to the list of outputs, and Bitcoin clients will reject any transactions that tries so.

Please make your genesis XRPs unspendable, or stop comparing apples to oranges.

I'm making a genuine attempt to discuss issues with you honestly. If you aren't going to do the same, I'll stop wasting my time. The issue was administrative control and decentralization. You raised a criticism that Ripple cannot be decentralized which I rebutted it by pointing out that it's the norm that some entity holds administrative control over a system until it's decentralized. You are welcome to defend your claim or acknowledge that it's incorrect. Then you are welcome to move onto something else. But you are *not* welcome to change the subject when your claims are refuted and ignore the fact that they were refuted.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

I'm making a genuine attempt to discuss issues with you honestly. If you aren't going to do the same, I'll stop wasting my time. The issue was administrative control. You raised a legitimate point and I rebutted it. You are welcome to defend your claim or acknowledge that it's incorrect. Then you are welcome to move onto something else. But you are *not* welcome to change the subject when your claims are refuted and ignore the fact that they were refuted.

I agree. You're claiming that Ripple is decentralized because no single entity has administrative control. That is true, however I disagree on that no single entity having total control makes it decentralized:

Decentralization is not a boolean. When you have "11 out of 20 entities" must agree (or 1 out of 1 entities like now), is that really decentralized when you compare it to Bitcoin's "6600 out of 13200 entities" must agree?

Having multiple validators does make it more decentralized compared to one, but it is hardly decentralized when you compare it to something else.

[sublime5447]

This conversation has become way to technical for me. Please give an analogy. Laymens terms guys. We know that the two of you get please include the rest of us.

I dont see any reason that a centralized system can become decentralized.  TF it sounds like the man is saying that yes they control the network for now but are working to change that.

I know you say the wiki says it isnt possible but is also says it is closed source, which as of today is not true  

[sublime5447]

Having multiple validators does make it more decentralized compared to one, but it is hardly decentralized when you compare it to something else

At one point bitcoin was 5 nerds building a network no network starts off decentralized
  


^ what am I doing wrong? quote in square brackets before and after the first line only yields this result

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Having multiple validators does make it more decentralized compared to one, but it is hardly decentralized when you compare it to something else

At one point bitcoin was 5 nerds building a network no network starts off decentralized

That's true, but how is Ripple going to be decentralized?

Take the barrier of entry. The Bitcoin network has a very low barrier to entry, being that if you run Bitcoin-Qt, the recommended client of that time, you are now part of the network. The current recommended client on Bitcoin.org, MultiBit still makes you part of the network. With Ripple, the recommended client, ripple.com/client does not make you part of the network, and does not allow you to choose your own validators. Ripple inherently favors centralization.

Next, assuming you've built Rippled and you've configured it to become a validator. At this point in time, you have no actual power over the ripple consensus system. Users must add your node to their UNL. However, if they do not have OpenCoin nodes in their UNL and you do not too, then you will end up with a fragmented network. This is purely academic as the majority of Ripple users are using the web client, which does not give them the ability to choose their own validators.

At the heart of Ripple, it is about having trusted third parties validate transactions and prevent double spends. JoelKatz is arguing that Ripple is decentralized because there will not be a central entity that will have administrative control over the Ripple network, however the Ripple structure inherently favors more centralization, especially with the light client situation.

I also believe that a trust free solution is inherently more decentralized than a solution that requires trust, even if granting trust is decentralized (which isn't with Ripple at it's current stage).

I'd like to the abstract of the Bitcoin paper, note the last line:

Abstract.
A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online
payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a
financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main
benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending.

A false comparison would be saying that Bitcoin requires trusting numerous third parties. Bitcoin does not require trusting third parities - it requires trusting cryptography (namely, SHA256 hash collisions) and cryptography exclusively. Ripple does use cryptography (like your bank uses cryptography to secure your online banking), however it still requires you to trust third parties. With commerce, you have to trust the seller that they won't defraud you, but we're talking about third parties.

It is possible to have a somewhat decentralized system that is not trust free, but that's not the case with Ripple's defaults. OpenPGP's web of trust does not have defaults, and all OpenPGP-compliant implementations include a way for you to add your own vetted certificates.

[sublime5447]

Correct me if I am wrong this stuff is admittedly over my head. I really dont care about the details of why it works just that it works. I leave it up to tech nerds to figure out the detials

But dont I have to trust miners?

And with asics coming out that are tera-hash units I dont care what anyone says having that much computing power does re-centralize a decentralized network anyone can see that cpu mining would be less centralized then asic mining and from my view point it makes it much more probable that the network could be taken over and parts of the blockchain rewritten?

So my question is dont I have to trust third party institutions like KNC to not pervert the network?       

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Correct me if I am wrong this stuff is admittedly over my head. I really dont care about the details of why it works just that it works. I leave it up to tech nerds to figure out the detials

But dont I have to trust miners?

And with asics coming out that are tera-hash units I dont care what anyone says having that much computing power does re-centralize a decentralized network anyone can see that cpu mining would be less centralized then asic mining and from my view point it makes it much more probable that the network could be taken over and parts of the blockchain rewritten?

So my question is dont I have to trust third party institutions like KNC to not pervert the network?      

No. You are not trusting miners, you are trusting the proof of work and that no hostile party will control more than 51% of the hash power.

Anyone can mine. I'm sitting by my two Avalon ASICs as we speak . You don't need to be trusted to mine, because nodes trust your cryptography and proof of work - not trust based on who you are.

This is trust on a completely different level - it is like trusting your code is free of bugs, instead of trusting Bitstamp won't defraud you.

[DeathAndTaxes]

But dont I have to trust miners?

...

So my question is dont I have to trust third party institutions like KNC to not pervert the network?       

Miners can't change the rules.  Miner can't validate invalid tx.  Miners can't simply decide to print 100 billion BTC on a whim.  The Bitcoin trust model involves more than just miners.  All full nodes independently validate transactions.  If a miner (or cartel of miners) try to break the rules their blocks/txs will simply be discarded by the rest of the network.   Miners simply resolve "disputes" in the network by selecting one tx to be canonical.   If I send 1 BTC to you and the same BTC to TradeFortress only one of those can be valid or I printed money from nothing.   Without miners your node and TradeFortresses node will never reach consensus (as it involves one of you losing 1 BTC).   Miners force that consensus because one of those double spent tx will be included in the next block and the network will then consider the other "version" as invalid.

I recommend reading the Bitcoin wiki as it outlines what miners can and can't do.  

As for specifically trusting one ASIC provide.  Well that is the elegance of the Bitcoin reward system.  There is an economic incentive to "do the right thing" and that economic incentive as it relates to ASICs has spawned a true free market of competition.  KNC doesn't have 51% of the network, nor do they have any reason to try.  They can become incredibly wealthy by simply "doing the right thing" and providing superior hardware at a price the market accepts.

[sublime5447]

Correct me if I am wrong this stuff is admittedly over my head. I really dont care about the details of why it works just that it works. I leave it up to tech nerds to figure out the detials

But dont I have to trust miners?

And with asics coming out that are tera-hash units I dont care what anyone says having that much computing power does re-centralize a decentralized network anyone can see that cpu mining would be less centralized then asic mining and from my view point it makes it much more probable that the network could be taken over and parts of the blockchain rewritten?

So my question is dont I have to trust third party institutions like KNC to not pervert the network?      

No. You are not trusting miners, you are trusting the cryptography and that no hostile party will control more than 51% of the hash power.

Anyone can mine. I'm sitting by my two Avalon ASICs as we speak . You don't need to be trusted to mine, because nodes trust your cryptography and proof of work - not trust based on who you are.

This is trust on a completely different level - it is like trusting your code is free of bugs, instead of trusting Bitstamp won't defraud you.

That is exactly my point if KNC or some other asic manufacture where to decide that it would be advantageous to control the network could they not plug in their tera-hash units and have 51 percent of the network and do as they pleased? 

[DeathAndTaxes]

That is exactly my point if KNC or some other asic manufacture where to decide that it would be advantageous to control the network could they not plug in their tera-hash units and have 51 percent of the network and do as they pleased?  

51 percent of the network doesn't allow you to "do as you please".  That is a misnomer.  

With 51% of the network they could attack Bitcoin one of two ways
a) reverse tx they CREATED (double spend)
b) prevent tx from being confirmed (denial attack)

both of which would likely do significant damage to the value of Bitcoin and thus the value of their multimillion dollar enterprise which builds .... chips that are designed solely for high speed mining.

On the other hand the network model (either directly by mining or indirectly by hardware sales) gives them the ability to make significant profits at less risk by just "doing the right thing".

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

That is exactly my point if KNC or some other asic manufacture where to decide that it would be advantageous to control the network could they not plug in their tera-hash units and have 51 percent of the network and do as they pleased?  

51 percent of the network doesn't allow you to "do as you please".  That is a misnomer.  

With 51% of the network they could attack Bitcoin one of two ways
a) reverse tx they CREATED (double spend)
b) prevent tx from being confirmed (denial attack)

both of which would likely do significant damage to the value of Bitcoin and thus the value of their multimillion dollar enterprise which builds .... chips that are designed solely for high speed mining.

On the other hand the network model (either directly by mining or indirectly by hardware sales) gives them the ability to make significant profits at less risk by just "doing the right thing".

Think about this: Why would KNC miner want to double spend or destroy the Bitcoin network when they are earning a steady stream of BTC through coinbase and transaction fees?

[sublime5447]

But dont I have to trust miners?

...

So my question is dont I have to trust third party institutions like KNC to not pervert the network?       

Miners can't change the rules.  Miner can't validate invalid tx.  Miners can't simply decide to print 100 billion BTC on a whim.  The Bitcoin trust model involves more than just miners.  All full nodes independently validate transactions.  If a miner (or cartel of miners) try to break the rules their blocks/txs will simply be discarded by the rest of the network.   Miners simply resolve "disputes" in the network by selecting one tx to be canonical.   If I send 1 BTC to you and the same BTC to TradeFortress only one of those can be valid or I printed money from nothing.   Without miners your node and TradeFortresses node will never reach consensus (as it involves one of you losing 1 BTC).   Miners force that consensus because one of those double spent tx will be included in the next block and the network will then consider the other "version" as invalid.

I recommend reading the Bitcoin wiki as it outlines what miners can and can't do.  

As for specifically trusting one ASIC provide.  Well that is the elegance of the Bitcoin reward system.  There is an economic incentive to "do the right thing" and that economic incentive as it relates to ASICs has spawned a true free market of competition.  KNC doesn't have 51% of the network, nor do they have any reason to try.  They can become incredibly wealthy by simply "doing the right thing" and providing superior hardware at a price the market accepts.

Thanks for the clarification my question would then be what if a government wanted to control the network to shut it down couldn't they go in with guns drawn and confiscate the equipment plug it in  and then create so much havoc that it collapsed the network? 

I know this is getting to the point of off topic on my own thread, but I guess the larger point to me is that all transactions require some level of trust.

Even transfers for gold or cash   

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Thanks for the clarification my question would then be what if a government wanted to control the network to shut it down couldn't they go in with guns drawn and confiscate the equipment plug it in  and then create so much havoc that it collapsed the network?  

I know this is getting to the point of off topic on my own thread, but I guess the larger point to me is that all transactions require some level of trust.

Even transfers for gold or cash  

They require different kinds of trust. Trusting cryptography versus trusting entities is like trusting physics to trusting deities.

And you're detailing a 51% attack - it's possible, but that's about a hostile government takeover instead of trusting entities or centralization vs decentralization.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Thanks for the clarification my question would then be what if a government wanted to control the network to shut it down couldn't they go in with guns drawn and confiscate the equipment plug it in  and then create so much havoc that it collapsed the network?  

Which would be easier try to find and confiscate and mine with Petahashes worth of equipment or hand a siezure warrant demanding OpenCoin turning over the private keys for the validator nodes?  For added bonus take the owners/operators away in handcuff and throw them in jail without trial under a content of court charge until they hand over the private keys.

If you are a corrupt government which would you find easier to control, manipulate, or subvert?

