
The first cryptocurrency using proof-of-passport - kseistrup
https://ubic.app/
======
dogcomplex
"Buy why?"

If you have proof of passport, you have proof of identity (at least up to the
difficulty of obtaining a counterfeit passport - pretty expensive). If you
have proof of identity, you have secure private online voting. You also have
solved the astroturfing bot problems, and multiple-accounts problems on most
communication platforms.

Want to get into cryptocurrency-specific applications? If you used that proof-
of-passport design and issued an inflationary currency around it such that
inflation was issued one-coin-per-passport, then you have a currency that
auto-taxes the rich and auto-distributes a UBI (parameterized however you
like). Could be governed via online voting. Would need to have considerable
penalties (or bounties) to those who are found with fake passports though.
This currency could be quickly substituted with effectively no usable
difference to most people for anything currently purchasable with
Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc. It could also be used as a decentralized asset
registration system for non-cash assets. If enough people simply held and used
this currency as opposed to other crypto or USD/etc, and enough started
requiring buyers/sellers to use it (for political reasons at first, then later
practical reasons) then its price would quickly stabilize and make it a
reserve currency, and there's not much any other party could do to stop it.
Participation in the economy could then effectively require use of this
currency, which means effectively registering your assets and your accounts
under a single identity and exposing those assets to automatic taxation in
their effective value due to inflation. It is simply built into the system at
that point. Though this inflation relationship could be set to be a net
benefit users up to a net worth of e.g. 2 million USD equivalent.

This also opens the doors for automated anonymous auditing of assets,
anonymous proof-of-ownership, etc.

Enter "but we could do this already without cryptocurrencies!" \- sure,
probably. But now you can do it without centralized control of the system by
anyone.

~~~
notahacker
> But now you can do it without centralized control of the system by anyone

Except ICAO's short list of centralized bodies issuing the passports you need
to participate, an exclusive club of the same sort of government bodies that
regulate traditional currency...

~~~
dogcomplex
heh. True. Alright then, replace what I said with true decentralized Proof of
Identity and consider this article merely another important step in that
direction.

PoI is looking like it will have to be an amalgamation of different identity
services anyway - something that is expensive, slow and hard to cheat at
through the multiple providers. Passport is one piece of that puzzle

------
toomanybeersies
It's a universal basic income. It requires a passport.

Those two assertions are contradictory. Not everyone has a passport, a lot of
people (especially lower-income, which UBIs tend to be pitched as being the
most beneficial for) don't own passports.

I suppose it's more a proof of concept than an actual serious attempt at
creating a cryptocurrency.

~~~
kylebenzle
If people want the UBI they need to get a passport. Are there people that are
not eligible for a passport?

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
Never-mind that passports tend to be expensive (relatively speaking, for the
average person), many countries don’t issue passports for a variety of
reasons: the UK will refuse to issue - or confiscate - passports of football
hooligans specifically - or suspected terror-tourists, I’m sure other
democracies have similar policies, let alone more authoritarian regimes.

~~~
unethical_ban
Passports are confiscated if you misbehave at a sports match? My God.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
> misbehave

That spin does kinda trivialize the conduct of hooligans - things like simple
assault or battery won't be enough, it's more like if you're involved in a
specific football hooligan gang, and conspire to do grevious bodily harm
and/or arrange organized fights between gangs, and you must have a prior
conviction too:
[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/832431/football-
related-arrests-banning-orders-1819-hosb2219.pdf)

------
theamk
By why? Cryptocurrencies used to at least claim to be useful, but this one
does not even try to?

Is there a need it fulfills, or some advantage over one of the thousands of
existing ones?

~~~
fungos
This is useful.. to someone. They are just collecting a lot of passport
information.

~~~
kylebenzle
Would love to know why HN is so blindly anti-crypto.

~~~
acdha
Informed skepticism is the opposite of “blindly anti-crypto”: hawkers have had
years to make the case for their systems but most of them have failed to
produce anything of value. If you can talk knowledgeably about a system and a
real problem which it solves, you won't have a problem.

