
Here’s Some Cryptocurrency. Now Please Use It - kimsk112
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/technology/cryptocurrency-ripple.html
======
Jakawao
Western Union made a bunch of press by announcing they would be leveraging
Ripple to streamline their international payments and reduce costs.

Last month they announce that they are parting ways as the Ripple hype did not
deliver: [http://fortune.com/2018/06/13/ripple-xrp-cryptocurrency-
west...](http://fortune.com/2018/06/13/ripple-xrp-cryptocurrency-western-
union/)

~~~
pferdone
Not true. Direct quotes from the article:

Still, Ersek cautioned that the pilot may be too early on and “too small” to
draw conclusions, as Western Union has only tested the cryptocurrency for
transfers between two currencies—U.S. dollars and Mexican pesos—so far.

“I don’t want to kill it,” Ersek said of the partnership, adding that the
Ripple team working with Western Union “are good people” who are “very
innovative.”

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lawlessone
"Despite a dramatic drop in the value of cryptocurrencies this year, Ripple
still owns $30 billion worth of XRP,"

But ripple can just make more.. it's not like bitcoin or even wants to be.

[http://hivergent.com/you-shouldnt-invest-in-ripple-and-
not-b...](http://hivergent.com/you-shouldnt-invest-in-ripple-and-not-because-
its-a-scam/)

------
pimmen
A related issue is that most crypto currencies are deflationary. This makes
people not want to spend them and they become poor currencies because they
stifle economic activity.

You can easily prove me wrong, too; use your crypto currencies to invest in
something that increases economic activity (such as shares in companies).

~~~
wbrasky
This is an oft-repeated falsehood. The majority of cryptos I have looked at
(the big, non-pre-mined ones in particular) are not and will not be for many,
many years. They are disinflationary. They experience inflation at a
decreasing rate over time. Eventually, yes, they will become deflationary.
Bitcoin will become deflationary on or before (effectively owing to "lost"
coins) 2140, but until then the monetary supply increases. That is called:
inflation.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _This is an oft-repeated falsehood_

Inflation is a measure between real goods and services on one hand and a
single unit of a currency on the other. It is _not_ a measure of money supply.
(For that we say “money supply”.)

Money supply increases _tend to_ be inflationary. But that’s not a hard and
fast rule. Bitcoin’s money supply is increasing, but on average it’s been
deflating.

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Nursie
This article really shows up the insanity of the cryptocurrency situation for
me -

    
    
      > digital token its founders created *six years ago*
      > almost no transactions are happening
      > Ripple still owns *$30 billion* worth of XRP
      > “It’s still really, really early days..."
    

Six years, massive valuations, little real use.

~~~
eksemplar
Cryptocurrency is a lot like Klondike. The first prospectors made money on
gold, but now the profit lies with the brothels, hardware shops and the big
kingpins.

If you ran an exchange you’d be extremely rich.

~~~
lmm
More like the South Sea Company. No actual revenue stream, just a self-
perpetuating mania that carries on until suddenly it doesn't.

------
fsiefken
Stellar was created to fix the issues with Ripple
[https://www.bitdegree.org/tutorials/stellar-vs-
ripple/](https://www.bitdegree.org/tutorials/stellar-vs-ripple/)

------
csomar
Ripple could help me a lot but the last time I checked (around one year ago)
their platform (Gatehub) was buggy. Plainly unusable. They are not friendly
toward small amount testing (they charge your for creating the account and
require a minimum balance)

It didn't help the bug debug text was unreadable and the platform way more
complicated that the bitcoin blockchain. Steep learning curve.

Apart from that they have a solid offering. Basically, if two parties
(exchanges, banks, etc...) support Ripple, you can move your currency (at
least USD/EUR) in real time and for no cost.

