What I mean is that Ripple is broken in the sense of severe congenital defects, the sort that cause abortion before gestation could in any way conceivably complete. Specifically :

Fatal congenital defect #1. Ripple requires any participant to trust other participants blindly. This is to say, if you trust X person to Y sum this doesn't mean that your trust is rescinded should X issue more than Y worth of debt. It simply means X may issue an infinite volume of debt and you unconditionally promise to accept Y of that. Just like that.

Fatal congenital defect #2. If #1 above somehow didn't kill the thing (for argument's sake), there's absolutely no way for you to receive compensation for the liquidity you provide. Conceivably no matter who X is, be it Russ Meyer or the very Bank of England in its heyday, as long as you take on its debt you're entitled to some sort of compensation for this. At least that's how things work in sane land, since forever. Not in Ripple, however. Your trust is unremunerated, which makes Ripple the only repo market in the history of finance working on 0% interest rates. Not even the FED pumping liquidity through the special bank windows did something like this.

Fatal congenital defect #3. If #1 and #2 above somehow didn't kill it (veering beyond the absurd by now), Ripple averages out all debt. You beg my pardon ? Good for you.

So, suppose Ripple was being used by Ben Bernanke, Christine Lagarde and Lou Jiwei, alongside a number of people randomly picked off the street. You'd sanely expect to be able to buy either BBdollars or Anondollars, separately, as distinct items. Right ? And then CLeuros and LJyuans as opposed to RandomChinesePersonIOU.

Well... that's not how Ripple works. As long as you trust both Lou Jiwei and some random Chinese dude, any people who trust the random dude and hold LJ's yuans can exchange LJ's yuans for any random dude's yuans that you hold.ii Or, as the case may be, the other way around. Always, always the other way around. So what happens when you find yourself trying to pay for a cab ride with what you thought were actual dollars but upon examination turn out to be pieces of paper with "DELLOR" scribbled in pink marker arcoss one side ? Awww, I guess you shouldn't have trusted your boss because he decided to trust his 5 year old daughter and now lookyiii. You've got a blue eye and the cab driver looks just about ready to give you another one.

Basically this boneheaded "everything's a Ripple" approach opens the entire space to the problem that lemon laws try to solve. Let's revisit that for a second, for the benefit of the completely clueless idiots who think it's their place to "create" and "innovate" retarded shit like thisiv.

So, inasmuch as used cars go, it is expensive for buyers to find the actual value of the item. Thus on any specified item buyers make offers based on a guess as to what the average value of a used car would be at any given time. Sellers either know this or soon find out (by being lowballed on good used cars) and soon enough only introduce into the market cars that are objectively worth less than the perceived average. This over time lowers the average, lowering the buyer expectation (and thus price offered) which further lowers the seller incentive and soon enough the only used cars you can buy are refurbished lawnmowers.

This is the problem that lemon laws try to solve. They fail.

So does Ripple. RIPv.