~~~
mopsi
But it's rarely informed. The US has very outdated, insecure and absurdly
expensive retail banking and most people seem to be completely oblivious to
it, which is why they fail to the potential of settlement systems like Ripple.
Financial transactions are just small pieces of information, no different than
funny GIFs or instant messages. It costs virtually nothing to move them around
instantaneously across the globe in a secure way, and yet here we are,
discussing if that has any value over snail-mail type of experience.

Europe stands out somewhat and we can argue that cryptocurrencies don't bring
much improvement onto the table. Banking fees are already very low and Europe
is currently rolling out instant credit transfer. I can open a bank account
for free and without any recurring fees, and make up to 5000 payments a month
for free to anyone in Europe, arriving in less than 20 seconds, available
24/7/365, automatable through APIs. But the rest of the world... my God what
stone age you're living in, people with paper checks and overdraft fees
imagine they're "informed skeptics" against modern settlement systems. Feels
like early 1990s with people saying that email is pointless and they'll never
use it.

~~~
theamk
Agree on all counts (I am in the US), but what does it have to do with crypto?
And with this coin in particular?

Whatever the solution we end up with, it won't be decentralized. No one wants
to lose their money because they lost some token or paper, and their computer
broke.

It will be great new distributed world -- but it would also be licensed,
insured, centrally approved, KYC'd, and free of chinese cryptominers and
people stealing your passport numbers.

~~~
mopsi
I am left puzzled by the strong skepticism and even downright hostility I
often see. I don't think any current cryptocurrency will take over the world
and replace existing financial systems like fanboys argue, but they are trying
out highly desirable features in real-world environment. I am certain many of
them will eventually become widely adopted.

Even the basic requirement of all transactions being digitally signed is a
huge step forward, especially when paired with hardware wallets[1]. It's crazy
that we're still typing plain-text credit card numbers into inherently
insecure computers, hoping that we'll be charged the correct amount (I
recently wasn't), and that no keylogger or sketchy merchant steals or
accidentally leaks the information.

Sure, dealing with digital keys and long hex addresses is clunky like sending
email in 1984[2], but I feel there's a lot of real innovation thrown out with
the bathwater when the whole sphere is called pointless Ponzi and so on, which
is particularly odd to see in a forum dedicated to startup culture.

[1] [https://shop.ledger.com/pages/ledger-
nano-x](https://shop.ledger.com/pages/ledger-nano-x)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szdbKz5CyhA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szdbKz5CyhA)

~~~
theamk
I have been dealing with the computers for a long time, and I know they fail.
The hardware breaks, my computer gets malware, vendor's computer gets malware,
I get nothing, I get wrong item and vendor is unresponsive, software makes
errors, I type the wrong thing and click the wrong button.

I think it is a terrible idea to keep any significant amount of money in any
place where it is easy to lose, like a cryptocurrency. And if you are
recommending cryptocurrency as a safe storage to someone who is not an expert,
you should feel bad, because you are lying to them.

And the worst part of all, is cryptcoiners _never_ _listen_. In fact, directly
in the message you are replying to, I wrote: "No one wants to lose their money
because they lost some token or paper, and their computer broke." And what was
your response? You point me to hardware wallet.

The hardware wallets are great if you are a crypto expert. If you are a
regular person, you are going to be lose your recovery words and forget your
password after vacation, and then you'll (almost) lose $30K like Mark
Frauenfelder did [0]

Telling people to use crypto for significant amounts of money is like
encouraging them to juggle live grenades. Yes, it looks cool and pretty safe
if you know the trick. But if everyone starts doing this, someone will get
killed.

[0] [https://www.wired.com/story/i-forgot-my-pin-an-epic-tale-
of-...](https://www.wired.com/story/i-forgot-my-pin-an-epic-tale-of-losing-
dollar30000-in-bitcoin/)

[https://www.wired.com/story/i-forgot-my-pin-an-epic-tale-
of-...](https://www.wired.com/story/i-forgot-my-pin-an-epic-tale-of-losing-
dollar30000-in-bitcoin/)

------
greyface-
Recent, related discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23066477](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23066477)

------
anm89
I guess this is kind of interesting but what's the value in holding the coins?
I do all of this to hold monopoly money?

