Ripple is not a scam - and you may be making yourself vulnerable to actual scams

[hypostatization]

No one can understand the foggy misleading purpose of mastercoin and ripple, so it will fail, simple as that. I will bet on Nxt. Period.

Understanding their purpose directly ties to understanding the major centralization issues threatening Bitcoin and Alts today.

[HairyMaclairy]

Sorry all the coloured concepts (Mastercoin, NXT etc) are so far removed from being able to be legally enforceable in the real world against real assets it's a joke.  At least with crypto you are dealing with virtual assets.

[hypostatization]

Sorry all the coloured concepts (Mastercoin, NXT etc) are so far removed from being able to be legally enforceable in the real world against real assets it's a joke.  At least with crypto you are dealing with virtual assets.

Ripple does not force you to deal in real world currencies. It supports crypto currencies with equal strength.

Also: since there are no legal precedents established for systems like Ripple yet---it is extremely hard to say how they will fair, in line with your concerns.

[BladeRunner]

Ripple Labs is highly focused on distributing XRP, and has found a way to promote a great cause in turn.

Highly focused to exchange those ripple for fiat as soon as possible. What a great cause!
If it does not allow anyone to create the coins in an equal manner than it is in effect pre-mined. I dont care how many ripple they gave you to come over here and try to pour perfume over a shit sandwich in order for all of us to eat it.

Im sure Ripple IS NOT a scam. It is doing exactly what it was designed to do. Make the dev's Rich beyond belief from the fools who will eat shit sandwiches.

[hypostatization]

Highly focused to exchange those ripple for fiat as soon as possible. What a great cause!
If it does not allow anyone to create the coins in an equal manner than it is in effect pre-mined. I dont care how many ripple they gave you to come over here and try to pour perfume over a shit sandwich in order for all of us to eat it.

Im sure Ripple IS NOT a scam. It is doing exactly what it was designed to do. Make the dev's Rich beyond belief from the fools who will eat shit sandwiches.

Experience with bad exchanges, seeking a long term currency investment, and then finally reading code kept bringing me back to Ripple. I have previously invested in many alts---and have made decent money. I am hoping to encourage people to look at other decentralized exchange systems as well.

I assumed it was a scam at first, myself, and then read up on it more.

I am not paid by Ripple Labs.

[hvezdasmrti]

Cripple is something like Monsanto. Trying to make every farmer to accept only their own rules. Controlling everything, of course.

Cripple is not a scam. It just makes you dependent on cripple CEO. Nothing more, nothing less. Typical centrallized project. Give a bow to the Monsanto and Monsanto maybe will allow you to make some profit.

Conspiration theory: many todays scamcoins and junkcoins are created by developers of ripple, nxt, megacoin and similar projects to initiate a declining attitude to the crypto in general

[HairyMaclairy]

I would appreciate if someone can find the answer to this question.  I cannot find it.

Is an ordinary user located in the US who trusts both Bitstamp for USD and an offshore exchange for USD required by FINCEN to be licensed as a money transmitter.  Anyone familiar with the issue will know the guidance note - I will try to find the link.  

*edit* link here: http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/nr/html/20130318.html

[heavyman]

Riplle is easy,future success！   

[efx]

Highly focused to exchange those ripple for fiat as soon as possible. What a great cause!
If it does not allow anyone to create the coins in an equal manner than it is in effect pre-mined. I dont care how many ripple they gave you to come over here and try to pour perfume over a shit sandwich in order for all of us to eat it.

Im sure Ripple IS NOT a scam. It is doing exactly what it was designed to do. Make the dev's Rich beyond belief from the fools who will eat shit sandwiches.

Experience with bad exchanges, seeking a long term currency investment, and then finally reading code kept bringing me back to Ripple. I have previously invested in many alts---and have made decent money. I am hoping to encourage people to look at other decentralized exchange systems as well.

I assumed it was a scam at first, myself, and then read up on it more.

I am not paid by Ripple Labs.

Ah, so they don't pay you. Somehow, I'm not surprised by that. However, I'm confident you have invested in Ripple, which is the only reason you spent your time trying to prop up this 'investment'.

Tell me, when did you gain the ability to run a trust node?
If ripple decides to modify their code in a way that the majority disagrees with, how exactly do you think you're going to prevent the 'community' from being forced over?

