Ripple vs Bitcoin

[johnyj]

I hope that Ripple can become the big actor in china when those centralized exchanges were shutdown by governments, but I'm afraid that their gateway will also be shutdown following such kind of ban, it seems localbitcoins has better future

[1714853079]

1714853079

[1714853079]

1714853079

[serenitys]

most people are not revolutionaries, we just want life to be more easier and comfortable

Which is why every government on earth is corrupt, out of control, and sold your futures to the banking cartel, why you're taxed into bankruptcy, why communism exists in 2014, why bank bailouts destroyed the economies worldwide, why religious superstition and retardation is allowed to reign king over science and education, and why innocent people are plowed over for the wealth of a greedy few.

But hey, enjoy your pizza!

[mmeijeri]

I hope that Ripple can become the big actor in china when those centralized exchanges were shutdown by governments, but I'm afraid that their gateway will also be shutdown following such kind of ban, it seems localbitcoins has better future

It would be perfect for that because of its support for rippling fiat payments through the trust graph. On the other hand the trust graph also makes it easier to break anonymity. So if Ripple is wildly successful in China, it could help the Chinese government to go after individual users.

[Sukrim]

It is not an open source project

Wrong, here's the code (again!): https://github.com/ripple/rippled

[...] and it is not even publicly auditable.

Wrong again, every node constantly audits transactions. It is easily auditable and verifiable.

In Bitcoin terms the ledger is something close to a UTXO set in a deterministic data structure, so to run a full node you only need this data (just like in Bitcoin) and history is kinda optional. Something similar to this approach has been suggested some time ago for Bitcoin too, here's the thread about it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88208.0

I'm not sure how else to explain it, but if you deal with balances it does not matter what happened before a certain point of time ...

How in the world do you figure that?

Actually anything dealing with money involves transactions and balances. That's how any money system works.

You, Sukrim, have a dollar balance. You have a Ripple balance. You have a yen balance, and you have a bitcoin balance. You have balances for other things too which you may not have ever heard of. Now many of your balances may be zero (e.g. your yen balance etc.) but you have a balance, which is the sum of all the units of that currency you have in your possession. Whenever you make a tranasaction, i.e. trade with someone your balance changes.

So far so good...

Now you're trying to say dealing with Ripple balances means it doesn't matter what happened in the system before a point of time? Then how do you know anyone's balance?!? The whole point of any money system is accounting for peoples' balances. People want to increase their balance so they can buy more expensive things (make larger trades).

So within Ripple there must be a way to know all balances (this exists with Bitcoin).

I think here is the issue that I probably did not explain too good:
You actually do know everyone's individual balance at ledger 32570!

It is not even that large, here it is in JSON format (every entry on a seperate line for better readability):
http://pastebin.com/P24vC3Vf

Every transaction since then is known and the result of applying them can be calculated and verified independently.

[leopard2]

only purpose of ripple: make it easier to buy BTC without BTC-fiat exchanges hehehehe 

[acoindr]

I think here is the issue that I probably did not explain too good:
You actually do know everyone's individual balance at ledger 32570!

Will any balances before ledger 32570 ever affect what happens in the Ripple system in the future, yes or no? It's a yes or no question, Sukrim.

If you answer no then we can end the discussion, because it means all the info people would ever need is theoretically provided in ledger 32570 -- in which case there is no need to number it '32570'. Simply number it 0.

If you answer yes then we can still end the discussion, because everything I said prior about not being able to verify how many ripple units will ever impact the system applies.

[Sukrim]

I think here is the issue that I probably did not explain too good:
You actually do know everyone's individual balance at ledger 32570!

Will any balances before ledger 32570 ever affect what happens in the Ripple system in the future, yes or no? It's a yes or no question, Sukrim.

That's a definite no and that's what I tried to explain before with "it does not matter what happened before a certain point of time".

[Bit_Happy]

only purpose of ripple: make it easier to buy BTC without BTC-fiat exchanges hehehehe 

How so, for someone starting with cash/fiat in a bank?

[acoindr]

I think here is the issue that I probably did not explain too good:
You actually do know everyone's individual balance at ledger 32570!

Will any balances before ledger 32570 ever affect what happens in the Ripple system in the future, yes or no? It's a yes or no question, Sukrim.

That's a definite no and that's what I tried to explain before with "it does not matter what happened before a certain point of time".

Then for what reason would you say:

It would be very unexpected to see that more than 100 billion XRP existed prior ....

