The difference between Ripple and Bitcoin

[corebob]

I've got BTC to spend but no reason to do so.. I'm thinking XRP should not been considered to have value and that they should be given away for free. I don't want to burn good BTC or any other coin for XRP while the use of them is so unclear. If they are being given away, then I'm happy to consider them and trial what they can do but that's a different model of distribution than finding suckers to buy them.

They have been and are given away for free.  You must have missed their very first giveaway to members of this very forum.  They just aren't going to dump all the XRP to a handful of crypto-enthusiast because that does nothing to help fairly distribute the currency to the world and for Ripple, it's about the masses not the miners.  Eventually, this distribution will run its course and we won't have to talk about XRP all the time.  I'll honestly be glad when it's over because there is so much great about Ripple that people fail to see because of their "coin" blindness.

...
They just aren't going to dump all the XRP to a handful of crypto-enthusiast because that does nothing to help fairly distribute the currency to the world and for Ripple
...

Add that to my earlier arguments


By the way, darkcoin is giving away coins too
https://www.darkcointalk.org/forums/general-discussion.2/
and they don't alienate certain parts of the community when doing so.

The engineer in me is somewhat tempted to take a closer look at the technology and figure out exactly what problem is being solved, but if its not completely decentralized
and controlled solely by the community as a whole, I doubt I will dig deep.

[MPOE-PR]

The difference between ripple and Bitcoin is that ripple is a scam.

[Sukrim]

Everything is in the ledger, just like the blockchain.

I've already went through this with another Ripple supporter here:

Since transactions in Ripple only operate on account balances, not on inputs like Bitcoin, and you can only branch at the top not "mine" on an earlier "block", there is no explicit need for keeping history, not even headers.

There is no explicit need for keeping history... So there is no need for keeping a ledger, in other words.

Dude, seriously?!
That's your interpretation and definitely not the final conclusion! Ripple ledgers are similar to a signed UTXO set in Bitcoin terms. If something like this (also called "ultimate blockchain compression" in the dev forum here) was implemented in Bitcoin in the first place, there would also have been no real need for full nodes to download gigabytes of stale transactions and you could be up and mining from scratch after loading a few dozen MB.

It is not my fault that you confuse technical terms (Ripple ledger) with accounting terms (a book keeper's ledger --> full transaction history) or that the proper choice of terms for Ripple would have been "balance sheet" maybe. I did not design that system, I use and study it.

XRP are cryptographically accounted for since ledger #32570 and there are efforts to push this back to have the genesis ledger at #0. Still at 32570 there were less than 100 billion XRP already and their amount has been only going down since. There is also no transaction possible currently (and yes, you can check that in the code for rippled) that would allow issuing any more of them.

Anyways, why are we even talking about XRP in here so much?! They are a centralized currency and not the greatest one anyways. You can get more of them than you'll likely ever need for the price of a beer and be done with them. Anything more than that is pure speculation and there are easier markets for gambling your money away...

There is spam concern because there are transactional limits to everything.  If there is no spam prevention, anyone can attack the network with say 100,000 false transactions and grind the network to a halt.

Okay, then use a cryptocurrency to prevent spam. In fact, you could use Bitcoin. The way to prevent spam is simple, which is attach a cost to an electronic action. Spammers are successful only when their cost to spam is negligible.

Actually that's a project that might be very interesting - to create a fork of Ripple that can use XRP and BTC or some other cryptocurrency for the purpose of spam prevention. They use similar enough crypto that it might even work, the only issue is that Bitcoin transactions are damn slow, but if someone is really disgusted by XRP, that won't stop them I guess. Another problem tmight be that validators then would need to watch a block chain too, creating more attack surface and another source for errors. It's definitely possible though.

Therefore, a valid transition between two ledgers can only maintain the number of XRPs in circulation or reduce it, and from that property, it derives that the only XRP that can ever be created need to be created in Ledger 0 (or genesis ledger).