Allow me to answer my own questions so we don't have to deal with your rambling attempts at deflecting from the real issues: The community does not control trusted nodes (servers, hosts, whatever you want to call them, it's the same damned concept) and you have no power to decide the direction of development.

That's called centralization.

The fact that you even pretend that the source they have released is of much significance is laughably ridiculous. By your own admission, you must have gotten involved with ripple before you ever even attempted to understand it and looking at the source was apparently the last thing you did....

[hypostatization]

Ah, so they don't pay you. Somehow, I'm not surprised by that. However, I'm confident you have invested in Ripple, which is the only reason you spent your time trying to prop up this 'investment'.

I am invested in XRP. I said above that looking for a long term investment kept bringing me back to it. I value my investment, and also what Ripple offers to the community directly and in ideas that can be adapted to other systems. Alternatives like eMunie, NXT, Monetas, and MasterCoin are important. BTC and Alts in general are facing severe centralization threats.

Tell me, when did you gain the ability to run a trust node?
If ripple decides to modify their code in a way that the majority disagrees with, how exactly do you think you're going to prevent the 'community' from being forced over?

Ripple is open source. Users can reject the changes and push back or fork, just like any crypto currency. Validation is decentralized. If someone wanted to start a modified system, they are able to do so. I actually hope that people spin off portions of the code and general concepts to make other systems more robust.

Allow me to answer my own questions so we don't have to deal with your rambling attempts at deflecting from the real issues: The community does not control trusted nodes (servers, hosts, whatever you want to call them, it's the same damned concept) and you have no power to decide the direction of development.

I think you may be confused. Anyone can become a Validator. Is that what you are referring to?

It may be worthwhile reading this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6867324

The fact that you even pretend that the source they have released is of much significance is laughably ridiculous. By your own admission, you must have gotten involved with ripple before you ever even attempted to understand it and looking at the source was apparently the last thing you did....

I am not sure what this comment is based on. My knowledge of the code base is growing, and I have acknowledged that. I have been impressed so far. I started investing in Ripple based on the concepts, as well as general interest in crypto currencies. My interest in it has grown more recently, following negative experience with exchanges. After reading about it more, and starting to dig into the source code, I have continued investing.

[scarface]

ripple is a premined scam no worse than nxt or quark

[BladeRunner]

Experience with bad exchanges, seeking a long term currency investment, and then finally reading code kept bringing me back to Ripple. I have previously invested in many alts---and have made decent money. I am hoping to encourage people to look at other decentralized exchange systems as well.

I assumed it was a scam at first, myself, and then read up on it more.

I am not paid by Ripple Labs.

So what about the mining of ripple? how can anyone with a desire create some XRP? They cant. you just have to grease the bankers palms with payola to get their "long term" investment.

I dont care how long your rubbed your private parts all over the code. Its still centralized and the bag holders are reaping the rewards from their turd sandwiches to all the fools willing to bite into it..

[hypostatization]

So what about the mining of ripple? how can anyone with a desire create some XRP? They cant. you just have to grease the bankers palms with payola to get their "long term" investment.

You cannot create Ripple. It is not a mining system. Via the World Computing Grid, however, you can earn it: https://www.computingforgood.org/

A lot of people seem to miss that the greatest utility of Ripple is not XRP. It is one component a system that allows transfer and exchange of all currencies.

Users are able to speculate with, trade, and spend any currency that has established gateways. Benefiting from Ripple does not have to take the path of investing in XRP. It provides a means of transferring and exchanging currency without being beholden to closed centralized systems like inputs.io.

[efx]

Ah, so they don't pay you. Somehow, I'm not surprised by that. However, I'm confident you have invested in Ripple, which is the only reason you spent your time trying to prop up this 'investment'.

I am invested in XRP. I said above that looking for a long term investment kept bringing me back to it. I value my investment, and also what Ripple offers to the community directly and in ideas that can be adapted to other systems. Alternatives like eMunie, NXT, Monetas, and MasterCoin are important. BTC and Alts in general are facing severe centralization threats.

Tell me, when did you gain the ability to run a trust node?
If ripple decides to modify their code in a way that the majority disagrees with, how exactly do you think you're going to prevent the 'community' from being forced over?