If you run the Ripple client you aren't part of the trust network anymore than you having a banking account makes you part of the interbank network.  Your client will accept whatever validators say are correct and the client implicitly trusts OpenCoin controlled valiators.  A single seizure warrant would give a government complete control of the Ripple network tonight with no massive hashing farm to run or the rest of a global network to compete against.   

I know this is getting to the point of off topic on my own thread, but I guess the larger point to me is that all transactions require some level of trust.

All trust is relative.  All risk is relative.  I could die tonight falling down the stairs but that doesn't mean climbing stairs is equally risky to playing with high voltage line in the rain.

[sublime5447]

I get your point

So does trusting the ripple network require the same trust as trusting the ripple currency?

edit- you where one step ahead of me. I see the answer is yes 


The one is for Joel if he decides to jump back in but anyone can interject obviously.  

Why if you can transact in the ripple network for any currency would the ripple currency itself ever become valuable and doesn't the business model require XRP to appreciate to become profitable?

[sublime5447]

"And you're detailing a 51% attack - it's possible, but that's about a hostile government takeover instead of trusting entities or centralization vs decentralization"

I cant quote to save my life 





All governments are hostile. That is the nature of government and no one has more incentive to stop it than them.

[r3wt]

Correct me if I am wrong this stuff is admittedly over my head. I really dont care about the details of why it works just that it works. I leave it up to tech nerds to figure out the detials

But dont I have to trust miners?

And with asics coming out that are tera-hash units I dont care what anyone says having that much computing power does re-centralize a decentralized network anyone can see that cpu mining would be less centralized then asic mining and from my view point it makes it much more probable that the network could be taken over and parts of the blockchain rewritten?

So my question is dont I have to trust third party institutions like KNC to not pervert the network?      

with the network currently setting at a petahash and change, your "end of the de-centralized bitcoin network" scenario seems higly unlikely. sure there will be large portions of network hash rate controlled by various large scale mining ops, but isn't that how its always been? back in may i knew a guy raking in 200+ btc a month with a 1500 ghash gpu farm. now what can he make with that? a fraction. my point being that things change so quickly, its highly unlikely that any normal human being with less than a couple million dollars could acquire enough hardware in a short enough period of time to effectively "centralize" bitcoin. i think you need to quit reading fairy tells and stick to the facts. I won't comment on ripple because frankly i have no interest in it, but i wish David and Co. all the success in the world with their endeavors.

r3wt

[sublime5447]

Correct me if I am wrong this stuff is admittedly over my head. I really dont care about the details of why it works just that it works. I leave it up to tech nerds to figure out the detials

But dont I have to trust miners?

And with asics coming out that are tera-hash units I dont care what anyone says having that much computing power does re-centralize a decentralized network anyone can see that cpu mining would be less centralized then asic mining and from my view point it makes it much more probable that the network could be taken over and parts of the blockchain rewritten?

So my question is dont I have to trust third party institutions like KNC to not pervert the network?      

with the network currently setting at a petahash and change, your "end of the de-centralized bitcoin network" scenario seems higly unlikely. sure there will be large portions of network hash rate controlled by various large scale mining ops, but isn't that how its always been? back in may i knew a guy raking in 200+ btc a month with a 1500 ghash gpu farm. now what can he make with that? a fraction. my point being that things change so quickly, its highly unlikely that any normal human being with less than a couple million dollars could acquire enough hardware in a short enough period of time to effectively "centralize" bitcoin. i think you need to quit reading fairy tells and stick to the facts. I won't comment on ripple because frankly i have no interest in it, but i wish David and Co. all the success in the world with their endeavors.

r3wt

That was my feelings when I first heard about it too, but I am starting to come around a bit. The Ripple currency it's self is not of much interest to me but the network has wild possibilities.

I have become disillusioned with bitcoin because it is so highly manipulated, is difficult to get, there are many attempts to regulate it, it is rampant with fraud, it is treated as commodity and not a currency, it has 0 potential for wide spread adoption (no mass appeal), it is not a threat to the banks or governments and I cant see how it ever will be, there is almost no p2p transactions with it, and the biggest problem I see is that it is incapable of bridging the gap between the traditional banking system and itself.

Ripple has the potential to fix a lot of those problems especially, If they are successful doing three things, 1. providing positive identification, 2. importing trust from other areas, and 3. providing insured transactions.

I need to think about it more though

I wonder what would happen if a node became to big to fail if it could create systemic failure that could create a a scenario where people in the network could lose their money due to no fault of their own?
I also wonder about its capacity to facilitate ponzi schemes?
 

     

[sublime5447]

Currency is to be spent

Money is to be saved

Right now bitcoin is a hybrid that doesnt do either well.

[sublime5447]

I also wonder about the adaptability of the trust network. For instance if a member that I trust decided that they wanted to use the ripple network for crowd funding for a highly speculative venture. If a public company did that it would more often then not be forced out into the open and I would have the opportunity to sell off my shares, but if someone did that in the ripple network it would be difficult to detect. I wonder if there could be an alert mechanism?
That could say hey this guy that you trust is engaging in risky behavior.

I am thinking out load here, just trying to run through likely scenarios     

[bitcoinBull]

Are you seriously saying that when OpenCoin unilaterally changed account reserve requirements, which is akin to Federal Reserve tampering with interest rates?

{
    "Account" : "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhoLvTp",
    "Fee" : "0",
    "Sequence" : 0,
    "SigningPubKey" : "",
    "TransactionType" : "SetFee",
    "hash" : "C6A40F56127436DCD830B1B35FF939FD05B5747D30D6542572B7A835239817AF",
    "ledger_index" : 562177,
}

Decentralized - OpenCoin unilaterally changed account reserve requirements.

The change has to be accepted by the majority of validators. You already know that, unless you didn't read the thread where you learned about that SetFee transaction.

Bitcoin will work if I have completely different nodes with someone else as long as we're on the same blockchain. It's not the same with Ripple.

No it won't, you will not be on the same blockchain if you are connected to completely different nodes. That's why the bitcoin client connects to a bootstrap IRC channel, so that everyone can connect to the same set of ip addresses. The UNL basically serves the same purpose, except where bitcoin requires hash power as a defense against an ip address Sybil attack, ripple uses an explicit list of non-colluding nodes. The function of the UNL is analogous to a miner choosing to mine at three different pools because she trusts that all three will not collude against her.

Take the barrier of entry. The Bitcoin network has a very low barrier to entry, being that if you run Bitcoin-Qt, the recommended client of that time, you are now part of the network. The current recommended client on Bitcoin.org, MultiBit still makes you part of the network. With Ripple, the recommended client, ripple.com/client does not make you part of the network, and does not allow you to choose your own validators. Ripple inherently favors centralization.

Running the bitcoin client only means you can broadcast transactions, that's somewhat shallow participation in the network (you aren't mining blocks). The ripple client has a setting in Advanced -> options to set your validator node / rippled server, so its just not true that it doesn't allow you to choose your own validators (the setting is an explicit field right there in the UI).

I also believe that a trust free solution is inherently more decentralized than a solution that requires trust, even if granting trust is decentralized (which isn't with Ripple at it's current stage).

That's fine, but bitcoin alone is only a trust-free solution if you never do any trading on exchanges. You are the one comparing apples to oranges, because the ripple protocol decentralizes multi-currency exchange. The bitcoin protocol decentralizes bitcoin transactions.

Miners can't change the rules.  Miner can't validate invalid tx.  Miners can't simply decide to print 100 billion BTC on a whim.

Ripple did not print BTC, they printed XRP. Every alt-chain miner decides, on a whim, to print their own pet alt-coins (litecoins, feathercoins, ppcoins, etc). May the best alt-coin win.

Tell me how I can print 100 billion XRPs.

Start your own ripple ledger.

[JoelKatz]

You can't get rid of OpenCoin and have a functioning Ripple, even the wiki admits that:

If everyone chooses a completely disparate sets of validators the network will be unlikely to reach consensus that a particular version of the ledger is the one true and accurate ledger.

What happens if everyone chooses a completely different set of rules for what constitutes a valid Bitcoin block? Yes, people have to agree to work together for any system to function.

But no central authority is needed to make this happen. The rules for what constitutes a valid Bitcoin block today are de facto decided by Gavin. But he's not a central authority because nobody has to listen to him. People do because they know that cooperation is needed for the system to work and he is doing a good job. He can't sustain his position unless he is responsive to the community. If he were to make some absurd decision, few would listen to him and that would be the end. Yes, lots of people update their code to whatever release he publishes but only because they trust him and can withdraw that trust at any time.

Any number of organizations can publish lists of validators that they recommend. These lists can be algorithmically combined. If someone publishes a list that is nonsensical, you can just stop following them.

[JoelKatz]

I get your point

So does trusting the ripple network require the same trust as trusting the ripple currency?

edit- you where one step ahead of me. I see the answer is yes

Not really. You're just trusting validators not to collude against you. When you extend a trust line, you are trusting someone to hold money for you or owe you money.

Why if you can transact in the ripple network for any currency would the ripple currency itself ever become valuable and doesn't the business model require XRP to appreciate to become profitable?

The business model requires XRP to appreciate. Nobody would disagree that what we're trying to do is high risk. Success is definitely not guaranteed.

XRP is unique though. It's the only currency that can flow between any two parties with no trust path needed. It's the only currency in Ripple that has no counter-party. While other currencies can have transfer fees imposed on them by their issuers, XRP never has any transfer fee other than the transaction fee. We expect that people will make assets liquid on Ripple by making them liquid to and from XRP, and we expect that people who don't know what asset they'll need will tend to hold XRP.

[DeathAndTaxes]

No it won't, you will not be on the same blockchain if you are connected to completely different nodes. That's why the bitcoin client connects to a bootstrap IRC channel, so that everyone can connect to the same set of ip addresses.

For the record Bitcoin hasn't bootstrapped using IRC for almost two years now.  Last version was 0.5.9 IIRC.

[sublime5447]

Running the bitcoin client only means you can broadcast transactions, that's somewhat shallow participation in the network (you aren't mining blocks). The ripple client has a setting in Advanced -> options to set your validator node / rippled server, so its just not true that it doesn't allow you to choose your own validators (the setting is an explicit field right there in the UI).

Are you saying that people could ignore Ripple inc. If they made a change that people didnt like?

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

You can't get rid of OpenCoin and have a functioning Ripple, even the wiki admits that:

If everyone chooses a completely disparate sets of validators the network will be unlikely to reach consensus that a particular version of the ledger is the one true and accurate ledger.

What happens if everyone chooses a completely different set of rules for what constitutes a valid Bitcoin block? Yes, people have to agree to work together for any system to function.

But no central authority is needed to make this happen. The rules for what constitutes a valid Bitcoin block today are de facto decided by Gavin. But he's not a central authority because nobody has to listen to him. People do because they know that cooperation is needed for the system to work and he is doing a good job. He can't sustain his position unless he is responsive to the community. If he were to make some absurd decision, few would listen to him and that would be the end. Yes, lots of people update their code to whatever release he publishes but only because they trust him and can withdraw that trust at any time.

Any number of organizations can publish lists of validators that they recommend. These lists can be algorithmically combined. If someone publishes a list that is nonsensical, you can just stop following them.

We are not talking about different rules, we are talking about different entities with the same rules. How do you propose on solving the centralization situtation with the Ripple light client?

[DeathAndTaxes]

Running the bitcoin client only means you can broadcast transactions, that's somewhat shallow participation in the network (you aren't mining blocks). The ripple client has a setting in Advanced -> options to set your validator node / rippled server, so its just not true that it doesn't allow you to choose your own validators (the setting is an explicit field right there in the UI).

Are you saying you people could ignore Ripple inc. If they made a change that people didnt like?

In theory yes, as a practical matter no.  Every client by default comes set to trust Ripple, Inc.  A significant portion of the network will never change that.   Sure you can untrust Ripple, Inc and trust a set of validators with incompatible rules but you have simply forked yourself into a insignificant minority network.

It is like saying if miners got everyone to agree could they change the block subsidy to 50,000 BTC.  They can and the majority of the network would simply ignore them.  You could fork Bitcoin to give you 1,000,000 BTC as well.  In theory nothing stops you, the practical reality that a network of one is useless is a hard thing to overcome though. 