Okay, if you say so... but what about this:

The oldest available ledger is #32570 (with about 100 entries) so this is currently the genesis one, the older ones are presumably lost or at least not available until JoelKatz finally publishes the transactions that took place in these first 1 1/2 weeks so these ledgers can be restored back to 0. Since then there is a unbroken hashed chain of headers (also cryptographically linked to the transactions and account state at each point of time). Nodes verify this by getting the most recent finalized ledger and continuing from there. Since transactions in Ripple only operate on account balances, not on inputs like Bitcoin, and you can only branch at the top not "mine" on an earlier "block", there is no explicit need for keeping history, not even headers.

Why is there this mysterious missing genesis ledger? In Bitcoin the creator disappeared, but it's no matter because we have and can verify the genesis block. With Ripple it's backwards, we have the creators but the verifiable origin of Ripple amount is a secret.

The genesis ledger is #32570 and it is publicly available with all its trust lines, XRP amounts and trade offers within.

It's easy to say that exchanges are just for exchanging and people should cash in and out quickly.  The reality is that there are costs in terms of fees and inconvenience (captchas, email verifies, delays) that make it difficult to do so.  So many people end up just leaving money on the exchanges.  And get bitten when they fail.   Is Ripple any different in this regard?   Is it 0 cost in terms of fees and near zero in terms of inconvenience to cash out my bitcoin IOU for a real bitcoin?

Otherwise, I don't see how that is much different from any of the other exchanges.... entities that I put approx zero trust in.

You would rarely hold Bitcoin IOUs to begin with, Ripple for bitcoiners would work similar to Coinbase or BitPay - most if not all of your funds are with you and you only convert them to IOUs if you want to trade them (e.g. atm. on traditional exchanges) or buy something denominated in a different currency (e.g. you buy a computer game on humbe bundle via coinbase, who then trade on behalf of HB).

Edit: Unlike coinbase, Ripple would likely add other payment networks via bridges though, not just single merchants. Once someone strikes a deal with e.g. PayPal, you could pay with Bitcoin to any site that accepts PayPal for example.

There are currently fees (for sure in XRP and potentially in IOUs too) as well as the normal market problems: spread and slippage. Unlike for example a bank transfer to an account in a different denomination though, you can get active there too and just put in a different offer, that might get taken.

The difference between ripple and Bitcoin is that ripple is a scam.

Sorry, but Mr. Popescu simply did not understand a few things, his example with the little daughter for one thing is flawed and can't happen that way. Feel free to try it out with a few accounts inside Ripple right now, it won't work. Unfortunately as far as I have heard from him, he seems like lomeone who rarely if at all changes opinions after he has made one... I wrote a longer piece about this blog post elsewhere, if you really want to, I can copy-paste it in here too.

[zzojar]

I've always been totally confused by Ripple. It makes no sense to me, and I've tried to look into it several times. My assumption is that if you cannot easily explain it, then it is probably a scam.

[Sukrim]

I've always been totally confused by Ripple. It makes no sense to me, and I've tried to look into it several times. My assumption is that if you cannot easily explain it, then it is probably a scam.

It's a decentralized market place - you take whatever you want to trade there, put it into a storage room of your choice (= gateway) and get a receipt for that, then proceed to trade this receipt with someone else for a recepit of what you want to have and in the end of the day go with the other receipt to a different storage room and get out whatever you bought. You can choose the storage room yourself freely, hell, you can just open one yourself and hope for customers. Also you can go there with your hands full of receipts that you just filled out and signed yourself. This is why Ripple ensures that they are all properly signed by a certain issuer and that you need to state before you trade which storage rooms you trust to actually not just run with the stuff while you're not looking.
XRP would be the stamps on the receipts by the way, which are issued by a single third party and you can trade receipts for stamps and vice versa too if you like. Some people think that makes them valuable and they build huge collections, while on the other hand they were given out in huge quantities for free in the beginning to get the market going. They do have some value from utility, but only inside the market place after all.

