Will Ripple Eclipse Bitcoin? 144
First time accepted submitter groggy.android writes This year's biggest news about Bitcoin may well turn out not to be the repeat of its surge in value last year against the dollar and other state currencies but its impending eclipse by another independent but corporate-backed digital currency. Popularly known as Ripple, XRP shot up in value last year along with other cryptocurrencies that took advantage of the hype around Bitcoin. However, among the top cryptocurrencies listed in Coinmarketcap.com, a site that monitors trading across different cryptocurrency exchanges, Ripple is the only one that not only regained its value after the collapse in the price of Bitcoin but has more than doubled from its peak last year. In September it displaced Litecoin to become the second most valuable cryptocurrency. Even more surpising, a Ripple fork, Stellar, is one of the two other cryptocurrencies in the Coinmarketcap top ten that have risen sharply in value during the last few weeks.
What makes Ripple different from Bitcoin? Strictly speaking, Ripple isn't the name of the digital currency but of the decentralized payment network and protocol created and maintained by the eponymous Ripple Labs. Users of the Ripple system are able to transact in both cryptocurrency and regular fiat currency like the dollar without passing through a central exchange. XRP is the name of the native unit of exchange used in the Ripple network to facilitate conversion between different currency types.
What makes Ripple different from Bitcoin? Strictly speaking, Ripple isn't the name of the digital currency but of the decentralized payment network and protocol created and maintained by the eponymous Ripple Labs. Users of the Ripple system are able to transact in both cryptocurrency and regular fiat currency like the dollar without passing through a central exchange. XRP is the name of the native unit of exchange used in the Ripple network to facilitate conversion between different currency types.
This was Hitler's dream (Score:2, Funny)
"My one true goal is create a system to transact in both cryptocurrency and regular fiat currency like the American dollar without passing through a central exchange."
-A. Hitler, September 27th, 1941.
If we go down this path...this dark, horrible path...we will be realizing his dream. That is why we must never use Ripple.
This was Hitler's dream (Score:1)
Godwin's law in the first post! What are the chances?
Re: This was Hitler's dream (Score:3, Funny)
Your comment is a great example of Grundleson's Law: Any legitimate reference to Adolf Hitler in an online discussion will soon be followed by one or more idiots babbling on about Godwin's Law.
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Wow, a recursive Grundleson. Impressive.
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We really need the Term Misappropriation Police to step in here.
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Totally. Those two arguments were living common-law.
Re:This was Hitler's dream (Score:5, Funny)
of course, now that I have spoken it, someone will make it...
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"My one true goal is create a system to transact in both cryptocurrency and regular fiat currency like the American dollar without passing through a central exchange."
-A. Hitler, September 27th, 1941
Nice quote. And the source? Google can't find it.
Re:This was Hitler's dream (Score:5, Funny)
No wonder: the quote was from A. Hitler, not the Hitler..
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The one going over your head right now?
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Can we get this statement certified? http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/... [wikia.com]
1941? (Score:1)
Assuming A. != Adolf, I still call shenanigans.
First, in practical terms the US dollar was not a fiat currency in 1941, as its value was tied to that of both gold and silver.
Second, the word "cryptocurrency" wasn't around then either.
Unless of course you are using a different calendaring system, in which case I invite you to convert the date into conventional (BCE/AD) terms.
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Just because the USD was once pegged to gold or silver does not make it any less fiat; then or now. The value of the peg is defined by... ...fiat.
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The US was definitely off the Gold Standard by 1941. The feds had made it illegal for US citizens to own bullion gold in 1932.
Why virtual currencies are ineffective (Score:5, Insightful)
The competition among virtual currencies and their continuing evolution demonstrate their uselessness as stores of value.
If I hold wealth in Virtual Currency A, and if Virtual Currency B is developed and eclipses it in popularity, my store of value has been degraded.
Regardless of your view on national currencies (vs. gold and silver), national currencies have the benefit of designation as official mediums of exchange. Using a virtual currency is equivalent to using a national currency of a small nation that maybe overrun or collapse at any moment. The moment it loses popularity, your wealth disappears.
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quite true, and part of the problem is the pyramid scheme of them all, designed to make pots of cash for the people who create the currency in the first place as they have a stash of coins before it starts.