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

I get your point

So does trusting the ripple network require the same trust as trusting the ripple currency?

edit- you where one step ahead of me. I see the answer is yes

Not really. You're just trusting validators not to collude against you. When you extend a trust line, you are trusting someone to hold money for you or owe you money.

Why if you can transact in the ripple network for any currency would the ripple currency itself ever become valuable and doesn't the business model require XRP to appreciate to become profitable?

The business model requires XRP to appreciate. Nobody would disagree that what we're trying to do is high risk. Success is definitely not guaranteed.

XRP is unique though. It's the only currency that can flow between any two parties with no trust path needed. It's the only currency in Ripple that has no counter-party. While other currencies can have transfer fees imposed on them by their issuers, XRP never has any transfer fee other than the transaction fee. We expect that people will make assets liquid on Ripple by making them liquid to and from XRP, and we expect that people who don't know what asset they'll need will tend to hold XRP.

Validators can cause you to lose money through double spending.

Another currency can impose a transfer fee which will be taken if you try to convert that IOU into Ripples.

As a practical matter no.  Every client by default comes set to trust Ripple, Inc.  A significant portion of the network will never change that.   It is like saying if miners got everyone to agree could they change the block subsidy to 50,000 BTC.  Sure but it is never going to happen.

And even if you try to change that, you'll end up on a different ledger.

[JoelKatz]

Are you saying you people could ignore Ripple inc. If they made a change that people didnt like?

Yes. It would be a little hard right now because the infrastructure to make it easy to do that isn't complete yet. Effectively, the community would probably just have to agree on someone to replace us. Until someone else could execute a full decentralization plan.

But we're hard at work on the transition to greater decentralization. We have no wish to control or operate the Ripple network. We have no desire to own the network or the protocol. The reason it's important that we get this right is that we want it to be as impossible for some other entity to become a central authority controlling the network. When we fully let go, we need to make sure nobody else can grab on.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Are you saying you people could ignore Ripple inc. If they made a change that people didnt like?

Yes. It would be a little hard right now because the infrastructure to make it easy to do that isn't complete yet. Effectively, the community would probably just have to agree on someone to replace us. Until someone else could execute a full decentralization plan.

But we're hard at work on the transition to greater decentralization. We have no wish to control or operate the Ripple network. We have no desire to own the network or the protocol. The reason it's important that we get this right is that we want it to be as impossible for some other entity to become a central authority controlling the network. When we fully let go, we need to make sure nobody else can grab on.

I think a little hard would be a severe understatement. >99% of your users use ripple.com/client, which does not allow choosing validator nodes. Will ripple.com/client ever come with support for choosing your own validators, and no defaults - like the EU Windows choose your browser screen?

The change process would be quite difficult too given ledger fragmentation / forking, and that's not to say you're still having to trust entities, instead of just trusting maths.

[JoelKatz]

I think a little hard would be a severe understatement. 99% of your users use ripple.com/client, which does not allow choosing validator nodes. Will ripple.com/client ever come with support for choosing your own validators, and no defaults?

Anyone else can set up a client and server now. The problem is that a trojaned client could steal your secret. A standalone client (or browser plug in) would be great to have. Anyone who wants to can implement one, of course. I know we have one in our plans, but I'm not sure what the timeline is. Again, this is another place where we agree. These are risks, and we'd prefer people did not have to take these risks so we're working to reduce or eliminate them.

If people have to trust us, that means we get the blame if something goes wrong and the risk that we might betray that trust is a disincentive to use the system. If people don't have to trust us, then we don't have to do anything or take any risk. We definitely do not want people to have to trust us.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

I think a little hard would be a severe understatement. 99% of your users use ripple.com/client, which does not allow choosing validator nodes. Will ripple.com/client ever come with support for choosing your own validators, and no defaults?

Anyone else can set up a client and server now. The problem is that a trojaned client could steal your secret. A standalone client (or browser plug in) would be great to have. Anyone who wants to can implement one, of course. I know we have one in our plans, but I'm not sure what the timeline is. Again, this is another place where we agree. These are risks, and we'd prefer people did not have to take these risks so we're working to reduce or eliminate them.

Anyone can just like you can become the president of the US if you're a US citizen and meet the requirements. Saying what is theoretically possible is irrelevant if practically it is never executed. There's actually significant vendor lock in at work here.

A standalone browser client would still need to communicate with a server, right? Only the server can choose validators / set UNLs.

[sublime5447]

The one is for Joel if he decides to jump back in but anyone can interject obviously.  

Why if you can transact in the ripple network for any currency why would the ripple currency itself ever become valuable and doesn't the business model require XRP to appreciate to become profitable?

I wonder what would happen if a node became to big to fail if it could create systemic failure that could create a a scenario where people in the network could lose their money due to no fault of their own?
I also wonder about its capacity to facilitate ponzi schemes?

I also wonder about the adaptability of the trust network. For instance if a member that I trust decided that they wanted to use the ripple network for crowd funding for a highly speculative venture. If a public company did that it would more often then not be forced out into the open and I would have the opportunity to sell off my shares, but if someone did that in the ripple network it would be difficult to detect. I wonder if there could be an alert mechanism?
That could say hey this guy that you trust is engaging in risky behavior.
I am thinking out load here, just trying to run through likely scenarios

What happens if someone gets hit by a bus with a ton of outstanding debts?

  



  

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

I also suggest making the website accurate instead of misleading.

"Send money to anyone, anywhere in any currency"

You can't send any currency other than XRP. You can only send XRPs or IOUs.

"all payments are processed automatically without any third-parties or intermediaries"

Is a validator not a third party? A validator is not the sender or receiver, by definition it is a third party.

"And because Ripple is a distributed system, there is no single point of weakness or attack."

You admitted that's not the current state of Ripple, so the use of present tense is troubling.

"Most payment systems are controlled by for-profit organizations that charge buyers and sellers for the privilege of making payments. In contrast, the Ripple payment network is controlled by a free Internet protocol that can be used by anyone."

Unless international financial networks uses carrier pidgins, I believe they also use the internet. For profit gateways like BitStamp charge buyers and sellers for the privilege of making payments.

[JoelKatz]

A standalone browser client would still need to communicate with a server, right? Only the server can choose validators / set UNLs.

The client does need to communicate with one or more servers (as do servers, of course). Currently, only servers have a set of chosen validators.

It's still early in Ripple's evolution. You can build software that uses the protocol and connects to the network that has any combination of features and capabilities that you want. We're not quite sure how people are going to wind up using it. One possibility is that people will run "thin servers" and connect a browser-based client to their own server. Another possibility is that people will run "heavy clients" that have a list of validators and act more like servers do (though probably only as observers to the consensus process). Another possibility is that Ripple will be invisible and people will use it indirectly through things like federation. We've designed the protocol and the data structures to be flexible enough to support fairly light implementations that can still implement their own UNLs. The reference client isn't there yet. There's still a lot of work to do. It's still early.

[JoelKatz]

What happens if someone gets hit by a bus with a ton of outstanding debts?

You can only have a debt outstanding to someone who specifically choose to allow you to owe them money. If you're worried about this, don't extend any credit to individuals or ensure that there are provisions to cover those debts in the event of their death. Alternatively, extend a small enough amount of credit that the benefits of using and re-using that credit over and over outweigh the risk of the one-time loss should they default.

But this is one of the problems with community/social credit. It requires people to manage a fairly complex kind of risk. This is the main reason I don't think the world is ready for community/social credit yet. It will take sophisticated tools to sensibly manage that risk and perhaps also some social changes.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

A standalone browser client would still need to communicate with a server, right? Only the server can choose validators / set UNLs.

The client does need to communicate with one or more servers (as do servers, of course). Currently, only servers have a set of chosen validators.

It's still early in Ripple's evolution. You can build software that uses the protocol and connects to the network that has any combination of features and capabilities that you want. We're not quite sure how people are going to wind up using it. One possibility is that people will run "thin servers" and connect a browser-based client to their own server. Another possibility is that people will run "heavy clients" that have a list of validators and act more like servers do (though probably only as observers to the consensus process). Another possibility is that Ripple will be invisible and people will use it indirectly through things like federation. We've designed the protocol and the data structures to be flexible enough to support fairly light implementations that can still implement their own UNLs. The reference client isn't there yet. There's still a lot of work to do. It's still early.

While this sounds promising, I still don't see how it can turn Ripple into decentralized rather than distributed. The consensus system requires people to have similar UNLs. Democracy is distributed, however the resulting government is not decentralized.

[sublime5447]

I think a little hard would be a severe understatement. 99% of your users use ripple.com/client, which does not allow choosing validator nodes. Will ripple.com/client ever come with support for choosing your own validators, and no defaults?

Anyone else can set up a client and server now. The problem is that a trojaned client could steal your secret. A standalone client (or browser plug in) would be great to have. Anyone who wants to can implement one, of course. I know we have one in our plans, but I'm not sure what the timeline is. Again, this is another place where we agree. These are risks, and we'd prefer people did not have to take these risks so we're working to reduce or eliminate them.

Anyone can just like you can become the president of the US if you're a US citizen and meet the requirements. Saying what is theoretically possible is irrelevant if practically it is never executed. There's actually significant vendor lock in at work here.

A standalone browser client would still need to communicate with a server, right? Only the server can choose validators / set UNLs.

Tech guys. I do data center installations and I swear to god you all have the personality of a server cabinet. Really people dont give a shit about these issues. These are details, things that can be fixed and changed.

The important aspects is the monetary theory behind the ideas! Tell me that it wont work because it is a debt based system that has the potential to collapse into a debt deflation death spiral then you will have my ear.

Joel you need to convince the masses not IT guys. You really have to work on explaining things so the average person can understand. Lines of code dont mean shit to me.   

[sublime5447]

What happens if someone gets hit by a bus with a ton of outstanding debts?

You can only have a debt outstanding to someone who specifically choose to allow you to owe them money. If you're worried about this, don't extend any credit to individuals or ensure that there are provisions to cover those debts in the event of their death. Alternatively, extend a small enough amount of credit that the benefits of using and re-using that credit over and over outweigh the risk of the one-time loss should they default.

But this is one of the problems with community/social credit. It requires people to manage a fairly complex kind of risk. This is the main reason I don't think the world is ready for community/social credit yet. It will take sophisticated tools to sensibly manage that risk and perhaps also some social changes.

Thank you

[sublime5447]

Can the network tell me if someone is acting irresponsibly?

[JoelKatz]

Can the network tell me if someone is acting irresponsibly?

You can see how much outstanding credit they have and how much of ot they've used. You can also see how other people value the assets they issue. (This is the same way the unusually high price of BTC at Mt. Gox leads you to believe there's some reason people value their USD at less than face value.)

It's possible that in the future tools might allow you to evaluate whether to trust people based solely on their behavior inside the network. For example, say you see someone who issues an asset that's very liquid -- you can easily sell it. And say that allowing them to we you a dollar would save you ten cents on a transaction. You might elect to accept that risk. After a while, and after this trust line has produced some value for you, you might raise the trust to, say $5. It may be such that even if they default on the whole $5, you're still up overall because the trust line made payments cheaper for you.

But this future may never happen. I think it's likely that for the foreseeable future, you'll need reasons outside the network itself if you don't want to take unreasonable risks.

One reason is that this can be gamed. I can issue bitcoins and offer to trade $130 for them. I can then create a lot of accounts that also offer to trade $130 for them. This might make you think that it's a liquid asset. But once you agree to hold it, I can pull all those offers. Now in theory you could check the people who placed the offers and use heuristics to make sure they're legitimate. And certain types of transactions (such as those that pay a transfer fee to a gateway) can only be faked at a cost.

But for now, we suggest people only create pathways to businesses that they have a reason to believe will continue to redeem as they've agreed to.

[smoothie]

Are you seriously saying that when OpenCoin unilaterally changed account reserve requirements, which is akin to Federal Reserve tampering with interest rates?

OpenCoin holds a majority of validators right now. I'm sure Satoshi made any number of changes to Bitcoin before it was open source. We genuinely don't want this power because others legitimately perceive it as a risk, and changing this is one of our priorities now. We designed the system to be decentralized and are working to get it there.

