Quote from: Mitzplik on May 20, 2013, 10:17:12 PM

So better than pushing him is to beg him to give you Bitstamp BTC.

This was funny. Somebody is running begging classes for the Bitcoin community?

Quote from: qxzn on May 20, 2013, 10:26:19 PM

My primary concern with ripple is exactly what TradeFortress has just demonstrated. Ripple IOUs have different values based on the issuer. If they traded on an open market, you would see this. IOUs for a trusted institution are worth more than IOUs for a less trusted one. E.g. you might see Bitstamp USD IOUs trading against Weexchange IOUs at a non-1 rate, such as 1.1.

But we don't see that in ripple (as far as I can tell). Instead, we see a markets labelled by the currencies only, such as USD/XRP. But whose USD? Where's the Bitstamp USD / Weexchange USD market?

The obvious defense to this is that the ripple thing is very new, populated by very clueless people and it will improve in time. The risk of course is that absent competent people involved it will simply end up tagged as a failure (which is happening already). The complete inability of the managing team to obtain and retain the support of competent people seems to irreversibly doom this particular installment (even if the ripple idea might eventually come to some fruition, made and marketed by people with actual skills, understanding and connections rather than by random "hey ma look, I can programmate the computor" folks).