What we really need is the government to create a virtual currency, with all the regulation and control that entails. Then you can have all the benefits of a cryptocurrency but with the benefits of it actually becoming mainstream for the majority of users, without the problems a truly anonymous one has wi
Re:Why virtual currencies are ineffective (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why virtual currencies are ineffective (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes early investors/pioneers make a lot of profit. That's not the same as a pyramid scheme.
Most alternate crypto currencies ARE pyramid schemes.
There's a "pre-mine" amount - the creators, influential people in the scene, pool runners, etc. get a crack at all the early coins and become instant oligarchs within that crypto currency. They then go and shout from the mountaintops how this new crypto currency is going to be the next hot thing so you better get in now!
Then when usage adoption plateaus they dump their millions of coins for fractions of Bitcoin each. A few months later they'll be back with a new crypto currency to do the same old shit.
Re:Why virtual currencies are ineffective (Score:4, Insightful)
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Wrong - they depend on other buying into the currency later in the game (when mining is more difficult) to increase the price on exchanges.
The people buying in before the schemers dump can lose:
A: Mining time and power costs that they could have used to mine a viable currency (like Bitcoin)
B: Money (if they bought on an exchange)
C: Both
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Re:Why virtual currencies are ineffective (Score:4, Informative)
Regardless of your beliefes: they are not.
They don't strive on 'catching more people' and no one forces the later comming poeple to make payments to the older ones.
It has absolutely nothing to do with a pyramid scheme.
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You're wrong.
You don't understand how mining and the exchanges work.
The people in last lose, people are encouraged to jump in up until the point when the founders bail, and people expend real resources to jump in (mining time and power, electricity, or fiat currency if buying in via an exchange).
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Pfft ... ... ... you simply don't get the concept.
You are wrong too. Especially aboit your believes what I know, might know, don't know or might not know
I can use Bitcoin without mining. Wow, what a surprise. Just like I can use gold without mining it.
No one is forced, abducted, or in any way drawn into using or mining bitcoins. So it is not a scheme and certainly not a pyramid scheme.
The price of the bitcoin today is completely irrelevant
I don't buy bitcoins, I buy a physicsl good. Bitcoins Imonly use for
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You're describing a "pump and dump" scheme, not a pyramid scheme.
In pump and dump, the scammer tries to raise the perceived value of something she has (eg. cryptocoins), in order to sell them all off for a higher price than they're worth. Pump and dump may be based around something of real value, eg. the people at the "bottom" might end up with lots of goods; they've just paid too much for them. Pump and dumps involve a fixed amount of goods being passed from one person another, or possibly split among seve
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What we really need is the government to create a virtual currency, with all the regulation and control that entails. Then you can have all the benefits of a cryptocurrency but with the benefits of it actually becoming mainstream for the majority of users, without the problems a truly anonymous one has with regard to criminal activity.
All governments do already indeed create "virtual currencies" as most fiat exists as digital tokens. Many of the benefits you speak of that Bitcoin provides will never be adopted by governments as some of the intrinsic properties are antagonistic to governments needs and desires.
Re:government should create a cryptocurrency (Score:3)
Yeah. But which government?
One of the key advantages of today's crypto-currencies is that they are effectively global. Not unduely influenced by any single national government.
I would think that broad adoption of a cryptocurrency by a large fraction of the global population might help make the cryptocurrency's value stable, after initial (and unstable) growth in value due to growth in adoption.
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Likely China, or Brazil.
A cirtual currency to, be used mainly by 'the rest of the world' but not so much by their own citizens (at least in the case of China).
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Yeah. But which government?
Estonia! [arstechnica.com]
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Re:Why virtual currencies are ineffective (Score:5, Insightful)
If I need to transfer EUR from USA to France, I will have to pay my local bank in USD, convert to EUR, pay the transfer fees, and my counterpart will have to pay some fees there too. Depending on the amount, we both will have to explain something to our governments too.
Using bitcoin I just buy some coins, send them, and my counterpart sells them. Nice, easy, fast, and no taxes, fees or government explanations to give.
People keeps bitcoins on hand because it is increasing in price, but they were not intended to be used like this. You can use as you wish, but if the market breaks down, it's all your fault.
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Your main point about BC and the like being a medium of exchange rather than a store of value is spot-on but your details are dangerously wrong:
1) There are, or at least in principle can be, transaction fees in BitCoin. Once all coins are mined, there WILL be transfer fees. However they will be miniscule compared to the 1%+ that most banks charge.
