Quote from: mmeijeri on December 23, 2013, 06:49:33 PM

Quote from: k99 on December 22, 2013, 06:52:45 PM

Maybe I dont understand all aspects right and maybe I am missing some.

For one you appear to be missing the fact that the IOU system is an addition to cryptocurrencies, not a replacement for it. In fact, Ripple has its own internal cryptocurrency just like Bitcoin. The IOU system and the foreign exchange system built on top of it can provide an excellent distributed exchange between all kinds of currencies, both cryptocurrencies and state-issued fiat money. This is enormously useful for all cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin.

But there is a big difference of XRP to BTC. There is a for-profit company behind it and it owns most of it. I know they say that they will give their XRP away some day and play fair, etc..... but that has to me no value (who knows who will own the company in the future?).

And I think XRP are not intended to be used as money to buy things. They are introduced to make the payment system work and prevent spam.

For me all that sounds much more as a trap to infect BTC with Fiat-like properties. To bring people to the point that they use IOUs for BTC instead of BTC directly (from their own wallets). If its faster, more convinient, maybe adds some small earnings with lending (interests) many people who dont care about the original motivation behind BTC could use it.
Look at the gold ETFs. Many people use them to speculate because they are more convinient to trade and they take the risk that the emitter is lying about the backing of physical gold. At the end the most people using that does not care about the different nature of gold against fiat. They use it to make fast profit. Like gold ETF has not much in common with real gold but very much with fiat, BTC IUOs are much more like fiat then like BTC.

As I said before the finance industry will love Ripple, and if they will not adopting it they will probably come with something similar soon.
Ripple could be a way that they keep control as well as the state. The US based ripple company and the gateways are for me too vulnerable.

I am not completely against the concept of colored coins and a layer which lets them interchange easily.
But that should come for me with the same ideas like the one behind BTC.
No need for trust to companies and states, open source and decentralized.
I think some day we will see applications for exchanging fiat or real world items to crypto with these characteristics.