I'll give a second try and see how they evolved.

~~~
froocpu2
You might like Stellar - pretty much the same offering as XRP, but with better
smart contract support and it has an open test network that anyone can use.
You basically just interact via an API so you can develop in pretty much any
language you like.

------
lixtra
I remember reading about a guy giving away 1 BTC to interested people (when it
was 7 USD/BTC). My first thought was poor guy, he sure regrets that he gave so
much money (in retrospect) away. But at a second thought his remaining BTC
probably gained more value by actively spreading the adoption rate of BTC in
this early stage.

------
1ba9115454
Ripple wants to be a global payment platform for banks.

There's just one problem, the banking world already has a platform (created by
the banks) called Swift.

Nearly every bank in the world is signed up to this platform and the banks can
send payment requests to each other for pennies. (Basically text promises.)

The network effect in full effect.

So what's the advantage of Ripple? Well as far as I can see they don't have a
USP.

And worse, even if a bank wants to start communicating with other banks using
the Ripple network , each bank now has to create new agreements with each
other. As opposed to Swift where you just sign up once.

Good luck with that.

~~~
csomar
Here is my experience with SWIFT for International payments:

1\. Emitter pays around 35-50 USD to send you the money.

2\. It takes from 5 to 10 days depending on (traffic?).

3\. No clue where your payment is until it hit your account. Basically there
is no visibility (unlike the blockchain where you can see in real time if the
payment is made even though it is not confirmed).

4\. Your bank take a cut. Usually it is another 10-20 USD.

And here is the worst part. In some countries (maybe many, most?) there is an
obligatory FX circle even if you hold USD accounts.

1\. You receive the amount in USD.

2\. Bank convert USD to Local Currency.

3\. Bank convert Local Currency to USD.

4\. USD deposited in your local bank account.

And here is the funny part: The bank make sure it fucks you really well on the
FX fees. Around 5-7% both ways. So ends up over 10% of the total amount + the
fixed fees.

Welcome to reality.

~~~
Nursie
That doesn't sound like the sort of thing Ripple is going to fix - as it's
aimed at being an inter-bank settlement layer, those banks would still get to
play those games.

As a consumer, sending money to other people where I am is free and
effectively instant. Sending within the EU is heading this way too thanks to
SEPA.

~~~
csomar
Not really. If two exchanges support the Ripple platform, you can move USD
without friction. If businesses started supporting Ripple, then you can
transact with them too.

You don't need to be a bank or an institution to start using Ripple. You can
do so at Gatehub.

~~~
Nursie
> You don't need to be a bank or an institution to start using Ripple.

Sure, but I'm not going to stop transacting using my bank or my national
currency any time soon, for a huge variety of reasons. Ripple is angling to be
an inter-bank service (see the first sentence in this thread), which doesn't
solve the problem of banks playing exchange-rate shenanigans.

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
It lowers the barrier to entry for remittance competitors significantly. Had
planned to build a proof of concept for a hackathon back in march but ran into
issues with nobody on the team having foreign bank accounts that we could pair
with crypto exchanges. We planned to use Bitstamp -> Bitso to change USD to
MXN via moving XRP between the exchanges. All the API documentation is there
to make it happen but unfortunately we couldn't open real accounts and one or
both of the exchanges didn't have a sandbox API. However the cost to make a
transfer would effectively be less than 1% and take roughly a day, which is
essentially the time it takes to deposit money from a crypto exchange to a
bank account.

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HashBasher
The rebuke from XRP investors is to "go do more research". Headline catching
articles predicting the future value of XRP is not research!

~~~
lawlessone
after doing research i'm certain ripple can just make more at anytime to keep
the value low.

~~~
froocpu2
Why would they want to keep the value low? They raise capital by selling it.

~~~
lawlessone
liquidity? Ripple owns most of the XRP in existence now anyway and could just
flood the market.

~~~
froocpu2
Is that a guess? Greater demand -> better market value and greater trading
volumes -> better liquidity because it requires less XRP to move x amount of
money from A to B, and the market price is less likely to be affected by the
move.

The majority of their XRP is in escrow contracts, so they physically can't
flood the market with more than 1b a month.