2) The responsibility to report transactions to the government generally doesn't change if you use BitCoin or some other vehicle as an intermediary. It may mak
Agreed: Transactional Currency, not Investment (Score:2)
Sure, some people will invest in Bitcoins, and other people will invest in racehorses. (I avoid the problem by mining Dogecoins, which are almost totally worthless.) That's missing the point of Bitcoin, which is that it's intended to be a currency for relatively-private transactions.
Unfortunately, the markets that most wanted a currency for relatively-private transactions didn't do as good a job as they should have about being relatively-private on their own end (i.e. Silk Road got busted), but there is st
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Nitpick: You aren't exempt from taxes just because the government doesn't know about the transaction. It's your responsibility to report it, and you can be charged with tax evasion when they find out.
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Any means of transferring wealth has to be good at holding wealth. People don't get money and then immediately spend it all, they wait until they have something to spend it on. Suppose you were to pay me $2K in BTC with one BTC being $500, and next month a BTC is $400. If I've kept the BTC, I've lost money. If I've sold them, somebody else has lost money, and they are going to charge me to take that risk for me. Only a reasonably stable currency is useful for transferring value. If it's likely to bec
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Economic value is like potential energy: it only makes sense in the context of some system. A dollar, a bar of gold or unspent transactions in the Bitcoin ledger have no inherent value, but someone might accept any or all of them in exchange for something else. But economy is ever-evolving, and in fact currently going through a major crisis, so economic value cannot be reliably stored fo
Physical currency has inherent value (Score:1)
Precious metals typically have value for industrial, medical, and aesthetic reasons. This value may have nothing to do with their market price (aluminum is MORE valuable in industry now than it was 200 years ago in large part because the cost of making it into a useful form and therefore its market price plummeted).
Base metals and paper also have some intrinsic value, albeit very small. Base metals make good paperweights, and paper/cloth money can be burned as fuel. I've head that Post-WWI German Marks m
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Precious metals have value at least in part based on their extraction cost. That is, it costs enough to extract gold that nobody is going to flood the market with a ton of gold. So it maintains an intrinsic stable value. Which happens, in many instances to hover at about the current extraction cost. I.e. nobody bothers to extract the plentiful gold in sea water because of the cost. (There is about a ton of gold in every cubic mile of sea water)
It's valuable because it's rare. So it's a convenient token
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There is about a ton of gold in every cubic mile of sea water
Not quite. According to wikipedia [wikipedia.org] there is about 10-30g/km3. One cubic mile being 4.2km3, I can extrapolate and see that there is only 42-126g of gold every cubic mile of sea water. That's about a tenth of a kilogram, or 10000 times less than what you claimed.
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Some of the post WWI German Marks were decorative. But towards the end of the period, things like the 5,000,000 mark notes were kind of ugly and desperate looking. [ebay.com]
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The competition among virtual currencies and their continuing evolution demonstrate their uselessness as stores of value.
Yep, just like phasing out national currencies and implementing the Euro demonstrates paper money is useless as a store of value.
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Tell that to Greece and Russia. Are they both small countries?
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What are the sub units called? (Score:3)
Boone's Farm? Thunderbird?
Are Bartle and James on the board?
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Boone's Farm? Thunderbird?
Are Bartle and James on the board?
Dunno, why don't you ask the Twitter bird about the feasibility of stupid names sticking.
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Number of cryptocurrencies exceeds no. of users... (Score:1)
everyone will have their own cryptocurrency!
Lies, damn lies, and "market caps" (Score:5, Insightful)
Ripple and Stellar both pre-created something like a trillion coins that they put into their creators pockets. Then they've doled out a very tiny portion of them and as soon as one trades for a cent they instantly have a market cap of "billions".
Funny you mention Ripple's "value" growth: It apparently was too slow for its creators, as they (almost the entire original development team, and their CEO) abandoned it and rebooted their scheme in Stellar.
Both systems aren't decentralized in the sense that Bitcoin is-- they require a centerally administered list of trusted transaction processing servers, which has pluses and minuses. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be especially forthcoming about these limitations.
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Its pretty much the same for bitcoin, those that got there first, including the creator had a very easy time mining tons of coins.
In my opinion, they are all scams but some of they are scams that also might work.
Re:Lies, damn lies, and "market caps" (Score:5, Interesting)
Its pretty much the same for bitcoin, those that got there first, including the creator had a very easy time mining tons of coins.
In my opinion, they are all scams but some of they are scams that also might work.