Bitcoin will work if I have completely different nodes with someone else as long as we're on the same blockchain. It's not the same with Ripple.

So will Ripple. Nodes you connect to don't effect the data you see. You just need to be on the same ledger. I think our consensus scheme has a lot of advantages over Bitcoin's proof of work scheme, but one thing that is a disadvantage is that you need to maintain (or trust some other people to maintain on your behalf) lists of validators that you are willing to trust not to collude against you. We've been working on ways to make this as painless and secure as possible without compromising decentralization. It is a challenge.

Tell me how I can print 100 billion XRPs.

Tell me how I can choose the Bitcoin genesis block, mining algorithm, or reward schedule. These systems are built under some entity's control and then that entity releases it into the wild such that it can never be imprisoned again.

So Ripple isn't decentralized then?

I seem to keep hearing that it is from the people you work for and with. It almost seems like this topic is a moving target.

You guys really need to make some real clarity on the topic as well as others.

Currently I look at it as centralized given there is a company behind the ripple network. That company can be shut down or regulated as the powers that be see fit.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Are you seriously saying that when OpenCoin unilaterally changed account reserve requirements, which is akin to Federal Reserve tampering with interest rates?

OpenCoin holds a majority of validators right now. I'm sure Satoshi made any number of changes to Bitcoin before it was open source. We genuinely don't want this power because others legitimately perceive it as a risk, and changing this is one of our priorities now. We designed the system to be decentralized and are working to get it there.

Bitcoin will work if I have completely different nodes with someone else as long as we're on the same blockchain. It's not the same with Ripple.

So will Ripple. Nodes you connect to don't effect the data you see. You just need to be on the same ledger. I think our consensus scheme has a lot of advantages over Bitcoin's proof of work scheme, but one thing that is a disadvantage is that you need to maintain (or trust some other people to maintain on your behalf) lists of validators that you are willing to trust not to collude against you. We've been working on ways to make this as painless and secure as possible without compromising decentralization. It is a challenge.

Tell me how I can print 100 billion XRPs.

Tell me how I can choose the Bitcoin genesis block, mining algorithm, or reward schedule. These systems are built under some entity's control and then that entity releases it into the wild such that it can never be imprisoned again.

So Ripple isn't decentralized then?

I seem to keep hearing that it is from the people you work for and with. It almost seems like this topic is a moving target.

You guys really need to make some real clarity on the topic as well as others.

Currently I look at it as centralized given there is a company behind the ripple network. That company can be shut down or regulated as the powers that be see fit.

It's currently very centralized - especially with Ripple.com/client, the web light client used by >99% of Ripple users only trusting OpenCoin validators.

Ripple promises that they will decentralize the network, however I raise objections to if it's actually possible to have decentralization of the level of Bitcoin with Ripple's consensus model.

[smoothie]

Are you seriously saying that when OpenCoin unilaterally changed account reserve requirements, which is akin to Federal Reserve tampering with interest rates?

OpenCoin holds a majority of validators right now. I'm sure Satoshi made any number of changes to Bitcoin before it was open source. We genuinely don't want this power because others legitimately perceive it as a risk, and changing this is one of our priorities now. We designed the system to be decentralized and are working to get it there.

Bitcoin will work if I have completely different nodes with someone else as long as we're on the same blockchain. It's not the same with Ripple.

So will Ripple. Nodes you connect to don't effect the data you see. You just need to be on the same ledger. I think our consensus scheme has a lot of advantages over Bitcoin's proof of work scheme, but one thing that is a disadvantage is that you need to maintain (or trust some other people to maintain on your behalf) lists of validators that you are willing to trust not to collude against you. We've been working on ways to make this as painless and secure as possible without compromising decentralization. It is a challenge.

Tell me how I can print 100 billion XRPs.

Tell me how I can choose the Bitcoin genesis block, mining algorithm, or reward schedule. These systems are built under some entity's control and then that entity releases it into the wild such that it can never be imprisoned again.

So Ripple isn't decentralized then?

I seem to keep hearing that it is from the people you work for and with. It almost seems like this topic is a moving target.

You guys really need to make some real clarity on the topic as well as others.

Currently I look at it as centralized given there is a company behind the ripple network. That company can be shut down or regulated as the powers that be see fit.

It's currently very centralized - especially with Ripple.com/client, the web light client used by >99% of Ripple users only trusting OpenCoin validators.

Ripple promises that they will decentralize the network, however I raise objections to if it's actually possible to have decentralization of the level of Bitcoin with Ripple's consensus model.

This is where I think Joel's statement of their goal is to get it to be decentralized is a misnomer.

Just like you can't create a free-market on your own that is fully robust and trustworthy and adds value to the economy.

I honestly don't think it is possible for OpenCoin to be the party to get ripple to be truly decentralized. The topic of decentralization is a free-market type phenomena that occurs when the market chooses for it to happen. It just happens, there is no formula or solution to getting something to be that way...it just happens on its own.

[JoelKatz]

So Ripple isn't decentralized then?

It's designed to operate as a full decentralized network. It is not all the way there yet. Open sourcing the server is one step. An infrastructure for managing validator lists without a central authority is the next big step.

Currently I look at it as centralized given there is a company behind the ripple network. That company can be shut down or regulated as the powers that be see fit.

If we shut down, the network will continue so long as people are interested in continuing it. If it solves real problems for real people, they'll keep it going. If not, what difference does it make? Avoiding regulation is not one of our goals. In fact, we're working very hard to figure out how everyone from individuals to financial institutions can use crypto-currencies while complying with existing regulations and working to prevent new regulations that stifle innovation.

I honestly don't think it is possible for OpenCoin to be the party to get ripple to be truly decentralized. The topic of decentralization is a free-market type phenomena that occurs when the market chooses for it to happen. It just happens, there is no formula or solution to getting something to be that way...it just happens on its own.

Well, we can start the process by convincing a number of distinct organizations to run validators, publish lists of validators maintained using an open process, and so on. But I do agree that real decentralization will require people to choose to adopt Ripple and choose to participate. Basically, it's like the way Bitcoin became decentralized -- it took large numbers of different groups to run miners, participate in the development of the software, and form a robust community that can make decisions about the direction the network should go.

[sublime5447]

Can the network tell me if someone is acting irresponsibly?

You can see how much outstanding credit they have and how much of ot they've used. You can also see how other people value the assets they issue. (This is the same way the unusually high price of BTC at Mt. Gox leads you to believe there's some reason people value their USD at less than face value.)

It's possible that in the future tools might allow you to evaluate whether to trust people based solely on their behavior inside the network. For example, say you see someone who issues an asset that's very liquid -- you can easily sell it. And say that allowing them to we you a dollar would save you ten cents on a transaction. You might elect to accept that risk. After a while, and after this trust line has produced some value for you, you might raise the trust to, say $5. It may be such that even if they default on the whole $5, you're still up overall because the trust line made payments cheaper for you.

But this future may never happen. I think it's likely that for the foreseeable future, you'll need reasons outside the network itself if you don't want to take unreasonable risks.

One reason is that this can be gamed. I can issue bitcoins and offer to trade $130 for them. I can then create a lot of accounts that also offer to trade $130 for them. This might make you think that it's a liquid asset. But once you agree to hold it, I can pull all those offers. Now in theory you could check the people who placed the offers and use heuristics to make sure they're legitimate. And certain types of transactions (such as those that pay a transfer fee to a gateway) can only be faked at a cost.

But for now, we suggest people only create pathways to businesses that they have a reason to believe will continue to redeem as they've agreed to.

Having a hard time envisioning how letting some one owe me a dollar would save me 10 cent on a transaction?

Will I be able to offer any asset in the future? say commodities. Could I offer say bushels of corn? 

[smoothie]

So Ripple isn't decentralized then?

It's designed to operate as a full decentralized network. It is not all the way there yet. Open sourcing the server is one step. An infrastructure for managing validator lists without a central authority is the next big step.

Currently I look at it as centralized given there is a company behind the ripple network. That company can be shut down or regulated as the powers that be see fit.

If we shut down, the network will continue so long as people are interested in continuing it. If it solves real problems for real people, they'll keep it going. If not, what difference does it make? Avoiding regulation is not one of our goals. In fact, we're working very hard to figure out how everyone from individuals to financial institutions can use crypto-currencies while complying with existing regulations and working to prevent new regulations that stifle innovation.

But isn't the entire ripple network based on trust of other users?

Saying if "they'll keep it going" is like saying that people will never be untrustworthy. Not to mention the large stash of "premined" XRPs you folks still hold and "promise" not to dump on the market. That involves trust too.

The IOU system is a flawed system with our current monetary system already. It almost sounds like you folks are mimicking the credit rating system to determine "trust" if I had to use an analogy.

Okay so it isn't...currently...decentralized. yet I keep hearing the sales pitch that it is. I was there at Bitcoin Conference in May where your own CEO who spoke on the alt-panel claimed it to be decentralized.

Has this mis-speak not  happened?

[sublime5447]

So Ripple isn't decentralized then?

It's designed to operate as a full decentralized network. It is not all the way there yet. Open sourcing the server is one step. An infrastructure for managing validator lists without a central authority is the next big step.

Currently I look at it as centralized given there is a company behind the ripple network. That company can be shut down or regulated as the powers that be see fit.

If we shut down, the network will continue so long as people are interested in continuing it. If it solves real problems for real people, they'll keep it going. If not, what difference does it make? Avoiding regulation is not one of our goals. In fact, we're working very hard to figure out how everyone from individuals to financial institutions can use crypto-currencies while complying with existing regulations and working to prevent new regulations that stifle innovation.

I honestly don't think it is possible for OpenCoin to be the party to get ripple to be truly decentralized. The topic of decentralization is a free-market type phenomena that occurs when the market chooses for it to happen. It just happens, there is no formula or solution to getting something to be that way...it just happens on its own.

Well, we can start the process by convincing a number of distinct organizations to run validators, publish lists of validators maintained using an open process, and so on. But I do agree that real decentralization will require people to choose to adopt Ripple and choose to participate. Basically, it's like the way Bitcoin became decentralized -- it took large numbers of different groups to run miners, participate in the development of the software, and form a robust community that can make decisions about the direction the network should go.

Deal breaker!

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

If we shut down, the network will continue so long as people are interested in continuing it. If it solves real problems for real people, they'll keep it going. If not, what difference does it make? Avoiding regulation is not one of our goals. In fact, we're working very hard to figure out how everyone from individuals to financial institutions can use crypto-currencies while complying with existing regulations and working to prevent new regulations that stifle innovation.

Not really, most XRPs won't be distributed,  most people have not written down their secret keys (no matter what wording you use, users are stupid. source: inputs.io support dealing with users who didn't write down their recovery keys), ripple.com/client would be down, wallet blobs would be down, etc.

[sublime5447]

So Ripple isn't decentralized then?

It's designed to operate as a full decentralized network. It is not all the way there yet. Open sourcing the server is one step. An infrastructure for managing validator lists without a central authority is the next big step.

Currently I look at it as centralized given there is a company behind the ripple network. That company can be shut down or regulated as the powers that be see fit.

If we shut down, the network will continue so long as people are interested in continuing it. If it solves real problems for real people, they'll keep it going. If not, what difference does it make? Avoiding regulation is not one of our goals. In fact, we're working very hard to figure out how everyone from individuals to financial institutions can use crypto-currencies while complying with existing regulations and working to prevent new regulations that stifle innovation.

But isn't the entire ripple network based on trust of other users?

Saying if "they'll keep it going" is like saying that people will never be untrustworthy. Not to mention the large stash of "premined" XRPs you folks still hold and "promise" not to dump on the market. That involves trust too.

The IOU system is a flawed system with our current monetary system already. It almost sounds like you folks are mimicking the credit rating system to determine "trust" if I had to use an analogy.

Okay so it isn't...currently...decentralized. yet I keep hearing the sales pitch that it is. I was there at Bitcoin Conference in May where your own CEO who spoke on the alt-panel claimed it to be decentralized.

Has this mis-speak not  happened?

That is not the problem with the current economic system the problem is that it is a ponzi scheme that is dependent on ever expanding debt so that people can make payments on principle plus interest payments due on the principle. All money is and has always been IOU's all money is a promise. Even gold  

Look up the credit theory of money

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

But isn't the entire ripple network based on trust of other users?

