Quote from: btcbug on April 04, 2017, 02:30:23 AM

Well to be fair it seems this is more a criticism of banking in general, not Ripple. I'm not aware of Ripple claiming they'd reform banking practices. From my understanding they're simply designing a system that can allow banks to operate more efficiently.

How is not paying an interest on deposits and not having any central bank or self-reported regulation on reserves represent what banking ever was or is?

If banks will only use Ripple as a clearing mechanism between themselves then what great value does Ripple have?

Frankly I don't understand what the widespread use case is?

Banks have the problem of trusting solvency. I don't see how trusted gateways resolve anything. All Ripple does is record that a promise was made. It doesn't do anything to insure those promises are valid or even fungible. Banks can't trust the USD.banknamehere tokens of each of 100 other banks. That is why they use a central bank backed currency.

I don't see how Ripple improves on the current situation at all.

Ripple reminds me of dot.com bubble with all the build it and they will come nonsense.

Ripple has a coordination problem which even the Fed can't solve. This is why Bitcoin rules and Ripple is dogshit.

Quote from: btcbug on April 04, 2017, 02:30:23 AM

Well, that was my point earlier. I don't see banks becoming non-existent "soon". Are you talking 5, 10 or 20 years when you say that?

I expect that in 5 - 10 years from now the world financial and monetary system will be quite different.

Quote from: Lecter on April 04, 2017, 04:08:50 AM

Quote from: iamnotback on April 04, 2017, 12:42:03 AM

I expect Ripple to collapse as the sovereign debt crisis goes into defaults probably next year.

Can you elaborate on this, or point to where you have already elaborated on this?

What do you recommend people invest in outside of cryptocurrency right now? Seems like you're stuck with real estate, equities or bonds at the moment. I feel like there's far too much fiat chasing far too few correctly-priced investments. What's your take?

As for the timing on sovereign debt collapse, I defer to Martin Armstrong. He has a blog.

He thesis is the Eurozone will economically collapse first. This has been and will continue to drive the USD higher as capital seeks a safe haven from the economic (and political) collapse of the EU. So the go to investment since 2012 has been the USA stock market. He has also recommended AAA corporate bonds, since the crisis is in sovereign bonds.

Eventually the ingress of capital to the USD will peak and the US economy will choked by the collapse of Europe and hence the rest of the world. Then we will have a global collapse and a monetary reset. So look for the global economy to become really horrible 2019 - 2020. But 2018 should be start in earnest of the Minsky Moment collapse of the Eurozone.

His thesis is China and Asia will bottom 2020, while the West will continue to spiral down into the abyss for many years hence. By 2033, Singapore and Shanghai will have replaced London and New York as the financial capitals of the world.

We are headed into a tempest. I am not very enthused about any tangible assets because the governments are going to be forced to tax and sequester (i.e. confiscate) everything they can get their hands on. I think even gold has lost most of its utility in such a crisis.

On the more bizarre point of view I offer the following which perhaps you should not view entirely seriously right now...

My thesis is fungible money is dying along with the industrial age.

You could try to do business in Asia, but you will likely be at a disadvantage being a non-Chinese. Philippine born Chinese even control the government and economy here in the Philippines where I am.

I would try to have investments in knowledge age businesses if at all possible.

My desire is to launch a blockchain project that will make such investments more readily feasible for you with a fungible token as the base of such a system that drives massive knowledge trading activity. But at the moment, I am still undergoing treatment for whole body disseminated Tuberculosis (meaning that bacterium is/was every where in lymph nodes, digestive system, brain, etc). This treatment is toxic and not even sure to work if I have MDR-TB (which is more likely for me given my location and historical pattern of exposure). Thus at the moment I am not able to work (code/program, etc) at the level I am accustomed to be before I got ill. So at this time I am very frustrated and am not sure if I can complete my project effectively. There are new better cures coming from the http://TBalliance.org, but I think it is not possible for me to get access to those medicines until years hence, unless one of you readers has a connection and could help me? I'm 10 weeks into treatment and not totally convinced if I am improving or not. Very toxic to the liver. Very fatigued and cognitively fatigued.