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RE: FCK/YOU Money: The Rise and Fall of XRP
With bitcoin, the actors are whoever has the best price on power and the best ASICs. There's no way to know whether or not such actors will collude and, today, they're all controlled by the government of China should it choose to exercise such control. By contrast, Ripple's consensus algorithm is not inherently centralizing in this way. It won't decentralize itself, but it's possible for it to be, and remain, truly decentralized. Ripple is committed to making this happen and has absolutely no incentive not to make it happen.
Well, RCL is a very worthy technology for a mostly decenteralized settlement network, I hope to see better node decentralization in the future. The same does not apply to XRP IMO.
Bitcoin and Ripple are very different projects - I do not find it entirely accurate to compare the projects in this way. I don't want to argue about the hypothetical collusion between Chinese miners; we can do that some other time :).
I disagree with this statement. See, I just don't like taking your word for it.
Nobody knows how to build a perfect system yet. If you're not interested in an objective comparison of Ripple to its "competitors", I'm not sure what other conversation we can have.
I agree; there is a difference however, between the RCL system and the XRP token that follows along. I am all for the tech behind RCL - I am skeptical about the use of XRP when in the end it comes down to 'trust us'. I don't want to trust anyone.
Just curious now that you mention it but how should one trust a "blockchain trustless" exchange. Aren't all blockchains that are focused on trustless relationships operating relatively the same way? I'm only asking is all.
I am not sure if I understand exactly what you are getting at, Bitcoin is 'trustless' because I can independently verify the entire transaction history. XRP does not operate in this trustless manner that Bitcoin is founded on. It is a pseudo crypto.
Hey Kyle,
I'm just a guy who's trying to figure this out. I'm certainly not an expert but guess i'm asking, irregardless of it being xrp/btc or other, what are the requirements for making a blockchain system "trustless" (whether it's a token or cryptocurrency)? What makes xrp a pseudo crypto...or even point me in the direction if you could so i could do a little research. Again, still learning this stuff myself.
Welcome to crypto!
What makes Bitcoin so special is you can download some code and independently verify all the transactions on the network. You do not need to trust anyone else in the network to provide you with the current ledger, you can form and validate it yourself.
XRP is centeralized in supply - you don't have to trust anyone to send it securely but you do have to trust Ripple regarding the supply of the coin. I.e. that they won't make any more than the 100billion they said.
I would advise looking into the history of a project and look at how well it is decenteralized. Is there only one cartel mining with > 50% mining power? Are all the nodes run by a single entity? These are some of the trust assumptions you must be comfortable with when you are being your own bank.
Be sure to follow up here with more questions: there are probably more answers than you know what to do with.
I guess I don't really see "I don't want to trust anyone" as a viable position. XRP's structures (at present) makes it very clear who you're trusting -- Ripple. Bitcoin's structure plays a game of hiding the ball. You don't have to trust anyone it says, but the reality is you do. As has been pointed out, you're trusting large scale miners to not collude. You're trusting the Chinese government (where most large scale miners reside) to not exert undue influence. In short, you're trusting a system that obfuscates the parties on whom your trust relies.
I think a pretty simple argument for XRP is that Ripple holds so much of it. Why wouldn't Ripple do everything they can to foster a healthy market and make sure that XRP is used within their software. If the price of XRP rises, the biggest winner is Ripple.
Still comes down to 'trust us'.
I'd go further and say their goal is to say "trust them".