But seriously, this argument is the single MOST used against Bitcoin and the typical "argument" why it is so much of a scam, ponzi scheme and whatnot.

[~Coinseeker~]

Add that to my earlier arguments


By the way, darkcoin is giving away coins too
https://www.darkcointalk.org/forums/general-discussion.2/
and they don't alienate certain parts of the community when doing so.

The engineer in me is somewhat tempted to take a closer look at the technology and figure out exactly what problem is being solved, but if its not completely decentralized
and controlled solely by the community as a whole, I doubt I will dig deep.

That's your choice and your future knowledge base.  If I was an engineer, I'd be trying to study all the tech I could but that's just me.  As for your "alienate" comment, Bitcointalk was the first and largest giveaway to single members.  Many receiving 50,000 XRP all the way down to 2000 or so.  It was a huge giveaway and a lot of people here made good money.

Either way, it matters not.  The crypto-community is only a fraction of a fraction of the world population and for people who talk about "mass adoption" all the time, many of you certainly do think small.  This is global baby and that means spreading the currency to as many of the 7 billion people on the planet as possible.  This about changing the world, especially for the unbanked, under-banked and the millions financially oppressed.  If that offends you, so be it.  Enjoy your darkcoin, I look forward to seeing on the Ripple network where all currencies are welcome...but before long, you'll likely be utilizing Ripple and you won't even know it.  

EDIT:  I want to thank the mods for keeping this thread up here this long.  I hope we don't have a trend of XRP, blah, blah, blah threads but it's good to have discussions on solid tech here nonetheless. I'll just be glad when this BS polarization in the digital currency world is over....or one can hope because fundamentally, we're all on the same side.

Cheers.

[magnebit]

Basically, Ripple is based on Trust; and Trust is the greatest liability of all.

[~Coinseeker~]

Basically, Ripple is based on Trust; and Trust is the greatest liability of all.

I fail to see your point.  The majority of bitcoin transactions are based on trust.

[Sukrim]

Basically, Ripple is based on Trust; and Trust is the greatest liability of all.

I fail to see your point.  The majority of bitcoin transactions are based on trust.

To back this up with some facts:
https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume?daysAverageString=30 <-- 30 day transaction volume on the block chain.
http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ <-- there are 4(!) different active closed source centralized purely trust based exchanges that have several times that volume alone, not counting others and not counting the volume that comes from sending money to and from these exchanges. Also not counting brokers like Coinbase or BitPay.

[buy4crypto]

What is Ripple and how did it become so valuable. I am not to familiar with it.

[~Coinseeker~]

To back this up with some facts:
https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume?daysAverageString=30 <-- 30 day transaction volume on the block chain.
http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ <-- there are 4(!) different active closed source centralized purely trust based exchanges that have several times that volume alone, not counting others and not counting the volume that comes from sending money to and from these exchanges. Also not counting brokers like Coinbase or BitPay.

Nice.  

What is Ripple and how did it become so valuable. I am not to familiar with it.

I personally wouldn't concern myself with Ripple's "value" as it means very little in the near term.  If you want to learn about Ripple though, I recommend you start with the Ripple primer.  Enjoy.  

https://ripple.com/ripple_primer.pdf

[corebob]

Add that to my earlier arguments


By the way, darkcoin is giving away coins too
https://www.darkcointalk.org/forums/general-discussion.2/
and they don't alienate certain parts of the community when doing so.

The engineer in me is somewhat tempted to take a closer look at the technology and figure out exactly what problem is being solved, but if its not completely decentralized
and controlled solely by the community as a whole, I doubt I will dig deep.

That's your choice and your future knowledge base.  If I was an engineer, I'd be trying to study all the tech I could but that's just me.  As for your "alienate" comment, Bitcointalk was the first and largest giveaway to single members.  Many receiving 50,000 XRP all the way down to 2000 or so.  It was a huge giveaway and a lot of people here made good money.

