Quote from: princesultan1 on November 28, 2014, 01:19:46 AM

Hi Joel,

You say that you do not recommend XRP as an investment, but (and correct me if I'm wrong) isn't a big part of Ripple Labs revenue model appreciation of XRP? I thought I read that somewhere...

Yes.

Quote from: Zer0Sum on November 28, 2014, 01:51:31 AM

(1) The XRP market is totally dominated by insider whales. They know exactly what will happen and why.
Even a sophisticated outsider will get constantly blind-sided by insiders.

I guess I can't refute a conspiracy theory, and maybe I am naive, but I genuinely don't think this is true. I'm not sure which variation of this you believe (for example, that there's insider information about Ripple Labs that affects the rational expected future value of XRP or that it's all manipulation and there's no real news), but the version I believe is essentially that the vast majority of the time, the market moves primarily on momentum. That is, when the price is rising, people buy just because they figure they can sell when it gets higher, which continues to push the price up. And when the price is dropping, even people who like to hold XRP may sell figuring they can buy back when it's lower.

I guess you can disagree with me, and if you do, I'm genuinely interested in hearing your reasoning because I am fully aware of the possibility that I might be wrong.

Quote

(2) The 2 months I traded XRP daily there did not appear to be any fees. Markets where certain
participants pay no fees or minimal fees have inflated and meaningless volume.

That's probably true. XRP is basically feeless except for a tiny transaction fee. So I agree that total volume is meaningless. One useful metric is to look at volume only where there are fees, for example XRP to/from Bitstamp BTC. You can use that volume as a proxy for total volume. Manipulation will appear mostly in feeless market.

Quote

(3) XRP is trading at << 50% of mid-2013 levels in terms of BTC. It's been a horrific "investment"...
except of course for insider whales.

I absolutely agree that XRP is not a sensible investment and that prices can drop drastically in short periods of time for no apparent reasons. Also, there are constant regulatory, technical, and business risks that could make XRP worthless overnight.

Quote

(4) Ripple Labs is an extremely secretive and disingenuous company. You can assume everything
is some kind of misdirection. All that hooey about "helping migrant African laborers" is baloney.
And I don't trust any of the numbers on Ripple Charts. They go back only 3 days for a reason.

I'm a member of the Board of Directors of Ripple Labs, I don't have to assume much of anything. The partnerships we're working on are secret. Generally, we would prefer to release that information and announce them as soon as we can. You're certainly entitled to be skeptical of our intentions. If you happen to be in San Francisco some time, let me know and I'll show you who we are and what we're doing, and maybe that will ease some of your skepticism.