Speaking only for myself and not for the company I work for (Ripple Labs):
Ripple Labs is a real company with over 60 employees. They are in legitimate business with real investors backing them. They plan to revolutionize the payment industry. They seem to be making deals with banks like Fidor. Is it "premined?" I accept the loose definition of premine - that the creators of the system issued themselves the coins. So yes it is premined (there should be no controversy here).
The difference between Ripple Labs and other alt-coins should be obvious. I can understand the skepticism when Ripple first came out on the scene about 2 years ago (I was one of the most vocal skeptics). But somehow, some way they are still around, developing the protocol and software ecosystem around it, making deals, growing, distributing XRP either by sale or by giveaway. They don't seem to be going away, rather they are just building up slowly but surely.
Some ask, why did XRP shoot up? I think a better question is why did it go down from its 2013 high of $0.10 in the first place. The
Armajeddon likely had a lot to do with it. And
TradeFortress running around
calling Ripple a scam, along with his sock puppets. There's also the early skepticism.
I admit Ripple can be a difficult concept to get your head around. And bitcointalk is a rough place: anyone with a new idea that doesn't fit the "decentralization" narrative perfectly is going to get a lot of flames. Being closed-minded is the default position towards anything new. But it seems people are starting to connect the dots and seeing Ripple Labs for what it is: a smart, well funded company building a decentralized payment ecosystem for the long term, courting the right players (banks) and being friendly to the establishment with regulator-friendly features such as
account freezing or its
identity system.
I specifically joined because I believe the approach they are taking is the correct one: A private for-profit corporation has the right economic incentives and operating freedom to take the risks necessary to build the next generation system. Compare this with Bitcoin where developers are tightly constrained by the interests of the largest established, external Bitcoin companies and the Bitcoin foundation. True innovation and risk taking no long occur, and features designed by committee languish for months or years before seeing the light of day if at all. I still believe in Bitcoin the technology, but the development process surrounding it appears broken.