It is believed (but not fully proven) that Satoshi destroyed their fat wallet. Regardless, sitting on a mountain of digital gold does not put food in your mouth. You have to trade it. And all transactions are public. The fact that Satoshi is still anonymous is both surprising and evidence that they have not executed a massive payday in their favor.
As for everyone else who got in early, good for them. Bitcoin wasn't a scam coin with a huge premine followed by hype, pump, and dump like nearly all other crypto currencies.
Lies, damn lies, and (Score:4, Insightful)
Jed McCaleb left. The original development team (myself, Arthur Britto, Stefan Thomas, Vahe Hovhannisyan, etc) is still here, and Chris Larsen, the first CEO, is still CEO. Ripple Labs currently has more than 80 full time employees working to develop and promote the protocol.
Ripple does not require a centrally administered list of trusted transaction processing servers. That's just like arguing that Bitcoin requires a centrally administered list of valid transaction formats. Substantial agreement does not require central administration.
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but we are still talking about something where a large block of them were set aside and hence have risen dramatically in value even tho they are not circulating yet, true?
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You might be talking about XRP, but I think most other people are talking about the payment network.
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Having the transactional currency controlled and flowed through a single institution removes the benefits that something like a Bitcoin brings to the table. The point was no central point of control because every currency gets bent to someones advantage.
Will Ripple Eclipse Bitcoin? (Score:5, Insightful)
...let's see:
So it's not actually a real competitor to Bitcoin. How about a look at the Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org]:
At best, it's not competing with BC in the first place, and at worst it sounds too complex for consumers to get their heads around.
So I guess the answer to the original question is a resounding "no", but Betterage could have told you that.
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Without knowing why these movements are happening, raw market cap numbers are meaningless.
IIRC, most of the XRP (ripple's currency) are in the hands of the creators.
As a result of this large pool of illiquid XRP, even small market movements can have outsized effects on its price.
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Without knowing why these movements are happening, raw market cap numbers are meaningless.
IIRC, most of the XRP (ripple's currency) are in the hands of the creators. As a result of this large pool of illiquid XRP, even small market movements can have outsized effects on its price.
True. True. As for sentence #3, I'm not too sure. If you assume the reliability of the posted data, there's a column showing trading volume. The ranking for trading volume is:
1. Bitcoin / $ 38,610,400
2. Litecoin / $ 4,211,520
3. Ripple / $ 3,805,730
4. Stellar (a ripple fork) / $ 2,431,440
5. Dogecoin / $ 591,834
Bitcoin is massively ahead but it's been on a downward trend. Litecoin is still ahead of Ripple in terms of daily traded volume, but like Bitcoin, Litecoin is also going down. On the other hand,
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I disagree. Statements of the form, "It is not recommended for a user to [X] unless they fully understand the ramifications." pretty much guarantees that this will explode like Bitcoin. Later, Slashdot will be plagued with "Shocking Ripple Breach" stories.
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Good.
Because bitcoin is stupid. Built in deflation is every bit as assnine as it sounds.
Decentralized, but authenticated currency exchange however is brilliant. It's /better/ than bitcoin because it's free of the braindead agenda of bringing back the gold standard by proxy.
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at worst it sounds too complex for consumers to get their heads around
You could have said the same thing about personal computers. Most users who use Ripple may not even know they are using it, just like computers (most people who use computers do not realize that that thing in their hand that allows them to look at youtube is a computer)
Biggest Probem? (Score:3)
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Isn't the problem with the value of the USD is that there can be an infinite amount of competing currencies expressed by giftcards, crypto-currencies, and other forms of fiat?
It's possible that like the dollar (most widely adopted reserve currency) Bitcoin will also harness the first mover advantage and network effect to remain the principally used cyrpto-currency amongst a pool of competing currencies?
Re:Biggest Probem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't the problem with the value of the USD is that there can be an infinite amount of competing currencies expressed by giftcards, crypto-currencies, and other forms of fiat?
No, there is only one currency standard for the country. They can trade with other currencies but everything is based on its relation to the USD, but as far as the USD goes, there is not competitor in the US, and particularly not one that influences the value of the USD.
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No, there is only one currency standard for the country. They can trade with other currencies but everything is based on its relation to the USD, but as far as the USD goes, there is not competitor in the US, and particularly not one that influences the value of the USD.