Saying if "they'll keep it going" is like saying that people will never be untrustworthy. Not to mention the large stash of "premined" XRPs you folks still hold and "promise" not to dump on the market. That involves trust too.

The IOU system is a flawed system with our current monetary system already. It almost sounds like you folks are mimicking the credit rating system to determine "trust" if I had to use an analogy.

Okay so it isn't...currently...decentralized. yet I keep hearing the sales pitch that it is. I was there at Bitcoin Conference in May where your own CEO who spoke on the alt-panel claimed it to be decentralized.

Has this mis-speak not  happened?

It's based on trust, but you're trusting Ripple for non-double spends, and the majority of users are trusting Bitstamp for BTC/USD/etc IOUs.

[smoothie]

If we shut down, the network will continue so long as people are interested in continuing it. If it solves real problems for real people, they'll keep it going. If not, what difference does it make? Avoiding regulation is not one of our goals. In fact, we're working very hard to figure out how everyone from individuals to financial institutions can use crypto-currencies while complying with existing regulations and working to prevent new regulations that stifle innovation.

Not really, most XRPs won't be distributed,  most people have not written down their secret keys (no matter what wording you use, users are stupid. source: inputs.io support dealing with users who didn't write down their recovery keys), ripple.com/client would be down, wallet blobs would be down, etc.

Hence why I brought up their large stash they promise not to dump on the market.

[smoothie]

So Ripple isn't decentralized then?

It's designed to operate as a full decentralized network. It is not all the way there yet. Open sourcing the server is one step. An infrastructure for managing validator lists without a central authority is the next big step.

Currently I look at it as centralized given there is a company behind the ripple network. That company can be shut down or regulated as the powers that be see fit.

If we shut down, the network will continue so long as people are interested in continuing it. If it solves real problems for real people, they'll keep it going. If not, what difference does it make? Avoiding regulation is not one of our goals. In fact, we're working very hard to figure out how everyone from individuals to financial institutions can use crypto-currencies while complying with existing regulations and working to prevent new regulations that stifle innovation.

But isn't the entire ripple network based on trust of other users?

Saying if "they'll keep it going" is like saying that people will never be untrustworthy. Not to mention the large stash of "premined" XRPs you folks still hold and "promise" not to dump on the market. That involves trust too.

The IOU system is a flawed system with our current monetary system already. It almost sounds like you folks are mimicking the credit rating system to determine "trust" if I had to use an analogy.

Okay so it isn't...currently...decentralized. yet I keep hearing the sales pitch that it is. I was there at Bitcoin Conference in May where your own CEO who spoke on the alt-panel claimed it to be decentralized.

Has this mis-speak not  happened?

That is not the problem with the current economic system the problem is that it is a ponzi scheme that is dependent on ever expanding debt so that people can make payments on principle plus interest payments due on the principle. All money is and has always been IOU's all money is a promise. Even gold  

How is Gold an IOU? If I hand you a coin 1 oz coin for payment for a laptop you are paid. I do not owe you anything nor do you owe me. The payment is settled. Nothing has been borrowed nor owed.

That is a transaction.

Gold has a perception of value just like the paper fiat currencies. The difference is that there is no counter-party risk with gold. FRN are IOUs backed by air. Gold is backed by its history as a store of value (the free-market version of saying we agree Gold is worth SOMETHING...similar to Bitcoin).


You are correct that the current state of IOUs is flawed. Before the lender actually backed what they lent out. Banks just lend air to people at interest.

[Labcoin_PR]

Hey JoelKatz, we lost our secret key, can you send us another 50 million ripples?

Happy to pay you the amount with Mtgox USD and smoothie trolling credits.

[sublime5447]

Gold is just a promise to get something of actual value. I know you will say it has actual value but it has value for the same reason bitcoin has value because of our shared belief in its value.

People cant live in gold they cant eat gold you cant put it in an engine and go places with it you cant burn it to warm yourself up if you where freezing to death you cant drink it if you dying from dehydration.

Like I said look up the credit theory of money.


 "The Credit Theory is this: that a sale and purchase is the exchange of a commodity for credit. From this main theory springs the sub-theory that the value of credit or money does not depend on the value of any metal or metals, but on the right which the creditor acquires to "payment," that is to say, to satisfaction for the credit, and on the obligation of the debtor to "pay" his debt and conversely on the right of the debtor to release himself from his debt by the tender of an equivalent debt owed by the creditor, and the obligation of the creditor to accept this tender in satisfaction of his credit."

There is a little bit of disagreement when it comes to commodity money like gold, but in reality no matter the medium of exchange it is just a promise that you will be able to get something that you value in exchange for giving up something to someone else that they value.

[sublime5447]

Avoiding regulation is not one of our goals. In fact, we're working very hard to figure out how everyone from individuals to financial institutions can use crypto-currencies while complying with existing regulations

Is this not a deal breaker for anyone else? Shit this is the kinda problem I was talking about. You guys are hung up on lines of code, dude comes out and says this and all I hear is crickets

[smoothie]

Gold is just a promise to get something of actual value. I know you will say it has actual value but it has value for the same reason bitcoin has value because of our shared belief in its value.

People cant live in gold they cant eat gold you cant put it an engine and go places with it you cant burn it to warm yourself up if you where freezing to death you cant drink it if you dying from dehydration.

Like I said look up the credit theory of money.


 "The Credit Theory is this: that a sale and purchase is the exchange of a commodity for credit. From this main theory springs the sub-theory that the value of credit or money does not depend on the value of any metal or metals, but on the right which the creditor acquires to "payment," that is to say, to satisfaction for the credit, and on the obligation of the debtor to "pay" his debt and conversely on the right of the debtor to release himself from his debt by the tender of an equivalent debt owed by the creditor, and the obligation of the creditor to accept this tender in satisfaction of his credit."

There is a little bit of disagreement when it comes to commodity money like gold, but in reality no matter the medium of exchange it is just a promise that you will be able to get something that you value in exchange for giving up something to someone else that they value.

The problem with your statement that gold is a promise is flawed.

Gold itself does not promise to pay anything. It is a lump of metal. The FRN and other fiat promise to pay or "get"  you something for your paper.

The logic is pretty simple. One is man-made thus creating the air portion of a promise, while gold is just a piece of metal not promising anything.

Here is a good definition of PROMISE:

prom·ise
ˈpräməs/
noun
1.
a declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing or that a particular thing will happen.
"what happened to all those firm promises of support?"
synonyms:   word (of honor), assurance, pledge, vow, guarantee, oath, bond, undertaking, agreement, commitment, contract, covenant More
the quality of potential excellence.
"he showed great promise even as a junior officer"
synonyms:   potential, ability, aptitude, capability, capacity More
an indication that something specified is expected or likely to occur.
"the promise of peace"
synonyms:   indication, hint, suggestion, sign More
verb
verb: promise; 3rd person present: promises; past tense: promised; past participle: promised; gerund or present participle: promising
1.
assure someone that one will definitely do, give, or arrange something; undertake or declare that something will happen.
"he promised to forward my mail"
synonyms:   give one's word, swear, pledge, vow, undertake, guarantee, contract, engage, give an assurance, commit oneself, bind oneself, swear/take an oath, covenant; More
archaic
pledge (someone, esp. a woman) to marry someone else; betroth.
"I've been promised to him for years"
2.
give good grounds for expecting (a particular occurrence or situation).
"forthcoming concerts promise a feast of music from around the world"
synonyms:   indicate, lead one to expect, point to, denote, signify, be a sign of, be evidence of, give hope of, bespeak, presage, augur, herald, bode, portend; More

[smoothie]

Avoiding regulation is not one of our goals. In fact, we're working very hard to figure out how everyone from individuals to financial institutions can use crypto-currencies while complying with existing regulations

Is this not a deal breaker for anyone else? Shit this is the kinda problem I was talking about. You guys are hung up on lines of code, dude comes out and says this and all I hear is crickets

Just so I dont assume anything...what is your problem with it?

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Avoiding regulation is not one of our goals. In fact, we're working very hard to figure out how everyone from individuals to financial institutions can use crypto-currencies while complying with existing regulations

Is this not a deal breaker for anyone else? Shit this is the kinda problem I was talking about. You guys are hung up on lines of code, dude comes out and says this and all I hear is crickets

Just so I dont assume anything...what is your problem with it?

Gateways must of course follow all local regulations.

Possible KYC / AML support:

Restricted issuance of IOUs
    The gateway may restrict the accounts to which it sends IOUs. For instance, it may limit sending to those account for which KYC requirements have been met.
Restricted holding of IOUs
    The gateway may restrict hold of its IOUs to pre-approved accounts. See Authorized accounts
IOU freezing
    Not implemented. The gateway may freeze an account's ability to transfer their IOUs.

From the official ripple wiki.

[sublime5447]

Avoiding regulation is not one of our goals. In fact, we're working very hard to figure out how everyone from individuals to financial institutions can use crypto-currencies while complying with existing regulations

Is this not a deal breaker for anyone else? Shit this is the kinda problem I was talking about. You guys are hung up on lines of code, dude comes out and says this and all I hear is crickets

Just so I dont assume anything...what is your problem with it?

My only purpose to being involved with digital money is to remove the mechanisms that the state uses to enslave its citizens, enact barriers to free trade and to defund the war machines of the world. I am in it for social change and if we are all cowering and complying with government regulations that wont happen.

The only reason to use it is to starve the state out of existence

[sublime5447]

Avoiding regulation is not one of our goals. In fact, we're working very hard to figure out how everyone from individuals to financial institutions can use crypto-currencies while complying with existing regulations

Is this not a deal breaker for anyone else? Shit this is the kinda problem I was talking about. You guys are hung up on lines of code, dude comes out and says this and all I hear is crickets

Just so I dont assume anything...what is your problem with it?

Gateways must of course follow all local regulations.

Possible KYC / AML support:

Restricted issuance of IOUs
    The gateway may restrict the accounts to which it sends IOUs. For instance, it may limit sending to those account for which KYC requirements have been met.
Restricted holding of IOUs
    The gateway may restrict hold of its IOUs to pre-approved accounts. See Authorized accounts
IOU freezing
    Not implemented. The gateway may freeze an account's ability to transfer their IOUs.

From the official ripple wiki.

Deal breaker fuck ripple

[JoelKatz]

Gateways must of course follow all local regulations.

Possible KYC / AML support:

Restricted issuance of IOUs
    The gateway may restrict the accounts to which it sends IOUs. For instance, it may limit sending to those account for which KYC requirements have been met.
Restricted holding of IOUs
    The gateway may restrict hold of its IOUs to pre-approved accounts. See Authorized accounts
IOU freezing
    Not implemented. The gateway may freeze an account's ability to transfer their IOUs.

From the official ripple wiki.

The "freeze" ability hasn't been implemented due to lack of demand. The restrict ability is implemented, but no gateways (that I know of, anyway) currently use it. These options have to be enabled for an account prior to any assets being issued by that account. So if a gateway chooses to use either of these features, everyone will know it before they choose to use that gateway. We don't want to tell other people how they have to use Ripple. We want to enable people to do what they want to do. Of course, we do want everyone to know what they're getting into and we want the rules to be hard to change after the game has started.

[sublime5447]

Gold is just a promise to get something of actual value. I know you will say it has actual value but it has value for the same reason bitcoin has value because of our shared belief in its value.

People cant live in gold they cant eat gold you cant put it an engine and go places with it you cant burn it to warm yourself up if you where freezing to death you cant drink it if you dying from dehydration.

Like I said look up the credit theory of money.


 "The Credit Theory is this: that a sale and purchase is the exchange of a commodity for credit. From this main theory springs the sub-theory that the value of credit or money does not depend on the value of any metal or metals, but on the right which the creditor acquires to "payment," that is to say, to satisfaction for the credit, and on the obligation of the debtor to "pay" his debt and conversely on the right of the debtor to release himself from his debt by the tender of an equivalent debt owed by the creditor, and the obligation of the creditor to accept this tender in satisfaction of his credit."