Either way, it matters not.  The crypto-community is only a fraction of a fraction of the world population and for people who talk about "mass adoption" all the time, many of you certainly do think small.  This is global baby and that means spreading the currency to as many of the 7 billion people on the planet as possible.  This about changing the world, especially for the unbanked, under-banked and the millions financially oppressed.  If that offends you, so be it.  Enjoy your darkcoin, I look forward to seeing on the Ripple network where all currencies are welcome...but before long, you'll likely be utilizing Ripple and you won't even know it.  

EDIT:  I want to thank the mods for keeping this thread up here this long.  I hope we don't have a trend of XRP, blah, blah, blah threads but it's good to have discussions on solid tech here nonetheless. I'll just be glad when this BS polarization in the digital currency world is over....or one can hope because fundamentally, we're all on the same side.

Cheers.

I get the impression you don't like "my" darkcoin. Personally I find any coin that adds features of real value interesting. There is a lot of coins out there that doesn't add anything significant to the original bitcoin protocol, and then there is coins that doesn't even respect, or value, the core pillars that makes bitcoin a revolutionary technology. And thats when I start to get wary.
In my opinion, mining is one of those core pillars that makes bitcoin disruptive and to work for everyone.
It may not be optimal, but in addition to the decentralized aspect, this is essential in order to avoid involving a central third party, which is obviously key.
Its about putting power into the hands of the little man, without making yourself a God in the process.
That can't be done without breaking a few eggs. You simply can't please everyone and have a revolution at the same time.

After watching the video referenced earlier I can't say I found anything that doesn't already apply to bitcoin or some of the other coins out there.
When I realized that RippleLab "happened" to mine the entire currency for themself, thats when I started loosing my focus completely.
I mean seriously, how can anyone compete with that?

[magnebit]

To back this up with some facts:
https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume?daysAverageString=30 <-- 30 day transaction volume on the block chain.
http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ <-- there are 4(!) different active closed source centralized purely trust based exchanges that have several times that volume alone, not counting others and not counting the volume that comes from sending money to and from these exchanges. Also not counting brokers like Coinbase or BitPay.

Exactly, maybe up to 20% of bitcoins (probably far less - I hope) are on a "trusted" exchange\online wallet.  We trust them only up to what we are willing to lose.  Otherwise, these coins are on USB drives, printed wallets, whatever.  I only use a trusted exchange when I have to - conversions, purchases, etc.  Else, cold storage is the way to go.

[freequant]

Let me ask all the Ripple supporters something. If there was a new coin created called ReallySmartCoin, and the people behind it said everyone should buy it, but when asked how many ReallySmartCoins existed they said well there is X amount,  um No.. you can't check for yourself, just take our word for it.

What do you think the community's reaction would be? Would you say people should support and invest in ReallySmartCoin?

That's what Ethereum is doing for their fundraiser and it doesn't seem to deter potential investors because not everyone is a sociopath incapable of trusting anyone to deliver on their promise.
But anyway, that rethorical question is irrelevant in the case of Ripple since the number of XRP is fixed and <100B as can be asserted from any ledger close, and the source code of validators in charge of guaranteeing that this remains so is opensource.

[freequant]

It's easy to say that exchanges are just for exchanging and people should cash in and out quickly.  The reality is that there are costs in terms of fees and inconvenience (captchas, email verifies, delays) that make it difficult to do so.  So many people end up just leaving money on the exchanges.  And get bitten when they fail.   Is Ripple any different in this regard?   Is it 0 cost in terms of fees and near zero in terms of inconvenience to cash out my bitcoin IOU for a real bitcoin?

Otherwise, I don't see how that is much different from any of the other exchanges.... entities that I put approx zero trust in.

You nailed it: moving money in and out of exchanges with Ripple is essentially free provided that exchanges don't add their own fees on top in which case it is more something specific to the exchange and not to Ripple per say.