~~~
espoir666
Prices are pushed by consensus

------
mofeien
I am kind of shocked and glad to see someone has already built this -- for the
last few years I have been thinking on and off about an electronic ID based
crypto currency UBI.

I see the biggest challenges to the succes of such a project in:

\- hardware difficulties: many android phones do not support the extended APDU
commands necessary to use the digital signing application of the chip on the
passport. If UBIC is not immediately usable on almost every phone, it may not
find wide adoption. And an UBI like this only gains value through adoption.

\- government restriction of passport use: afaik, the German ID card can only
be used to digitally sign data from sanctioned sources, i. e. your service
that uses the ID card to sign data must first authorize itself to the ID card
using a valid certificate issued by a government certificate authority.

\- government sabotage: while flooding the system with fake passport
certificates might mean bad PR, the government ultimately controls all the
trust anchors and will do this if UBIC gets dangerous. It's good to have
different UBICs per country, this way the power of a single government is
limited.

\- privacy: since reliable passport revocation is not available, proof of
passport is not enough to prevent multiple passport use. I think, aside from
schemes where people meet in person and check each other's passports, only a
non-anonymous proof of identity system will work.

------
vzaliva
the web site is very brief on the passport verification mechanism. Anybody can
explain how it works? I understand they are compatible with passports with a
chip. How do they read them? NFC? OCR a string of letters inside the passport?
I would love to hear a report from somebody who tried it.

~~~
Aaargh20318
> How do they read them? NFC? OCR a string of letters inside the passport?

I actually work on software that does this. To read a passport you first need
to OCR the two lines of text at the bottom of the data page, the machine
readable zone or MRZ (actually: you only need the document number, date of
birth and date of expiry, but OCRing the MRZ is the easiest way to input these
without error).

These 3 pieces of data form a kind of password to access the chip, this is so
someone can't skim your passport, they have to already be looking at the data
page with all your info before they can access the same info in the chip.
(Note that there is an additional way on some passports, which uses a PIN code
printed on the passport but this isn't very common yet).

Once you got the key, you can authenticate yourself towards the chip and read
its data. The data is digitally signed by the government of the issuing
country and if you have the root certificates you an verify the data is
genuine and not tampered with.

Then there is also a mechanism to detect if the chip is not a copy, which is
what the cryptocurrency seems to use, called 'active authentication'. You
basically send an 8-byte challenge to the passport, which signs it and returns
the signature. The passport's public key is readable, the private key is not
and stored in a secure way in the chip. By verifying the response against the
public key you verify the chip is not a copy. This public key is part of the
signed data so you can form a chain-of-trust back to the signing authority.

Notice that what this cryptocurrency is doing (signing data using a passport)
is considered a problem by some governments (specifically Germany) and thus a
new standard was created called EAC-CA (Extended Access Control - Chip
Authentication) that specifically prevents this from happening. Both AA and
EAC-CA are optional features.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
Is there any danger is using the app and exposing the information in your
passport to this app? I'd think so, otherwise why all that effort to keep the
information from being skimmed.

~~~
Aaargh20318
Obviously the potential for abuse is high; if you don’t trust the author of
the app then I certainly wouldn’t use it.

Passports contain personal information, a color photo of the holder, and
optionally can contain a copy of your signature or fingerprints.

Note that some information can be behind an additional level of access control
called EAC-TA (Extended access control - terminal authentication). For example
the fingerprints in Dutch passports are protected like this. Accessing them
requires a certificate which is so closely guarded that hardly anyone has
access to it.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
That is why I was concerned. But if you read through the technical
descriptions in this hacker news discussion, some people say you are only
verifying that the information in it is a valid and unique passport,
effectively. I want someone with more information than me to state a
definitive answer of the dangers here. Let my try asking the questions:

1\. The user info that leads to that 'key' or hash, they get that name and
number on the inside, and that's a hash to verify that its a passport issued
by a real authority?

