[2018-03-23] Ripple: Crypto needs a decentralized network to be successful

[Powerpuff]

Cryptocurrency and the underlying blockchain technology need a decentralized network in order to be successful long term, said Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb.

Use of a centralized financial payment network will result in "a system that is no better than SWIFT or PayPal," McCaleb said.

"The real vision is that you have a network, much like the internet, that anyone can participate in," McCaleb said Friday on CNBC's "Fast Money." "There's not one central entity that can decide that it's going to start charging. This is the way this thing can actually grow and reach ubiquity."

"That's the key thing to make these things successful," he said.

McCaleb co-founded Ripple, whose ripple currency is the third-largest digital coin by market cap, but split off from the Ripple team to form Stellar in 2014 because of different beliefs in how the system should be run.

"It's very hard to run nodes outside of ... Ripple Labs," McCaleb said of ripple coins. "[The Ripple team is] running the majority of the nodes, which should be concerning for people."

The developer, who also created the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange and then sold it in 2011, said the only other successful decentralized network he's seen is the internet.

"What we're trying to build at Stellar is an internet-level protocol," said McCaleb, Stellar's chief technology officer. "That's important that that be done by a nonprofit entity. If you imagine an internet created by a for-profit company, it would just be a very different world."

Another key to Stellar's success, McCaleb said, is to not limit the investor base to a few participants.

"One of the things we're doing at Stellar is distributing the underlying coin very widely," he said.

Stellar's XLM coins, known as lumens, were among the 10 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization earlier this year. But the currency has declined approximately 34 percent so far this year.

The coin's transaction settlement times are 5 seconds or less, a fraction of bitcoin's time, McCaleb said.

Earlier this week, McCaleb told CNBC that cryptocurrency and the underlying blockchain technology will change the way banking takes place in the future by creating a public ledger that everyone can see — but that cannot be changed at random.

Within the next 10 years, McCaleb predicted most assets, even non-crypto assets, will become digitized.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/23/ripple-co-founder-says-a-decentralized-network-is-key-.html

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[darkangel11]

So, Ripple didn't get enough popularity and they're trying a new strategy. BTC is still bad, we need something new, let's pump stellar because it's less centralized.
It's going to be the same with stellar, just like with most of those altcoins that get hyped for a while and become pretty much forgotten, like dogecoin.

[FrueGreads]

So, Ripple didn't get enough popularity and they're trying a new strategy. BTC is still bad, we need something new, let's pump stellar because it's less centralized.
It's going to be the same with stellar, just like with most of those altcoins that get hyped for a while and become pretty much forgotten, like dogecoin.

I agree with McCaleb on the importance of decentralization. Ripple is nothing more than a new SWIFT, and he is completely correct with that. Not saying won't be useful to accelerate transactions, and banks need that in order to compete with bitcoin, and other alts. But the main concern here is not just getting things done faster. The importance of bitcoin and other decentralized crypto, is the ability they provide to ditch the middle man. We hold a hand on our economies, they can't be easily seized or confiscated, and they don't lose value if our country does something stupid and enters in a crisis.

Ripple can't offer that, and it's not really a coin or a currency in my opinion. It's just a technology that will probably be used by banks in the future.
I also don't think McCaleb was saying that stellar it better than BTC. He just said it was faster. That is a true fact right now, but we all know that bitcoin will probably solve all those problems soon, so that will stop being a big deal in the future.

I' not saying stellar is bad though. I actually like it, and I bought some for the long term.

[thefaucetrunner]

Decentralization is definitely important for keeping a cryptocurrency out of the hands of a small elite, but Stellar is certainly a bad example of it. How many nodes are completely owned by the founders? Plus you can't mine lumens. In my thinking, mining is vital to decentralization, because if the currency is not mined, then the supply has to controlled... by a "central" authority, which goes against the whole concept of decentralization. Stellar does provide a middle way between Bitcoin's decentralized design and Ripple's centralized one that investors may appreciate, but so far, its price is highly correlated with Ripple.

[vit05]

Ripple as a company has more porpuse than the token. This is sad for whoever bought and hold the token. I have sell mine when they passed BTC in market cap because I do not believe they have more value then a decentralized coin.

But for the banks is a great solution and will probably be really successful.

[theCoinMaestro]

Decentralized or not, the speed at which the blockchain can handle transactions must at least be at par with how major credit card companies do their transactions and as of this time, I'm afraid that we're not there yet. As for a formula for a crypto to succeed, being decentralized certainly has it's appeal as it is one of the reasons the early adopters flocked to bitcoin. But decentralization would not be enough if people's confidence towards the said crypto/blockchain is shaky. As mentioned, it must be like the internet which has become ubiquitous in our day to day lives. But the mentality of the people hoarding the coins/tokens as a means to gain wealth is not helping it's cause. To have widespread use, crypto must be easy to access at very minimal cost to the user. 

[Rustamm]

Ripple as a company has more porpuse than the token. This is sad for whoever bought and hold the token. I have sell mine when they passed BTC in market cap because I do not believe they have more value then a decentralized coin.

But for the banks is a great solution and will probably be really successful.

Ripple was created primarily for servicing the banking system, which is a fairly closed system that does not tolerate large volatility of decentralized crypto-currencies. Financial institutions need stability and peace. Maybe it is because of this that ripple was conceived as a centralized crypto currency. However, now all its lacks of centralization are manifested.