There is a little bit of disagreement when it comes to commodity money like gold, but in reality no matter the medium of exchange it is just a promise that you will be able to get something that you value in exchange for giving up something to someone else that they value.

The problem with your statement that gold is a promise is flawed.

Gold itself does not promise to pay anything. It is a lump of metal. The FRN and other fiat promise to pay or "get"  you something for your paper.

The logic is pretty simple. One is man-made thus creating the air portion of a promise, while gold is just a piece of metal not promising anything.

Here is a good definition of PROMISE:

prom·ise
ˈpräməs/
noun
1.
a declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing or that a particular thing will happen.
"what happened to all those firm promises of support?"
synonyms:   word (of honor), assurance, pledge, vow, guarantee, oath, bond, undertaking, agreement, commitment, contract, covenant More
the quality of potential excellence.
"he showed great promise even as a junior officer"
synonyms:   potential, ability, aptitude, capability, capacity More
an indication that something specified is expected or likely to occur.
"the promise of peace"
synonyms:   indication, hint, suggestion, sign More
verb
verb: promise; 3rd person present: promises; past tense: promised; past participle: promised; gerund or present participle: promising
1.
assure someone that one will definitely do, give, or arrange something; undertake or declare that something will happen.
"he promised to forward my mail"
synonyms:   give one's word, swear, pledge, vow, undertake, guarantee, contract, engage, give an assurance, commit oneself, bind oneself, swear/take an oath, covenant; More
archaic
pledge (someone, esp. a woman) to marry someone else; betroth.
"I've been promised to him for years"
2.
give good grounds for expecting (a particular occurrence or situation).
"forthcoming concerts promise a feast of music from around the world"
synonyms:   indicate, lead one to expect, point to, denote, signify, be a sign of, be evidence of, give hope of, bespeak, presage, augur, herald, bode, portend; More

a declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing


The particular thing the lump of metal does is that it says I will be able to get what I desire in exchange for giving up something that you desire. That is the promise gold makes 

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Gateways must of course follow all local regulations.

Possible KYC / AML support:

Restricted issuance of IOUs
    The gateway may restrict the accounts to which it sends IOUs. For instance, it may limit sending to those account for which KYC requirements have been met.
Restricted holding of IOUs
    The gateway may restrict hold of its IOUs to pre-approved accounts. See Authorized accounts
IOU freezing
    Not implemented. The gateway may freeze an account's ability to transfer their IOUs.

From the official ripple wiki.

The "freeze" ability hasn't been implemented due to lack of demand. The restrict ability is implemented, but no gateways (that I know of, anyway) currently use it. These options have to be enabled for an account prior to any assets being issued by that account. So if a gateway chooses to use either of these features, everyone will know it before they choose to use that gateway. We don't want to tell other people how they have to use Ripple. We want to enable people to do what they want to do. Of course, we do want everyone to know what they're getting into and we want the rules to be hard to change after the game has started.

If a gateway is forced to do so because of legal reasons, they most likely will stop honoring their old IOUs for redemption and create new IOUs.

[JoelKatz]

If a gateway is forced to do so because of legal reasons, they most likely will stop honoring their old IOUs for redemption and create new IOUs.

That's certainly possible. Gateways are, like all other businesses, required to follow the laws of the jurisdictions in which they operate and must respond to court orders issued by courts of competent jurisdiction. The greater includes the lesser -- in theory a government could order a gateway to stop redeeming entirely. Basically, if you operate in an jurisdiction, the controlling government can do any terrible thing to you that you might imagine.

[smoothie]

Avoiding regulation is not one of our goals. In fact, we're working very hard to figure out how everyone from individuals to financial institutions can use crypto-currencies while complying with existing regulations

Is this not a deal breaker for anyone else? Shit this is the kinda problem I was talking about. You guys are hung up on lines of code, dude comes out and says this and all I hear is crickets

Just so I dont assume anything...what is your problem with it?

Gateways must of course follow all local regulations.

Possible KYC / AML support:

Restricted issuance of IOUs
    The gateway may restrict the accounts to which it sends IOUs. For instance, it may limit sending to those account for which KYC requirements have been met.
Restricted holding of IOUs
    The gateway may restrict hold of its IOUs to pre-approved accounts. See Authorized accounts
IOU freezing
    Not implemented. The gateway may freeze an account's ability to transfer their IOUs.

From the official ripple wiki.

Deal breaker fuck ripple

So if accounts can be frozen ....

remind me how this is any better than the current banking system that does that too?

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

If a gateway is forced to do so because of legal reasons, they most likely will stop honoring their old IOUs for redemption and create new IOUs.

That's certainly possible. Gateways are, like all other businesses, required to follow the laws of the jurisdictions in which they operate and must respond to court orders issued by courts of competent jurisdiction. The greater includes the lesser -- in theory a government could order a gateway to stop redeeming entirely. Basically, if you operate in an jurisdiction, the controlling government can do any terrible thing to you that you might imagine.

But bitcoin is innovative in the sense that accounts cannot be frozen. Perhaps you should take a read at the Bitcoin white paper, http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

You may point at XRP, however you've just answered that "the controlling government can do any terrible thing to you that you might imagine."

Ripple Labs may be forced to update ripple.com/client and the servers it connect to by a government.

Bitcoin core devs can only push out a new version of Bitcoin-Qt, yet nobody will migrate to it.

[smoothie]

Gold is just a promise to get something of actual value. I know you will say it has actual value but it has value for the same reason bitcoin has value because of our shared belief in its value.

People cant live in gold they cant eat gold you cant put it an engine and go places with it you cant burn it to warm yourself up if you where freezing to death you cant drink it if you dying from dehydration.

Like I said look up the credit theory of money.


 "The Credit Theory is this: that a sale and purchase is the exchange of a commodity for credit. From this main theory springs the sub-theory that the value of credit or money does not depend on the value of any metal or metals, but on the right which the creditor acquires to "payment," that is to say, to satisfaction for the credit, and on the obligation of the debtor to "pay" his debt and conversely on the right of the debtor to release himself from his debt by the tender of an equivalent debt owed by the creditor, and the obligation of the creditor to accept this tender in satisfaction of his credit."

There is a little bit of disagreement when it comes to commodity money like gold, but in reality no matter the medium of exchange it is just a promise that you will be able to get something that you value in exchange for giving up something to someone else that they value.

The problem with your statement that gold is a promise is flawed.

Gold itself does not promise to pay anything. It is a lump of metal. The FRN and other fiat promise to pay or "get"  you something for your paper.

The logic is pretty simple. One is man-made thus creating the air portion of a promise, while gold is just a piece of metal not promising anything.

Here is a good definition of PROMISE:

prom·ise
ˈpräməs/
noun
1.
a declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing or that a particular thing will happen.
"what happened to all those firm promises of support?"
synonyms:   word (of honor), assurance, pledge, vow, guarantee, oath, bond, undertaking, agreement, commitment, contract, covenant More
the quality of potential excellence.
"he showed great promise even as a junior officer"
synonyms:   potential, ability, aptitude, capability, capacity More
an indication that something specified is expected or likely to occur.
"the promise of peace"
synonyms:   indication, hint, suggestion, sign More
verb
verb: promise; 3rd person present: promises; past tense: promised; past participle: promised; gerund or present participle: promising
1.
assure someone that one will definitely do, give, or arrange something; undertake or declare that something will happen.
"he promised to forward my mail"
synonyms:   give one's word, swear, pledge, vow, undertake, guarantee, contract, engage, give an assurance, commit oneself, bind oneself, swear/take an oath, covenant; More
archaic
pledge (someone, esp. a woman) to marry someone else; betroth.
"I've been promised to him for years"
2.
give good grounds for expecting (a particular occurrence or situation).
"forthcoming concerts promise a feast of music from around the world"
synonyms:   indicate, lead one to expect, point to, denote, signify, be a sign of, be evidence of, give hope of, bespeak, presage, augur, herald, bode, portend; More

a declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing


The particular thing the lump of metal does is that it says I will be able to get what I desire in exchange for giving up something that you desire. That is the promise gold makes  

Where does it say that? lol

Is it written on every atom of gold? No. that is a person's perception. Not gold itself making promises. Let's get that straight.

 

I think more accurately saying that "A person who has gold may perceive it to purchase X or Y or Z."

Gold itself, once again, does not make the promise. It is a human assumption that it will get them something by trading the gold for something else.

No promises.

On FRN it says it right on the paper bill everything having to do with the "PROMISE" that backs it by the fed.

Gold does not have this thus it is an entirely different argument to say Gold promises anything.

[smoothie]

If a gateway is forced to do so because of legal reasons, they most likely will stop honoring their old IOUs for redemption and create new IOUs.

That's certainly possible. Gateways are, like all other businesses, required to follow the laws of the jurisdictions in which they operate and must respond to court orders issued by courts of competent jurisdiction. The greater includes the lesser -- in theory a government could order a gateway to stop redeeming entirely. Basically, if you operate in an jurisdiction, the controlling government can do any terrible thing to you that you might imagine.

But bitcoin is innovative in the sense that accounts cannot be frozen. Perhaps you should take a read at the Bitcoin white paper, http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

You may point at XRP, however you've just answered that "the controlling government can do any terrible thing to you that you might imagine."

Ripple Labs may be forced to update ripple.com/client and the servers it connect to by a government.

Bitcoin core devs can only push out a new version of Bitcoin-Qt, yet nobody will migrate to it.

Right, they have to choose to use what the devs push out.

[sublime5447]

Yes that is the shared perspective between people transacting for gold.

So ripple and the ripple network is basically worthless to me.  Glad I got to the bottom of that.  

On FRN it says it right on the paper bill everything having to do with the "PROMISE" that backs it by the fed.

Gold does not have this thus it is an entirely different argument to say Gold promises anything.

ridiculous line of reasoning right here.  

I guess if I minted a piece of gold with a promise on it you could open you mind a little. Think about what I am saying. That money is debt and the problem with the monetary system is not that it debt based but a ponzi scheme

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

If a gateway is forced to do so because of legal reasons, they most likely will stop honoring their old IOUs for redemption and create new IOUs.

That's certainly possible. Gateways are, like all other businesses, required to follow the laws of the jurisdictions in which they operate and must respond to court orders issued by courts of competent jurisdiction. The greater includes the lesser -- in theory a government could order a gateway to stop redeeming entirely. Basically, if you operate in an jurisdiction, the controlling government can do any terrible thing to you that you might imagine.

But bitcoin is innovative in the sense that accounts cannot be frozen. Perhaps you should take a read at the Bitcoin white paper, http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

You may point at XRP, however you've just answered that "the controlling government can do any terrible thing to you that you might imagine."

Ripple Labs may be forced to update ripple.com/client and the servers it connect to by a government.

Bitcoin core devs can only push out a new version of Bitcoin-Qt, yet nobody will migrate to it.

Right, they have to choose to use what the devs push out.

Meanwhile, for Ripple, the majority of the network / consensus uses ripple.com/client. You could build rippled and somehow get the majority of the users to switch, but..

[smoothie]

Yes that is the shared perspective between people transacting for gold.

So ripple and the ripple network is basically worthless to me.  Glad I got to the bottom of that.  

On FRN it says it right on the paper bill everything having to do with the "PROMISE" that backs it by the fed.

Gold does not have this thus it is an entirely different argument to say Gold promises anything.

ridiculous line of reasoning right here.  

Hardly ridiculous when it basically debunks your comment that "gold makes a promise", when in fact it is an assumption on the part of the holder of gold that it can buy something for them.

Still...no promise.

[sublime5447]

I guess if I minted a piece of gold with a promise on it you could open you mind a little. Think about what I am saying. That money is debt and the problem with the monetary system is not that it debt based but a ponzi scheme

[smoothie]

I guess if I minted a piece of goldwith a promise on it you could open you mind a little. Think about what I am saying. That money is debt and the problem with the monetary system is not that it debt based but a ponzi scheme

You made a statement I debunked it. Moving on...with my "ridiculous" reasoning and logic.

