Rise of Bitcoin Competitor Ripple Creates Wealth to Rival Zuckerberg • Hacker News Board

Re: Rise of Bitcoin Competitor Ripple Creates Wealth to Rival Zuckerberg

#71

Post by pixie_ » Fri, Jan 05, 2018, 9:52 AM UTC

codegladiator wrote: post #23

pixie_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one of these properties of cryptocurrency is imaginary? Coins cant be faked or duplicated No one can create them at will They can be transmitted quickly/globally with low fees (excluding bitcoin of course) You can store them yourself, no bank needed Sending huge sums of money is no problem Relatively simple design, 8 page white paper Has worked as designed for almost a decade Seems like crypto has a lot unique…

> Has worked as designed for almost a decade "worked as designed" can be said for every thing. Everything works as designed. Yet gets hacked/stolen/cracked/misused. Banks are working as designed. And so is the government. Just that the majority will dislike the design because they have no say in it. > You can store them yourself, no bank needed And then you can loose it yourself too. Remove all the safeguards which w…

If there were a bug found in a crypto currency, it could easily be worth zero the next day.

The fact that the current blockchain design has withstood people trying to break it for so long gives the currency a greater value.

Would you rather store value in a crypto that is a brand new design, or something that has withstood the test of time?

Re: Rise of Bitcoin Competitor Ripple Creates Wealth to Rival Zuckerberg

#72

Post by austincheney » Fri, Jan 05, 2018, 9:54 AM UTC

pixie_ wrote: post #11

iamleppert wrote: post #5

The thesis statement here is value itself is an arbitrary concept and is such because we say it is. It's completely imaginary, often times irrational and a shared fiction. The fact that we have conventional billionaires at all is almost a ridiculous concept in and of itself, as any amount of tangible work is always done en masse, not by a singular person. Works can be created by individual contributors but it is the…

Which one of these properties of cryptocurrency is imaginary? Coins cant be faked or duplicated No one can create them at will They can be transmitted quickly/globally with low fees (excluding bitcoin of course) You can store them yourself, no bank needed Sending huge sums of money is no problem Relatively simple design, 8 page white paper Has worked as designed for almost a decade Seems like crypto has a lot unique…

> Seems like crypto has a lot unique intrinsic value that surpasses traditional currencies to date.

Only if they are used as currency in the marketplace. If cryptocurrencies are only an investment point they are a bubble with little or no practical value. The only value is to other investors.

Personally, I find cryptocurrencies volatile and as such would not use them to purchase anything.

Re: Rise of Bitcoin Competitor Ripple Creates Wealth to Rival Zuckerberg

#73

Post by mcmacintosh » Fri, Jan 05, 2018, 9:55 AM UTC

skydv wrote: post #13

tristanj wrote: post #2

A couple other discussions from earlier this week. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16071731 (Yesterday) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16057883 (Two days ago) I found the top comment in yesterday's thread rather interesting. If there is a hard cap of 100 billion Ripple coins that can exist, and Ripple Labs already owns 60% of them, at today's price of $3.33 that would mean Ripple Labs has $3.33 * 0.60 * 10…

but they can't sell any of it without annihilating the market. It's like I sell a diamond to my friend for 1 billion dollars, but she pays me 1$ every year for a billion years. So formally I am a billionaire, but actually I am one diamond short.

That's like saying Bezos or Gates aren't really worth ~60B dollars, like the news are repeatedly saying though. Isn't that right? Considering most of their wealth is in stocks.

Re: Rise of Bitcoin Competitor Ripple Creates Wealth to Rival Zuckerberg

#74

Post by pixie_ » Fri, Jan 05, 2018, 9:55 AM UTC

richmarr wrote: post #43

beebmam wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also downsides of course too. But I think the reality is that the future will have both crypto currencies and fiat currencies. Both have advantages.

Nitpick... crypto currencies are fiat currencies (if they're currencies at all, rather than commododites) Edit: Fiat just means its value is driven by supply/demand rather than being backed by something like gold.

Mineable crypto is not fiat because it cannot be created or destroyed at will. That is what gives it value over a fiat currency. You don't have to worry about a central government devaluing it or inflating it artificially.

Re: Rise of Bitcoin Competitor Ripple Creates Wealth to Rival Zuckerberg

#75

Post by lawn » Fri, Jan 05, 2018, 10:03 AM UTC

sethgecko wrote: post #64

lawn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you lump bitcoin cash with the other pointless coins? It is better at being bitcoin than bitcoin except for speculative purposes (so far).

Because I don't find anything that does better than litecoin. Also this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JarEszFY1WY shows the fundamentally different viewpoints between bitcoin and bitcoin cash. As someone mentions in the video what bitcoin cash is trying to do is implement business logic inside the protocol which is a layer violation.

Litecoin is basically following Bitcoin's approach to scaling which will leave it congested if it gets popular enough. Litecoin already has much higher fees than Bitcoin Cash. Litecoin's development has basically been nonexistent since it's invention and has only been copying Bitcoin ever since. Bitcoin Cash is also quickly gaining merchant adoption with for example BitPay, something Litecoin has failed to do in many years. The network effect is a powerful thing.