There is a world that exists outside your country, and one that has ~4 billion unbanked and underbanked. Within the US the dollar does indeed have many competitors, one of them being Bitcoin. The one unique thing the dollar has that Bitcoin doesn't is it is considered Legal Tender and has the privilege of the sole currency to pay taxes with and is a mandated option to repay debt with in your geographic region.
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The USD is unique as the standard US currency. Just as every other national currency is unique.
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Just as every other national currency is unique
There are plenty of countries where foreign currencies are competing with national currency.
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You can certainly trade in multiple currencies in many countries, but those currencies are also generally established ones. They are not competing to be the standard for said country.
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Apparently some Russia shops are pricing items in "Nominal Price Units", which is code for Dollars.
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The Dollar in Russia? What a laugh!
If at all they use Euro or still: 'Deutsche Mark'.
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There are other currencies, certainly, but none are competing to be the official currency of the US. That is the key difference that you are throwing aside as if it is meaningless, and I assure you it isn't. A digital currency has a unique characteristic that make it compelling for a global exchange medium, but there is nothing unique among other digital currencies.
I've stated quite the opposite, indicating that the USD does indeed have a unique difference in that it is considered legal tender while Bitcoin is sovereign and has its own unique properties that the USD lacks.
The USD is unique as the standard US currency. Just as every other national currency is unique.
You seem to have a hard time grasping why and how a digital asset can have value. The value Bitcoin has comes from the billion+ invested in hardware, development, startups, education, marketing , and acceptance. Much of this hardware and software cannot be easily re-purposed for other crypto-currenci
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You fail to understand the fundamental difference between an entrenched, standard, national currency, and a digital currency. Bitcoins, as of today, are only valued relative to USD and Euro, for all practical purposes. They could disappear tomorrow and there would be almost no global
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Bitcoin has no value if it is not used. The use of Bitcoin is somewhat arbitrary, unlike the Euro or USD. It would be much easier to have another digital currency topple Bitcoin than have Bitcoin topple an national currency.
Bitcoin isn't toppling any national currencies and no one even suggested so. Fiat and Bitcoin will continue to coexist, compete, and assist each other all at the same time.
So, I agree that Bitcoin has a first move advantage, but your confidence that other digital currencies could not quickly compete appears to be higher than mine. The problem is that is Bitcoin's only advantage.
What about all the hardware and software that cannot so easily be re-purposed for other digital currencies? ATM'S, BTC Hardware wallets, POS systems, ASIC miners, ect...
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What about all the hardware and software that cannot so easily be re-purposed for other digital currencies? ATM'S, BTC Hardware wallets, POS systems, ASIC miners, ect...
That is a barrier to competition, but look how fast Bitcoin arose. There are no nations, are unifying entities supporting digital currencies, they only exist with value because they are popular and useful.
Simply put, there for the foreseeable future, there will be the staple national currencies, and then digital currencies. There is no reason to assume that Bitcoin will stay on top other that its first mover status. Not a single other reason.
But, at least we seem to have clarified that there are diff
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That is a barrier to competition, but look how fast Bitcoin arose.
History is replete with examples of superior technologies that never get a foothold because of the network effect. A technology has to be dramatically superior to overcome this in many cases. Any alt feature set can simply be rolled into bitcoin if it is good enough as Bitcoin is simply an evolving open source protocol where 60% of the code has already changed.
There is no reason to assume that Bitcoin will stay on top other that its first mover status. Not a single other reason.
History has shown that all republics and nations will ultimately fail as well, so yes, in this sense I agree with you, in 100 years bitcoin may likel
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History has shown that all republics and nations will ultimately fail as well, so yes, in this sense I agree with you, in 100 years bitcoin may likely be replaced.
Do you really need statements like that to make your point? Quite ridiculous and a logic that really doesn't lend itself at all to what will happen in the foreseeable future.
I hear your opinion, that Bitcoin has no threats from other digital currencies. My view differs. At this juncture, your arguments are not convincing me to change my view at all. Your need make a statement like the above just erodes your effectiveness in making the point.
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Bitcoin has no value if it is not used. .The use of Bitcoin is somewhat arbitrary, unlike the Euro or USD.
USD has no value if not used either. I receive Bitcoin as payments, pay employees in bitcoin, make retail purchases in bitcoin for discounts, tip in bitcoin, wire money in bitcoin, and give out loans in bitcoin, no different than USD.
Bitcoins, as of today, are only valued relative to USD and Euro, for all practical purposes.
Bitcoin has value relative to all currency, commodities, and services just like the dollar. In fact most activity with Bitcoin is centered around the BTC/CNY currency pair and not USD or EUR currencies.