[Siegfried]

I have no interest in Ripple because I can already buy almost everything that I need with Bitcoin, and soon I will be able to buy literally everything I need with Bitcoin. That is the vision of Bitcoin that made me a believer - one currency that can be used to buy anything, anywhere, instantly. Middlemen, whether they be traditional banks, fiat-Bitcoin exchanges, or Ripple, have no place in the ideal world of digital currency. Obviously, Bitcoin exchanges are necessary now during this transitional stage, but it seems to me that Bitcoin users have few uses for Ripple now and will have even fewer uses, eventually none, as Bitcoin weaves its tentacles deeper into the global economy and realizes its full potential.

[acoindr]

Let me ask all the Ripple supporters something. If there was a new coin created called ReallySmartCoin, and the people behind it said everyone should buy it, but when asked how many ReallySmartCoins existed they said well there is X amount,  um No.. you can't check for yourself, just take our word for it.

What do you think the community's reaction would be? Would you say people should support and invest in ReallySmartCoin?

That's what Ethereum is doing for their fundraiser ...

Ethereum appears to be a block chain based currency which is mined and mathematically verifiable, just like cryptocurrencies we're already familiar with:

https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Paper#wiki-currency-and-issuance
https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-Dagger

and it doesn't seem to deter potential investors because not everyone is a sociopath incapable of trusting anyone to deliver on their promise.

Don't you know the first person to engage ad hominem attacks loses by default?

But anyway, that rethorical question is irrelevant...

The question was not rhetorical.

... in the case of Ripple since the number of XRP is fixed and <100B as can be asserted from any ledger close, and the source code of validators in charge of guaranteeing that this remains so is opensource.

Again, the amount of Ripples in existence is conspicuously not mathematically verifiable. Statements posted on the Internet are not adequate proof.

[freequant]

I have no interest in Ripple because I can already buy almost everything that I need with Bitcoin, and soon I will be able to buy literally everything I need with Bitcoin. That is the vision of Bitcoin that made me a believer - one currency that can be used to buy anything, anywhere, instantly. Middlemen, whether they be traditional banks, fiat-Bitcoin exchanges, or Ripple, have no place in the ideal world of digital currency. Obviously, Bitcoin exchanges are necessary now during this transitional stage, but it seems to me that Bitcoin users have few uses for Ripple now and will have even fewer uses, eventually none, as Bitcoin weaves its tentacles deeper into the global economy and realizes its full potential.

If I may ask how did you get your Bitcoins in first place?
If you mined them and made it a policy not to ever exchange them for fiat or other crypto-currencies, then indeed Ripple is not for you. But keep in mind that you are the exception, and the overwhelming majority of Bitcoiners want to be able to move in and out of Bitcoin and to fiat or other crypto-currencies. To this vast majority, Ripple offers instant balance teleport between exchanges, gives back to users full control over their exchange balances / debt, and enforces cryptographically exchanges accountability and book keeping.

Comparing Bitcoin alone and Ripple makes no sense since Bitcoin is a commodity and Ripple is a distributed exchange and payment network. It's like comparing the Apple stock and the Nasdaq exchange. However comparing Bitcoin + traditional centralized exchanges VS Bitcoin + Ripple is very relevant, and that's where it becomes clear that Ripple is a major step forward for Bitcoin and a solution to the recurrent issue of poor exchanges transparence, accountability and tendency to setup arbitrary capital controls.

[freequant]

... in the case of Ripple since the number of XRP is fixed and <100B as can be asserted from any ledger close, and the source code of validators in charge of guaranteeing that this remains so is opensource.

Again, the amount of Ripples in existence is conspicuously not mathematically verifiable. Statements posted on the Internet are not adequate proof.

Based on the same reasoning (or lack thereof), the amount of Bitcoins in existence is conspicuously not mathematically verifiable either. Now prove me wrong without relying on statements posted on the Internet.

[acoindr]

Based on the same reasoning (or lack thereof), the amount of Bitcoins in existence is conspicuously not mathematically verifiable either.

I think we're done.