That Bitcoin Cash would implement "business logic" is just wrong. It simply removes the artificial blocksize limit and does not try to prevent users from utilizing 0-conf if they so choose. From that point it is Bitcoin which is forcing out valid use cases (low value transactions, opt in 0-conf).

Re: Rise of Bitcoin Competitor Ripple Creates Wealth to Rival Zuckerberg

#76

Post by pixie_ » Fri, Jan 05, 2018, 10:09 AM UTC

randomerr wrote: post #44

pixie_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one of these properties of cryptocurrency is imaginary? Coins cant be faked or duplicated No one can create them at will They can be transmitted quickly/globally with low fees (excluding bitcoin of course) You can store them yourself, no bank needed Sending huge sums of money is no problem Relatively simple design, 8 page white paper Has worked as designed for almost a decade Seems like crypto has a lot unique…

I respect fully disagree wit many of your statements. From my experience I've seen these kind of schemes comes and go: * Coins can't be faked or duplicated - YET - If you get a bot net arguing other the same coin either someone is going to get the coin or the coin is going to get lost. It kinda like the Captain Midnight and HBO. If you haven't heard about HBO and some other TV networks has launched a communication sa…

Tulips can be created by anyone with some dirt. Mineable crypto is super difficult to create yourself. Tulips are also hard to distinguish, difficult to transport, ephemeral.

Understand that and you'll understand why most of your arguments above are poor.

Re: Rise of Bitcoin Competitor Ripple Creates Wealth to Rival Zuckerberg

#77

Post by Cthulhu_ » Fri, Jan 05, 2018, 10:13 AM UTC

pmontra wrote: post #45

I just read a critical analysis about Ripple [1] then saw this thread on HN. I quote the conclusion "XRP is 100% premined, Ripple holds 60% of the supply, controls which nodes are selected as “trustworthy” to confirm transactions, while they have paid nothing to create those tokens that people are so willingly buying at $4+ per piece and thereby make the creators insanely rich. Let us call it what it really is, digit…

I should make my own cryptocurrency, generate $60 billion out of thin air.

Re: Rise of Bitcoin Competitor Ripple Creates Wealth to Rival Zuckerberg

#78

Post by pixie_ » Fri, Jan 05, 2018, 10:16 AM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #72

pixie_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one of these properties of cryptocurrency is imaginary? Coins cant be faked or duplicated No one can create them at will They can be transmitted quickly/globally with low fees (excluding bitcoin of course) You can store them yourself, no bank needed Sending huge sums of money is no problem Relatively simple design, 8 page white paper Has worked as designed for almost a decade Seems like crypto has a lot unique…

> Seems like crypto has a lot unique intrinsic value that surpasses traditional currencies to date. Only if they are used as currency in the marketplace. If cryptocurrencies are only an investment point they are a bubble with little or no practical value. The only value is to other investors. Personally, I find cryptocurrencies volatile and as such would not use them to purchase anything.

I pay my friends for drinks in crypto, they pay me (usually ltc, ether, or doge). It's quick and easy with a wallet on your phone like Jaxx. No venmo, no paypal, no bank account necessary. I use crypto to store and exchange value today. It will only get more popular as it becomes easier.

I encourage everyone to try it. Send $100 of crypto to a wallet on your phone and use it to pay people you owe for small stuff. It's fun and easy. It also gets your friends bootstrapped with crypto without needing to use coinbase or gemini or whatever.

Also wallets like Jaxx are deterministic, meaning you can use 12 unique words to recover your wallet anywhere - even if you lose your phone.

Re: Rise of Bitcoin Competitor Ripple Creates Wealth to Rival Zuckerberg

#79

Post by imtringued » Fri, Jan 05, 2018, 10:25 AM UTC

pixie_ wrote: post #74

richmarr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick... crypto currencies are fiat currencies (if they're currencies at all, rather than commododites) Edit: Fiat just means its value is driven by supply/demand rather than being backed by something like gold.

Mineable crypto is not fiat because it cannot be created or destroyed at will. That is what gives it value over a fiat currency. You don't have to worry about a central government devaluing it or inflating it artificially.

You now only have to worry about your "currency" crashing by more than 40% overnight.

Re: Rise of Bitcoin Competitor Ripple Creates Wealth to Rival Zuckerberg

#80

Post by imtringued » Fri, Jan 05, 2018, 10:29 AM UTC

pixie_ wrote: post #76

randomerr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect fully disagree wit many of your statements. From my experience I've seen these kind of schemes comes and go: * Coins can't be faked or duplicated - YET - If you get a bot net arguing other the same coin either someone is going to get the coin or the coin is going to get lost. It kinda like the Captain Midnight and HBO. If you haven't heard about HBO and some other TV networks has launched a communication sa…

Tulips can be created by anyone with some dirt. Mineable crypto is super difficult to create yourself. Tulips are also hard to distinguish, difficult to transport, ephemeral. Understand that and you'll understand why most of your arguments above are poor.

Anyone can create new crypto coins. Did you forget about the ICO craze?