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Cryptocurrency company Ripple says SEC lawsuit is imminent

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Re: Cryptocurrency company Ripple says SEC lawsuit is imminent

#121
post #20
post #7

If your coin can be sued by the SEC, then it's probably not decentralized.

If it thought there were grounds to do so, the SEC could take on the major BTC exchanges. Losing a means to convert to/from fiat currencies would drive away the vast majority of BTC traders, and possibly cause something of a bank run upon the announcement of SEC action against them. I mean, let's be real here, the vast majority of BTC transactions aren't for goods or services.

the SEC shutting down centralized exchanges would be a short term shock to the value of BTC but long-term would be a disaster for regulators.

Decentralized P2P exchanges exist(bisq/hodlhodl), and shutting down centralized exchanges would force people to use those as the on/off ramps.

The best way for regulators to fight bitcoin imo is to slowly assimilate it into the legacy finance infrastructure to the point that it becomes similar to gold reserves, something only central banks and large institutions hold, while the public might only hold IOUs. Similar to what paypal is already doing.

Re: Cryptocurrency company Ripple says SEC lawsuit is imminent

#123
post #39

What I've never understood about XRP and Ripple is that originally XRP was meant to only be used for paying for transactions and the ledger was meant to track IOUs between people denominated in some other "real" currency. They had videos floating around explaining the concept. In fact, they were handing out XRP for free to bootstrap the network of users [0] (that post says 1000 XRP, originally it was 30,000 XRP when…

I remember their original pitch sounding like it made a lot of sense. Fast, cheap, verifiable trading layer for IOUs that can then be settled externally. A lot like how many stock exchanges work. Ended up selling any XRP I had two years ago when things went nuts. Now it looks like people are re-building that whole concept elsewhere and Ripple is becoming irrelevant.

So what destroyed or displaced the efforts of the original concept - was it the profit incentive associated with Bitcoin's structure, essentially maligning incentives?

Re: Cryptocurrency company Ripple says SEC lawsuit is imminent

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, because it's a CENTRALIZED service. I can make a centralized transaction settlement service with a completion time in milliseconds. But it will not have the security and freedom of a decentralized service.

The security of having an audit trail with no way of reversing the transaction and the freedom to get ripped off by a shady exchange?

... with the solution being an externalized centralized government with centralized accountability, justice, and enforcement organizations - also left to deal with the bad actors who will freely use the system without the centralized (hopefully in place via democratically elected government with integrity) tools of things like Magnitsky Act to dissuade bad actions of bad actors.

Re: Cryptocurrency company Ripple says SEC lawsuit is imminent

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The security of having an audit trail with no way of reversing the transaction and the freedom to get ripped off by a shady exchange?

The freedom to get ripped off by a shady exchange is the same as the freedom to not have your money stolen by the government. Worth it, in my opinion.

Except you can, through effort and organization (none of this "trustless" mantra non-sense/propaganda), get in place a competent democratically elected government with integrity via accountability and oversight - perhaps even running for elected positions yourself if you're passionate and strong enough.

Or you can ignore the nuances and complexes, say fuck it, and support a system that disables power that good organizations do need to manage bad actors - instead of turning the clock back and making the world a "free for all" - making tools like the Magnisky Act unenforceable, along with other unavoidable pitfalls that pro-Bitcoiners ignore, scoff at without rebuttal, or glance over without serious thought. Regulatory capture is real and it needs to be addressed always - and if you work from founding principles and are honest with yourself you'll come to the conclusion that centralized organizations are a necessity to fighting "evil"/bad behaviour with good, responsible, trustworthy people

The argument then goes into nuance of where the debate continues as to how conservative or liberal you are - how "small" or "big" the government is, e.g. what decision making power or function does or should government have, e.g. Universal Basic Income/UBI - the Freedom Dividend as Andrew Yang calls it - would arguably be more of traditional Conservative/Republican leaning - giving $1,000/month to individuals for THEM TO DECIDE what to do with the money vs. some bureaucratic government agency spending that money themselves making broad-vague decisions, almost always influenced by regulatory capture and industrial complexes manipulating the system via influencing politicians and the population via propaganda of various forms: "tobacco is good for you" - says your doctor, "fat is bad for you" says the sugar and health industry, "MDMA/mushrooms are bad for you" - says big pharma industry who can't patent those medicines, etc.

Edit: LUL - imagine a person actually had to put the effort into writing a qualitative response instead of getting a dopamine hit from a single click to ignore/avoid engaging.

Re: Cryptocurrency company Ripple says SEC lawsuit is imminent

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, because it's a CENTRALIZED service. I can make a centralized transaction settlement service with a completion time in milliseconds. But it will not have the security and freedom of a decentralized service.

The security of having an audit trail with no way of reversing the transaction and the freedom to get ripped off by a shady exchange?

Any system powerful enough to give you everything you want (perfect security) is also powerful enough to take everything away.

Re: Cryptocurrency company Ripple says SEC lawsuit is imminent

#127
post #61

Make no mistake. They're going to make an example of Ripple. This is going to be horrible for them and a warning to anyone trying to run a similar Ponzi scheme. You can't centralise, hype and then cash out on vaporware without there being consequences. XRP held zero value at the time the founder cashed out and they've been trying to make their consulting business work ever since. Dare I say XRP goes to zero. Watch th…

Actually Ripple is not Vaporware. I work for an MTO and we use ripple XCurrent product. XRP enables MTOs to send / receive without having to use USD as an intermediary currency. This reduces costs on money transfer and also enables money transfer even when US banks are on holiday. So I can say there is real value in the network Ripple is building and also XRP itself being used as the tool for cross border remittance.…

Why not use ether/smart contracts? Seems way better than ripple for this use case.

Re: Cryptocurrency company Ripple says SEC lawsuit is imminent

#129
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it thought there were grounds to do so, the SEC could take on the major BTC exchanges. Losing a means to convert to/from fiat currencies would drive away the vast majority of BTC traders, and possibly cause something of a bank run upon the announcement of SEC action against them. I mean, let's be real here, the vast majority of BTC transactions aren't for goods or services.

the SEC shutting down centralized exchanges would be a short term shock to the value of BTC but long-term would be a disaster for regulators. Decentralized P2P exchanges exist(bisq/hodlhodl), and shutting down centralized exchanges would force people to use those as the on/off ramps. The best way for regulators to fight bitcoin imo is to slowly assimilate it into the legacy finance infrastructure to the point that it…

You can walk into any major bank in the US with tens of thousands in USD cash, deposit it via deposit ticket with no ID, and have anonymous bitcoin/ether/monero in your account within minutes.

Re: Cryptocurrency company Ripple says SEC lawsuit is imminent

#130
post #28
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SEC deals with securities, bitcoin is not a security according to them. Ripple(XRP) is.

It's a thought exercise, not a serious suggestion that it might occur, hence "if it thought there were grounds to do so." I'm imagining how a Government with sufficient power might go about crippling the value of BTC.

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