And why not call the current ledger 0, the Genesis ledger? My last question.

[Sukrim]

Because I don't know what ledgers 0-32569 contain. If you run rippled from back then (or also a current version), you'd start with just the single root account and 100 billion XRP in it. As I was asked about theoretical possibilities, theoretically anything could have happened in there. It is very improbable but not impossible.

32570 is called "genesis" ledger (https://ripple.com/wiki/Genesis_ledger) because it is the oldest available ledger on the network atm. It is not the first ledger though. Ledger 0 is the one with (very, very, very likely) 100 billion XRP, 32570 misses already a few fractions of an XRP from transactions that took place in the meantime. As I said, there is a chance that older ledgers could be reconstructed. There is no way to go "below" ledger 0 though, so that is the definitive starting point.

Rippled actually usually just loads the most current verified ledger (~82 MB or so atm.) and uses this as "genesis" (all balances etc. are known after all and can be traced back cryptographically), you can instruct it to fetch more history if you want to. Bitcoin on the other hand always starts with block 0 as genesis and starting block and replays all transactions since then, because you can not know if a transaction is valid just by looking at the latest block in the block chain.

[Bit_Happy]

[ANN] Cripple Payments
Cripple = Cryptographic ripple
Have you had your first cripple? 

....sorry....probably not funny.

[acoindr]

... all balances etc. are known after all and can be traced back cryptographically ...

See you're saying two different things. You say what happens before a point in time is irrelevant, yet all balances are known and can be traced back cryptographically; but they can't be traced back to ledger 0, obviously. Classic definition of trying to have a cake and eat it too.

[Sukrim]

I actually had an idea for something that I would have called "cripple"...
Idea is on the backburner for now though.

Something that I'd love to see though would be to integrate BTC as second native currency into rippled (yes, this means validators need to track the bitcoin blocks too - compared to what rippled uses ressource wise not much of a deal really...) to be used as alternative to XRP when paying for transactions etc.

... all balances etc. are known after all and can be traced back cryptographically ...

See you're saying two different things. You say what happens before a point in time is irrelevant, yet all balances are known and can be traced back cryptographically; but they can't be traced back to ledger 0, obviously. Classic definition of trying to have a cake and eat it too.

You can trace them back to ledger 32570 at the moment, in the future maybe to 0 too. The link between 0 and 32569 is lost atm. though, so 32570 is the earliest one we have and to which one can trace everything back. You need to verify balances in ledger 32570 (they look reasonable and add up to less than 100 billion XRP, as advertised) and transactions since then to verify everything available in Ripple. If you only care about more recent events, you can also define ledger 5.9 million as genesis for yourself, verify this one as being correctly assembled + hashed and only look at transactions since then.

[str4wm4n]

ripple is really frickin cool

haters gonna hate

[NWO]

Every time I read bitcoiners trying to understand Ripple.



Why are you all so dumb!? Stick with your simple archaic system if that is all you can wrap your mind around.

Sick of seeing these debates.

[NWO]

ripple is really frickin cool

haters gonna hate

Amen +1

[Bit_Happy]

Every time I read bitcoiners trying to understand Ripple.



Why are you all so dumb!? Stick with your simple archaic system if that is all you can wrap your mind around.

Sick of seeing these debates.

Yes, insulting people is a great way to support your view?

Every time I read bitcoiners trying to understand Ripple..
Ripple is not suitable for mainstream users (BTC is not yet either)

• BTC has over 20 to 50+ companies with VC$$$ all trying to make BTC ready for prime time.
• How many companies are actively working to improve Ripple?
• What are the chances Ripple will ever be ready for "the dumb people" to use?

[jonald_fyookball]

only purpose of ripple: make it easier to buy BTC without BTC-fiat exchanges hehehehe  

Explain how this works.  Honestly I'm pretty unmotivated to learn about ripple
since it's not a true cryptocurrency and I'm sure I ain't the only one.  If I ain't learning
About it on btc forum, I ain't learning about it lol

[themusicgod1]

only purpose of ripple: make it easier to buy BTC without BTC-fiat exchanges hehehehe 

Actually it has many uses, including the ability to bootstraps communities out of autarky.

[themusicgod1]

Every time I read bitcoiners trying to understand Ripple ...
Sick of seeing these debates.

I know how you feel but your post was unhelpful, NWO.   Bitcoiners are a natural ally to the Ripple ecosystem, though and we can't forget that.