[sublime5447]

Avoiding regulation is not one of our goals. In fact, we're working very hard to figure out how everyone from individuals to financial institutions can use crypto-currencies while complying with existing regulations

Is this not a deal breaker for anyone else? Shit this is the kinda problem I was talking about. You guys are hung up on lines of code, dude comes out and says this and all I hear is crickets

Just so I dont assume anything...what is your problem with it?

What was your assumption? Is that not a problem for you?

[JoelKatz]

So if accounts can be frozen ....

remind me how this is any better than the current banking system that does that too?

Not accounts, balances. Nobody can freeze your account, and the freeze feature (if it was implemented) would only freeze a single balance, not an entire account.

In any event, here's a repeat of my explanation in case you missed it:

The "freeze" ability hasn't been implemented due to lack of demand. The restrict ability is implemented, but no gateways (that I know of, anyway) currently use it. These options have to be enabled for an account prior to any assets being issued by that account. So if a gateway chooses to use either of these features, everyone will know it before they choose to use that gateway. We don't want to tell other people how they have to use Ripple. We want to enable people to do what they want to do. Of course, we do want everyone to know what they're getting into and we want the rules to be hard to change after the game has started.

[sublime5447]

I guess if I minted a piece of goldwith a promise on it you could open you mind a little. Think about what I am saying. That money is debt and the problem with the monetary system is not that it debt based but a ponzi scheme

You made a statement I debunked it. Moving on...with my "ridiculous" reasoning and logic.

Sure you did. Try reading debunking economics by steve keen, followed by the new depression by richard duncan. Then you might actually understand the real problem with the global economy and not make statements like the problem with the current monetary system is it is debt based all monetary systems are debt based money is debt or credit or an iou or a promise how ever you want to look at it    

"Innes goes on to note that a major problem in getting the public to understand the extent to which monetary systems are debt based is the challenge in persuading them that "things are not the way they seem"

[smoothie]

Avoiding regulation is not one of our goals. In fact, we're working very hard to figure out how everyone from individuals to financial institutions can use crypto-currencies while complying with existing regulations

Is this not a deal breaker for anyone else? Shit this is the kinda problem I was talking about. You guys are hung up on lines of code, dude comes out and says this and all I hear is crickets

Just so I dont assume anything...what is your problem with it?

What was your assumption? Is that not a problem for you?

There was no assumption. Hence my comment. Get it?

[smoothie]

I guess if I minted a piece of goldwith a promise on it you could open you mind a little. Think about what I am saying. That money is debt and the problem with the monetary system is not that it debt based but a ponzi scheme

You made a statement I debunked it. Moving on...with my "ridiculous" reasoning and logic.

Sure you did. Try reading debunking economics by steve keen, followed by the new depression by richard duncan. Then you might actually understand the real problem with the global economy and not make statements like the problem with the current monetary system is it is debt based all monetary systems are debt based money is debt or credit or an iou or a promise how ever you want to look at it   

If you missed it I already said I agree with you on the part where our current IOU system is broken. You claimed Gold is a form of IOU where gold makes a promise.

If you still can't see what I was getting at, there isn't much more I can say to get through to you. Moving on...

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

So if accounts can be frozen ....

remind me how this is any better than the current banking system that does that too?

Not accounts, balances. Nobody can freeze your account, and the freeze feature (if it was implemented) would only freeze a single balance, not an entire account.

In any event, here's a repeat of my explanation in case you missed it:

The "freeze" ability hasn't been implemented due to lack of demand. The restrict ability is implemented, but no gateways (that I know of, anyway) currently use it. These options have to be enabled for an account prior to any assets being issued by that account. So if a gateway chooses to use either of these features, everyone will know it before they choose to use that gateway. We don't want to tell other people how they have to use Ripple. We want to enable people to do what they want to do. Of course, we do want everyone to know what they're getting into and we want the rules to be hard to change after the game has started.

Would you refute my description of this feature as a visible backdoor, similar to Lotus Notes's NSA backdoor in certain versions which allows the NSA to crack it 16 million times faster than anyone else?

And for semantics, a freeze can freeze multiple balances, not just one.

[smoothie]

So if accounts can be frozen ....

remind me how this is any better than the current banking system that does that too?

Not accounts, balances. Nobody can freeze your account, and the freeze feature (if it was implemented) would only freeze a single balance, not an entire account.

In any event, here's a repeat of my explanation in case you missed it:

The "freeze" ability hasn't been implemented due to lack of demand. The restrict ability is implemented, but no gateways (that I know of, anyway) currently use it. These options have to be enabled for an account prior to any assets being issued by that account. So if a gateway chooses to use either of these features, everyone will know it before they choose to use that gateway. We don't want to tell other people how they have to use Ripple. We want to enable people to do what they want to do. Of course, we do want everyone to know what they're getting into and we want the rules to be hard to change after the game has started.

The important part of an account I would think is what's in it...i.e. Balances. Money. Currency. etc.

Who cares if you can still access your account but not move the balance(s). If your balance is frozen that's no better than current banking systems that do the same thing..only they call it "freezing your account".

[sublime5447]

So if accounts can be frozen ....

remind me how this is any better than the current banking system that does that too?

Not accounts, balances. Nobody can freeze your account, and the freeze feature (if it was implemented) would only freeze a single balance, not an entire account.

In any event, here's a repeat of my explanation in case you missed it:

The "freeze" ability hasn't been implemented due to lack of demand. The restrict ability is implemented, but no gateways (that I know of, anyway) currently use it. These options have to be enabled for an account prior to any assets being issued by that account. So if a gateway chooses to use either of these features, everyone will know it before they choose to use that gateway. We don't want to tell other people how they have to use Ripple. We want to enable people to do what they want to do. Of course, we do want everyone to know what they're getting into and we want the rules to be hard to change after the game has started.

We don't want to tell other people how they have to use Ripple

Which is it Joel are you working busily to comply with regulations or are you gonna let people do as they please?

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

If anyone is wondering why account freezing by banks/gateways is a big deal, look at these:

http://www.coindesk.com/bitspend-ceases-trading-due-to-frozen-accounts/

http://www.coindesk.com/commonwealth-bank-closes-coinjars-business-and-founders-personal-accounts/

http://thoughtsonliberty.com/biggest-bitcoin-account-frozen-by-the-united-states-government

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ke0ro/commonwealth_bank_of_australia_closes_personal/

Their Bitcoins were not affected. Now, if they held Ripple BTC instead of Bitcoins..

[sublime5447]

I guess if I minted a piece of goldwith a promise on it you could open you mind a little. Think about what I am saying. That money is debt and the problem with the monetary system is not that it debt based but a ponzi scheme

You made a statement I debunked it. Moving on...with my "ridiculous" reasoning and logic.

Sure you did. Try reading debunking economics by steve keen, followed by the new depression by richard duncan. Then you might actually understand the real problem with the global economy and not make statements like the problem with the current monetary system is it is debt based all monetary systems are debt based money is debt or credit or an iou or a promise how ever you want to look at it    

If you missed it I already said I agree with you on the part where our current IOU system is broken. You claimed Gold is a form of IOU where gold makes a promise.

If you still can't see what I was getting at, there isn't much more I can say to get through to you. Moving on...

Right we agree that the current system is broken, but for different reasons you say it is broken because it is debt based i say that all money is debt based even gold. That ALL money is a promise or an IOU

"Innes goes on to note that a major problem in getting the public to understand the extent to which monetary systems are debt based is the challenge in persuading them that "things are not the way they seem"

Graeber echoes earlier theorists such as Innes by saying that during these eras population perception was that money derived its value from the precious metals of which the coins were made,[6] but that even in these periods money is more accurately understood as debt.

"When you make a promise to someone, it is equivalent to you taking a debt"
Moving on..

[sublime5447]

If anyone is wondering why account freezing by banks/gateways is a big deal, look at these:

http://www.coindesk.com/bitspend-ceases-trading-due-to-frozen-accounts/

http://www.coindesk.com/commonwealth-bank-closes-coinjars-business-and-founders-personal-accounts/

http://thoughtsonliberty.com/biggest-bitcoin-account-frozen-by-the-united-states-government

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ke0ro/commonwealth_bank_of_australia_closes_personal/

Their Bitcoins were not affected. Now, if they held Ripple BTC instead of Bitcoins..

Not looking good.

Why didnt you start here TF? Shit if you wanted to debunk ripple start here.

[JoelKatz]

Which is it Joel are you working busily to comply with regulations or are you gonna let people do as they please?

There's really almost no conflict. Satoshi didn't violate any regulations when he made Bitcoin, so far as I know. Yet he built a system that lets people do as they please.

[smoothie]

Which is it Joel are you working busily to comply with regulations or are you gonna let people do as they please?

There's really almost no conflict. Satoshi didn't violate any regulations when he made Bitcoin, so far as I know. Yet he built a system that lets people do as they please.

Satoshi also didn't create a centralized company to issue Bitcoin's adoption.

[smoothie]

I guess if I minted a piece of goldwith a promise on it you could open you mind a little. Think about what I am saying. That money is debt and the problem with the monetary system is not that it debt based but a ponzi scheme

You made a statement I debunked it. Moving on...with my "ridiculous" reasoning and logic.

Sure you did. Try reading debunking economics by steve keen, followed by the new depression by richard duncan. Then you might actually understand the real problem with the global economy and not make statements like the problem with the current monetary system is it is debt based all monetary systems are debt based money is debt or credit or an iou or a promise how ever you want to look at it    

If you missed it I already said I agree with you on the part where our current IOU system is broken. You claimed Gold is a form of IOU where gold makes a promise.

If you still can't see what I was getting at, there isn't much more I can say to get through to you. Moving on...

Right we agree that the current system is broken, but for different reasons you say it is broken because it is debt based i say that all money is debt based even gold. That ALL money is a promise or an IOU

"Innes goes on to note that a major problem in getting the public to understand the extent to which monetary systems are debt based is the challenge in persuading them that "things are not the way they seem"

Graeber echoes earlier theorists such as Innes by saying that during these eras population perception was that money derived its value from the precious metals of which the coins were made,[6] but that even in these periods money is more accurately understood as debt.

"When you make a promise to someone, it is equivalent to you taking a debt"
Moving on..

You still have failed to show how gold (itself), not the human perception, actually makes any promise.

What goes on in the human mind in terms of perception of money then yes your statement is true. No object by itself unless specified by the creator can act as a promise.

Gold sitting in the ground still not mine out of the ground does not promise anything, same goes for lumps of gold elsewhere. It is man that gives it that perception of value and being "able" to buy something thus your concept of debt is correct when bringing the human aspect of the "promise"...which is more of like an assumption of what it can buy you, because we all don't know the future.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Which is it Joel are you working busily to comply with regulations or are you gonna let people do as they please?

There's really almost no conflict. Satoshi didn't violate any regulations when he made Bitcoin, so far as I know. Yet he built a system that lets people do as they please.

Satoshi also didn't create a centralized company to issue Bitcoin's adoption.

Nor premine even a single BTC. Like I said earlier, the genesis block was made intentionally unspendable.

[sublime5447]

Which is it Joel are you working busily to comply with regulations or are you gonna let people do as they please?

There's really almost no conflict. Satoshi didn't violate any regulations when he made Bitcoin, so far as I know. Yet he built a system that lets people do as they please.

What about money transmitting laws? If I use your system am I gonna have to register as a money transmitter?

What about my other question am I gonna be able to list any asset in the future like bushels of corn? If so are you guys gonna 1099 me? Are you gonna do what paypal did to ebay sales?

[OnkelPaul]

I think a little hard would be a severe understatement. >99% of your users use ripple.com/client, which does not allow choosing validator nodes.

The client allows you to set the server to which it connects. If that server has a different UNL or even is part of a copycat ripple network, the client will work with that. Couldn't get much easier.

Onkel Paul

[johnyj]

When money is presented in the form of IOU, there is always a risk of default. IOU money's value is always a percentage of the face value depends on the risk of the default. It does not have the same credibility as honest money like gold or bitcoin (no promise of future, works already paid)

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

When money is presented in the form of IOU, there is always a risk of default. IOU money's value is always a percentage of the face value depends on the risk of the default. It does not have the same credibility as honest money like gold or bitcoin (no promise of future, works already paid)

The default Ripple client treats all IOUs for the same currency 1:1.

