Quote from: mmeijeri on May 11, 2013, 06:19:38 PM

Quote from: grue on May 11, 2013, 06:15:32 PM

200 is the minimum fee to have a open account.

It's 75 now, I think.

Let me clear up some misconceptions. Every object in the ledger database adds to a "reserve" requirement. This is necessary, or else the ledger could be attacked with spam (for example, by writing a script that creates an infinite number of accounts). The reserve requirement for an account is currently 50 XRP (it used to be 200 but OpenCoin lowered it because XRPs went up so much in value). This means that you cannot perform transactions or receive payments until you have received at least 50 XRP in your account.

The reserves in an account can only be spent on transaction fees (currently, the transaction fee is ten millionths of an XRP but it can be changed if all the servers agree). This means that if your account has only 40 XRP you cannot get the 40 XRP "out" of the account. It can only be used to pay for fees. Each object that you create increases the reserve requirement by 25 XRP (it used to be 100). Objects include trust lines and book offers.

Because XRPs are "sequestered" in an account's reserves, it is possible for OpenCoin to give away 50 billion XRPs to new account holders, but without making the value of XRPs fall by too much. The recipients of these XRP giveaways cannot sell the XRP reserves. I believe that the current giveaway is down to 3,000 XRP (down from 50,000). This means that at most 2,950 can be spent. I expect that the size of the giveaway will steadily decrease over time. Developers might get larger dollops though, who knows.

It seems OpenCoin wants to make it free or cheap for people in the early stage to open Ripple accounts, to spur adoption. To this end the appear to be giving away XRP both to let people open accounts and also so that a market forms.