RE: FCK/YOU Money: The Rise and Fall of XRP
I don't hate on bitcoin security. I just have a realistic, rather than a naive, view of what it can, and has, accomplished. If you don't realistically see the weaknesses of one scheme, you can't rationally compare it to another.
The problem with bitcoin is that the stakeholders are chosen by external, inherently centralizing, factors. And worse, the stakeholders have a strong incentive to see the transaction fees be high. This is not by any stretch a fatal flaw, and bitcoin would probably have already gotten past it if people were honest about it. It just shows that the naive view that mining is inherently decentralizing and governance will take care of itself through everyone acting selfishly, doesn't always work out as well as you might hope.
I'm still very bullish on bitcoin and expect it to be the dominant cryptocurrency for some time, maybe forever. But it will always have poor censorship resistance due to its reliance on PoW -- unless that reliance changes.
Not to mention that some actors are much more selfish than others.
Thus, you have inherently different levels of selfishness which ultimately lead to the emergence of some dominance hierarchy that creates a disproportionate power differential over time.
As you, I am not saying that this is bad, but I am far more willing to place my trust in a company that has something to lose from fucking up (e.g.: 20 billion Ripple). The stake that the owner's of the company hold are what insures their integrity.
Are we talking about the RCL or XRP... Becasue I have a realistic understanding of the security that Bitcoin offers.
I think there are a lot more to these two statements than you make it seem. I agree with most of what you detail, although with with many small caveats. I think there is a place in this space for many different systems - each offering degrees of 'security', 'decentralization' and such. XRP and BTC will coexist dispite their large differences in centralization.
I agree. I'm a huge supporter of both systems. Since XRP doesn't have to fight the inherently centralizing tendency of PoW, XRP should be more decentralized that bitcoin by the end of the year. And, I suspect, bitcoin will improve its decentralization and censorship resistance as well.
Expect for the fact that XRP is inherently centeralized in the first place or am I just entirely off base here?
To be clear - I am a huge supporter of both systems also.
the xrp ledger is not centralized. You are very off base.
the xrp ledger is a decentralized exchange in of itself. Shows how much you know about crypto.