[sublime5447]

When money is presented in the form of IOU, there is always a risk of default. IOU money's value is always a percentage of the face value depends on the risk of the default. It does not have the same credibility as honest money like gold or bitcoin (no promise of future, works already paid)

Currency= fiat / bitcon

Money= gold and silver/ commodity based


The main difference between money and currency is that money is a store of value over time when 100 years passes and bitcoin is still valuable then you can start calling it money, but it wont it is just a currency!

Stop comparing bitcoin to gold! Bitcoin is not real! and there is nothing honest about bitcon right now.

Joel do you see what I mean? It is like beating you head against the wall to get people to understand the credit theory of money.

You cant present money as an IOU it is an IOU. I can present an elephant as a cat but it doesnt change reality.

What you are talking about when you are saying money presented as a IOU is called a loan! A loan is an IOU on a IOU


Please watch these videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iquemUNNYY8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqvKjsIxT_8             Watch this one first.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj2s6vzErqY

[sublime5447]

I notice in the live feed that people are offering ILS what is that?

Also when I go the the live feed there is no back button, how to I get back to the main page?

Very cool graphic in the live feed though I dont really get what I am looking at?


I need a tutorial?  You said I could offer PP. Can I make Paypal my issuer. I have tired messing around on the site a few times and every time I leave pissed off.

How the fuck do you use it?

[ahbritto]

I notice in the live feed that people are offering ILS what is that?

ILS = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_new_shekel

[sublime5447]

I need a tutorial?  You said I could offer PP. Can I make Paypal my issuer. I have tired messing around on the site a few times and every time I leave pissed off.

How the fuck do you use it?


Where is the order book?

Can I link alias to my ripple account?


Is there a way to find my contacts?

When I hit the link to be added to the mailing list it redirects to the home page? what up with dat?

Can I only pick 2 currencies to trade?

What if I want to offer BTC for PP or USD or MP?

IS bitstamp the only issuer at this time?

Where is a list of contacts that are issuers?

[sublime5447]

What about other assets like derivatives contracts? Am I going to be able to buy and sell futures contracts?  

Simple Gateway Guide
This walks you through a simple ripple Gateway setup.
A Gateway must do two things
accept some form of deposit from a user and give the user Gateway IOUs. (Other -> ripple)
accept Gateway IOUs from a user and send that user payment. (ripple -> Other)
Getting started:
Set up and run rippled
Create a ripple account that will issue and redeem your IOUs. This is your Gateway Account.
Create a page to handle Other -> ripple
Create a page to handle ripple -> Other
Process for Other -> ripple
Collect from User their ripple Account where they want the IOU sent.
Once you get the money in from the Other source you simply make one RPC call to the ripple server to send the IOU to the user's account.
send an RPC submit: RPC API#submit
using something like this as the JSON: API Example Transactions#Basic IOU Send
User now has the Gateway IOU and can send it around to other people that accept your IOUs
Process for ripple -> Other
Collect from User the account they are sending from and the amount they are sending and whatever information you need to send them the Other payment. (Paypal address, dowlla ID, etc)
Tell user your Gateway Account address
Wait to see a transaction from the User's Account for the specified amount
You can either open a websocket to your rippled and handle the transaction events on your Gateway Account or
Periodically ask your rippled server for the recent transactions on your Gateway account and handle any payments
Once you receive the IOU back from the User you send the Other Payment.

I dont even know where to start only a computer programmer could think this is a simple guide, man you guys need help

What the fuck is a gateway?
Create a page to handle Other? huh what?
Process for Other -> ripple ? seriously
Once you get the money in from the Other source you simply make one RPC? simply this is not simple!!! no explanation of what a RNC is when you get the money in from where how?
send an RPC submit: RPC API#submit? no explanation what a API is
websocket?

Joel I have spent probably 10 hours dicking around on this site between today and other attempts in the past. I still have no fucking clue how to use your site.

I dont know if you guys are trying to do to much or what?

Look I am lucky if I can get a computer to turn on seriously my dad is a computer engineer who has owned his own software company for 20 years so I do have a little bit of experience. When you made this site did you only expect computer programmers to use it?  

Stop talk to robots and realize that human beings are going to be who users this.

Should I just give up and come back in a year? I am all about building the fuck out of a trust network can I use you site to do that or not?

[SeNiels]

What about other assets like derivatives contracts? Am I going to be able to buy and sell futures contracts?  

Simple Gateway Guide
This walks you through a simple ripple Gateway setup.
A Gateway must do two things
accept some form of deposit from a user and give the user Gateway IOUs. (Other -> ripple)
accept Gateway IOUs from a user and send that user payment. (ripple -> Other)
Getting started:
Set up and run rippled
Create a ripple account that will issue and redeem your IOUs. This is your Gateway Account.
Create a page to handle Other -> ripple
Create a page to handle ripple -> Other
Process for Other -> ripple
Collect from User their ripple Account where they want the IOU sent.
Once you get the money in from the Other source you simply make one RPC call to the ripple server to send the IOU to the user's account.
send an RPC submit: RPC API#submit
using something like this as the JSON: API Example Transactions#Basic IOU Send
User now has the Gateway IOU and can send it around to other people that accept your IOUs
Process for ripple -> Other
Collect from User the account they are sending from and the amount they are sending and whatever information you need to send them the Other payment. (Paypal address, dowlla ID, etc)
Tell user your Gateway Account address
Wait to see a transaction from the User's Account for the specified amount
You can either open a websocket to your rippled and handle the transaction events on your Gateway Account or
Periodically ask your rippled server for the recent transactions on your Gateway account and handle any payments
Once you receive the IOU back from the User you send the Other Payment.

I dont even know where to start only a computer programmer could think this is a simple guide, man you guys need help

What the fuck is a gateway?
Create a page to handle Other? huh what?
Process for Other -> ripple ? seriously
Once you get the money in from the Other source you simply make one RPC? simply this is not simple!!! no explanation of what a RNC is when you get the money in from where how?
send an RPC submit: RPC API#submit? no explanation what a API is
websocket?

Joel I have spent probably 10 hours dicking around on this site between today and other attempts in the past. I still have no fucking clue how to use your site.

I dont know if you guys are trying to do to much or what?

Look I am lucky if I can get a computer to turn on seriously my dad is a computer engineer who has owned his own software company for 20 years so I do have a little bit of experience. When you made this site did you only expect computer programmers to use it?  

Stop talk to robots and realize that human beings are going to be who users this.

Should I just give up and come back in a year? I am all about building the fuck out of a trust network can I use you site to do that or not?

You should read this post again in 5 years so you can read how stupid you are. You say you don´t understand so I tell you, this is the point where you apologize.

EDIT:

1. A Gateway is a trusted entity within the network that hands out IOU's
2. Other could be USD/LTC/BTC/EUR, but also BKW, my own currency that I'm planning to launch in my region so i can educate people on finance in order to save the planet from total destruction. Creating a page is just putting in a counter currency with bid and ask
3.Process other > ripple: This is the next step in the explanation, you can not really ask this as a question (see it more like the header of the next chapter in the explanation)
4. RPC and websocket I also don't know

If you have questions in the future i suggent you fiend a more polite way to putting them, because people really don't deserve to be spoken to the way you did, i suggest you do that on facebook.

[sublime5447]

Much better reply.. Thanks

Sorry for the negativity using a web site should be self explanatory. The point I am trying to make is that I am more computer literate than 70 percent of the people on the plant and I cant make heads or tails out of the site how is anyone else  

I shouldnt need to read for 10 hours and have to look up a thousand terms

They post simple on the header and it is far from it.

If the site isnt ready or they dont really expect people to use it then . I will just move on. I have Thousands of trades and can offer a good amount of people to really build up the network, but if I cant tell them how it works or why they should use it or help with the problems that they have then I cant get them to join.

It shouldnt be so hard to figure this shit out.  



You guy have a great flashy video on the site and a nice concept video on youtube, but how about one that is just a guy sitting in front of a computer walking you through the steps of how to use it?

Teach me how to use it and I will make a video, it would probably get a lot of hits

I know it is beta but most people would have given up a long time ago.

[sublime5447]

Fuck it I give up.

Sell it to the banks that is who it is designed for any way.

Sell it to wall street.   

 

[Sukrim]

While this sounds promising, I still don't see how it can turn Ripple into decentralized rather than distributed. The consensus system requires people to have similar UNLs. Democracy is distributed, however the resulting government is not decentralized.

(and similar statements before/after)

Imagine Bitcoin at it's infancy:
Satoshi publishes the initially mined chain (let's say with ~10 blocks) and a second user joins the network. This second user can now either generate a new genesis block or use the Satoshi chain. He chooses the latter and now user #3 can either start a new chain, or use the one from Satoshi and user #2 etc.

This is similar to how Ripple was running for quite some time now - third party validators can either start their new ledgers from 0 or join the one started by OpenCoin. This is still true today and in 5 years from now - everybody can choose freely to fire up rippled and start their own fork or use the one that was once 100% owned by 1 entity, then 50% by 2, then 33.3% by 3 etc.
Even if you have UNLs that do not contain Ripple Labs directly, you will either have to have someone who is on the main ledger in your UNL (or at least in your peer list...) or be on a forked net, just like in Bitcoin. Either you accept Satoshi as initial central bootstrapping entity or you don't. People can have vastly dissimilar UNLs by the way (and they maybe should) just as in Bitcoin you can have completely different miners and peers - if a miner builds on a different genesis block or a peer broadcasts a block based on a different genesis block though, you would regard them as invalid as Ripple would see a ledger that is not a result of the mainline ledger currently visible for example on s1.ripple.com.

Sorry for the negativity using a web site should be self explanatory. The point I am trying to make is that I am more computer literate than 70 percent of the people on the plant and I cant make heads or tails out of the site how is anyone else

Bold statement, though since a LOT of people do not have access to computers on this planet, that means you are likely in the bottom 50% or even 30% computer users in a western country.
You are actually trying to issue something that others should trust you, that you are competent to issue and redeem it. If reading (and asking without swearing/insulting ("Fuck it", "what the fuck is a gateway", "figure this shit out"...)) a few wiki pages is already too much, maybe you should look into hiring a consultant or taking private lessons. You current tone definitely does not encourage me to help you further. Also you do not really give hints on what your actual problem is, besides not understanding anything/being confused or frustrated. If you pose concrete questions (e.g. "I want to issue BTC IOUs from my ripple account, how do I do that and what do I have to keep in mind?") instead of "websocket?" (tried the Wikipedia page on that already?) this would also help people helping you.

Also keep in mind that issuing IOUs is something that likely is a regulated business in most countries, especially for fiat money. It is not really something that every user of Ripple would need to do at all and also right now there are FAR more people using Ripple more like a bank (in the sense of the payment processing part) than like a community credit system.

[sublime5447]

I have lost interest. It wasn't designed for me this is for the banks to use.

[Sukrim]

You seem to switch interests quite quickly...

I definitely use Ripple and I am not a bank - it might be the case though that it wasn't designed for you (quite likely, as you seem to have troubles understading some things and/or using the client UI) or your ideological goals (e.g. you were upset when it was mentioned that Ripple tries to fit into existing laws instead of ignoring governmental regulations).
Depending on how the journey goes, in the future you might use Ripple without even realizing it (services like BitPay are easy to implement using Ripple) if you continue using Bitcoin or other crypto-currencies.

Sorry to see you go, at least you tried to understand more about something instead of just repeating heresay and half-truths or plainly refusing the idea from the beginning without being able to give any reason.

[Mitzplik]

I doubt the creators of bitcoin have not retained a significant amount for them.

Who can say how concentrated are the bitcoins? Who owns the big amounts? The pope? Drug Dealers? FARCs? AlQaeda? UNICEF?

If there is some concentration, the big players interests will always be to promote the protocol, this way their assets will keep or increase their value. Or, if they have already made their money selling BTC, they could create another - better - replacement and make money again, or whatever they want. The protocol would belong to everyone.

I see ripple obeying the same logic, but in a less anonymous way. Now that its open source, Ripple Labs team will work on a common good which is the protocol, this way they can keep their assets valuable (XRP), otherwise, someone will fork the code and create a better code, and the XRPs will be garbage.