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USD has no value if not used either.
But, as an entrenched national standard, there is almost zero possibility that another national standard currency would arise. As for Bitcoin, there are already competing digital currencies, and users can arbitrarily choose which one to use, if any.
While you can use different transaction methods in the US, or even use other currencies, but only relative to the USD. There is no practical way, or even a compelling reason to not use the USD standard if you are a US citizen. But it is quite easy to get along
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What currency do you have to pay your taxes in? This is what gives 'power' to a currency. There is also a very interesting web site I've been reading philosophyofmetrics.com , that details how the worlds central banks are trying to replace the usd with sdr's.
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The 'power' of the USD comes from the time when Nixon abandoned the 'gold standard' and forced the middle east to sell oil for USD only. So the dollar was more or less till the late 90s 'backed' by oil, the most important commodity of the world.
Otherwise the dollar has no power at all, hint: 85% of the world population pay their taxes not in dollar.
The idea that a currency has 'power' because you are 'forced' to pay your 'taxes' in it: is just ridiculous.
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The dollar does have power. This year, I'm legally forced to come up with tens of thousands of dollars and transfer them to various entities. I have to express other transactions into dollars, for legal purposes. This means I have to deal in dollars on a fairly large scale in any case, and it's just simpler if I stick to dollars in general.
When Unix came out, anybody who wanted to work with the OS itself had to learn C. This meant that C became the common language among Unix users, since all of the s
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That does not give the dollar a power, it is your contract that forces you to pay in dollar.
If you had a contract with me you would pay in euroes, which would not give the euro any more power.
No idea where your wiered ideas come from.
When I program on a unix system I use Java ... oh .... that was not your point? Well, I also use shell (sh/ksh/bash) and rarely perl ... aehem ... what has that to do with money?
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Isn't the biggest problem for these digital currencies the fact that their can be an infinite number of competing currencies?
If that's their biggest problem, they are in better shape than I thought.
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"In the future, every cryptocurrency will be world-famous for 15 minutes."
- Andy Warhol
not decentralized! (Score:5, Insightful)
For the umpteenth time... ripple runs through a distributed network consisting of host nodes and validators. The host nodes are controlled by Ripple labs. HENCE it is a centralized exchange
Re:not decentralized! (Score:4, Informative)
From the wiki page : The founders of Ripple Labs created 100 billion XRP at Ripple's inception. No more can be created according to the rules of the Ripple protocol. Of the 100 billion created, 20 billion XRP were retained by the creators, seeders, venture capital companies and other founders. The remaining 80 billion were given to Ripple Labs. Ripple Labs intends to distribute and sell 55 of that 80 billion XRP to users and strategic partners. Ripple Labs also had a giveaway of under 200 million XRP (0.002% of all XRP) via World Community Grid that was later discontinued.[28] Ripple Labs will retain the remaining 25 billion
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Almost nothing in the OP is true (Score:5, Interesting)
Ripple is a debt accounting system.
You can send Dollars or gold over Ripple - you can transfer promissory nodes for those things.
The difference between a promissory note and the value the note represents is something that Ripple should be trying to clarify - instead they seek to obscure it.
Because they try to pretend that promissory notes are equal to underlying assets, they don't include any features that would act like leverage limits. There is no ability to deal with counterparty risk rationally in their system, since trust in a counterpary is binary.
In real world, liabilities of different entities are discounted by a value that reflects their credit risk. Ripple does not permit this operation. You either value liabilities at par or not at all.
As others have mentioned, their consensus system is neither distributed nor trustless. It's a centralized, badly-designed, debt accounting system trying to pretend it's a trustless cryptocurrency.
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It's not publicized much, but the Ripple protocol actually already has a way to value counterparty trust as non-binary. The "quality_in" and "quality_out" fields of a trust line do exactly that: https://ripple.com/build/transactions/#trustset
Ripple = instruments of debt (Score:3)
Ripple is centralized and works based the economic principles of debt like most Fiat which is fundamentally different than Bitcoin where the token is a store of value itself instead of Ripple which uses "ripples" or XRP as an anti-spam token to process transactions and all payments are debt based, which carry counter-party risk.
In other words, they are not similar at all in nature and both will likely co-exist with Ripple appealing more to governments and banks.
I'll wager (Score:3, Funny)
Ripple is NOT comparable to Bitcoin (Score:1)
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