Quote from: JoelKatz on May 17, 2013, 01:45:17 PM

Quote from: strinkle on May 17, 2013, 01:33:33 PM

So it's not a bug in Ripple that one's account balance can show 1 trillion BTC?

No. Garbage in, garbage out. Is it a bug in the forums that I can make them say: 2 + 2 = 5

If you tell it to consider something worthless to be worth 1 trillion BTC, then it will tell you that you have something worth 1 trillion BTC. And, worse, it will trade something worth 1 BTC to get it, causing you to lose 1 BTC. It does what you ask it to do. If you tell it do something stupid, it can hurt you.

Ripple is a trading and payment platform. You have to tell it what assets are worth because it has no way to know otherwise. There are no central authorities to set exchange rates or tell you what assets are really worth.

As I said above, "this really is just a question of whether people are ready for access to powerful financial tools that permit pseudonymous transactions that are irreversible or whether people are just too dumb and careless to be trusted with that kind of power and will only hurt themselves."

Fair enough. I understand the principle. But I don't see "the masses" being able to use the system successfully as it stands. It will be interesting to see what scams get developed to exploit this.