Ripple is open source. Users can reject the changes and push back or fork, just like any crypto currency. Validation is decentralized. If someone wanted to start a modified system, they are able to do so. I actually hope that people spin off portions of the code and general concepts to make other systems more robust.

Allow me to answer my own questions so we don't have to deal with your rambling attempts at deflecting from the real issues: The community does not control trusted nodes (servers, hosts, whatever you want to call them, it's the same damned concept) and you have no power to decide the direction of development.

I think you may be confused. Anyone can become a Validator. Is that what you are referring to?

It may be worthwhile reading this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6867324

The fact that you even pretend that the source they have released is of much significance is laughably ridiculous. By your own admission, you must have gotten involved with ripple before you ever even attempted to understand it and looking at the source was apparently the last thing you did....

I am not sure what this comment is based on. My knowledge of the code base is growing, and I have acknowledged that. I have been impressed so far. I started investing in Ripple based on the concepts, as well as general interest in crypto currencies. My interest in it has grown more recently, following negative experience with exchanges. After reading about it more, and starting to dig into the source code, I have continued investing.

Oh, I wasn't aware that every proposed change on github is automatically merged... The fact that it can obviously be forked is neither here nor there, simply a statement that the code and basic concept is indeed interesting.

You do not know who is actually running as a public 'validator'. It's still simple consensus, and the majority is most likely represented by those who have something to gain by following the direction set by those who used to be known as 'opencoin'. I still consider that dubious, but the process is not significantly different from bitcoin and the rest.

However, it's true that I was not aware of the release of the rippled source specifically, that seems to be a fairly recent development. https://github.com/ripple/rippled/ (also included by proxy in your original post but I consider it to be the most significant part by far)


Anyways, I hope someone will make use of the provided code and concepts without the mostly unnecessary 'premine' (I understand that XRP does not exist solely to line the devs pockets). I expect it would gain significant interest on it's own merit, no bribes necessary.

[Micon]

No one can understand the foggy misleading purpose of mastercoin and ripple, so it will fail, simple as that.

#Agree

In general I think all alts go to close-to-0.  I think any alt with a strong network will always have some value as a dogecoin-like "playmoney" but I think the days of alts are numbered.  the space is simply exploding and it will collapse, IMO.

Ripple is a special one, IMO.  Ripple, like many of the alts, never answers the question "why not just use bitcoin?"

Also, it should be noted, I love the idea of Dogecoin and all it stands for. 

very alt-crypto

[hypostatization]

Oh, I wasn't aware that every proposed change on github is automatically merged...

Apologies - did not mean to imply that. By 'push back', I meant voice disagreement with changes, not literal git push.

Anyways, I hope someone will make use of the provided code and concepts without the mostly unnecessary premine (I understand that XRP does not exist solely to line the devs pockets).

It would be great to see concepts from it adapted to other code bases. Decentralized exchange systems, with support for multiple currencies, is going to be massively important to supporting a healthy future.

[casascius]

Ripple does not force you to deal in real world currencies. It supports crypto currencies with equal strength.

Ripple is an ill-conceived system useful for trading unenforceable promises.  Its success depends on people mistakenly believing that a Ripple promise denominated as 1 USD is the same thing as 1 USD.

Ripple serves to insulate its users from the world's legal systems, the very same systems the users would depend upon to enforce any promises on the network.  It's broken by design - like a screendoor submarine.

[hypostatization]

Ripple, like many of the alts, never answers the question "why not just use bitcoin?"

I think part of the confusion comes from Ripple striving to support the exact opposite: use Bitcoin!

It is a complementary system. As it does not target overtaking Bitcoin, but instead seeks to support all currencies, its message is more broad:

https://ripple.com/guide/#what-are-the-advantages-of-using-ripple-for-financial-transactions

Here is one of the most important ongoing concerns in our community today: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Off-Chain_Transactions

Ripple facilitates a decentralized means of making off-chain transactions.

Centralized exchanges and payment systems are a major threat to Bitcoin and crypto currencies in general. Exchanges that are relied upon for most cryptos are closed, centralized, off-chain systems.

[casascius]

What happens if I "receive" something in Ripple and I want to exchange it for the real asset but the person who owes it to me (from the view of Ripple) doesn't want, or isn't able, to pay?  This is what I see as Ripple's achilles heel.

[goa604]

Thanks for explaining what a scam it is.