2\. Isn't there a danger in leaking that internal information in #1? If there
was no danger, then they wouldn't put it on the inside, right?

3, Do they have access to further information when they get that hash and
verify what else is contained? Is this access to everything that is encoded?
It seems not.

I _think_ that you are leaking that information on the inside cover, that is
of little use to outside people who don't have your passport. They'd know of
your existence, and they'd maybe be able to use it if they ever got your
passport? I don't want to speculate on important information like your
passport credentials.

~~~
Aaargh20318
I looked into it a little more, and it's even more dubious than I originally
thought.

To first address your questions: they claim they only get the document signer
certificate from the security object in the document. This in itself isn't
dangerous but if they can read this file, they can also read files which do
contain privacy sensitive information. More than enough to be very worried
about identity theft.

Even more more worrying is that they treat having the document signer
certificate as proof of holding a passport. This is not in any way a proof of
you holding a specific passport. Document signer certificates are not unique
to a document, and even if they were it doesn't prove in any way you're not
using a copy.

------
Gys
It does not say anything about loosing your pasport. I wonder what that might
do. I am assuming they at least cover the case of replacing your pasport when
it expires as it is a known date.

~~~
arcticbull
Just like any other cryptocurrency: you lose your keys, you lose your coins,
end of story. That's one of the many reasons crypto is utterly worthless.

~~~
lukifer
It's no different than bearer bonds [1]. "Utterly worthless" is a little
strong; while for 99% of users, it's arguably inferior to a banking authority
than can restore your assets in the event of fraud, there are those that would
consider this a feature rather than a bug, since it also means that a
government or bank can't seize your assets either (given sufficient
precautions, etc). It's a tradeoff, like so many things.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearer_bond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearer_bond)

~~~
arcticbull
From the wiki: "Bearer bonds have historically been the financial instrument
of choice for money laundering, tax evasion, and concealed business
transactions in general"

Ah good! That, but digital. Just what the world needed. I almost feel like you
made my case just there.

~~~
elil17
"I don't like the use case" is different than "useless."

~~~
arcticbull
Ok, then it's great for crime, and nothing else.

~~~
elil17
And low fee transactions

~~~
arcticbull
Low fees aren't a feature of cryptocurrencies, I'm not sure the big websites
even list it as such because:

(1) Fees are irrelevant in the face of overwhelming volatility. Who cares if
the fee is a couple of cents on your million dollar transaction when BTC
regularly flings up and down 10%, or more? How could you willingly risk
$100,000 on a million dollar transaction when your bank would charge you
between $25 and $0 depending on your account size for the same transfer?

(2) Fees only appear low because nobody's using it. The minute people start
using it, as we've seen, the fees absolutely skyrocket. BTC transaction fees
hit $35 last time around.

(3) Fees only appear low because they're being socialized through
inflation/dilution. A single BTC transaction consumes 700kWh of power --
enough to drive a Tesla from SF to New York. That's currently being absorbed
by the system in the form of inflation/dilution ("block rewards"). But make no
mistake, each transaction actually costs about $0.08/kWh in China = $56.

(4) Fees for traditional currency are really low. Really, really low. Cash is
free to hand to someone. Checks are free. ACH costs your bank 1/10th of 1 cent
per transaction, and often that's passed along free of charge (see Venmo,
Square Cash). Even wires are a few pennies in bulk, and often free -- my bank
doesn't charge me for wires.

(5) Before you start on international transactions, those are really really
cheap too. The cheapest option for small transactions is TransferWise,
charging 0% on the USD-INR corridor up to 0.85% or so. Most credit cards
charge nothing on forex.

If you're doing big transactions, InteractiveBrokers is a great bet for forex.
On monthly transactions under 1,000,000,000 (that's right, a billion dollars)
they charge 2/10th of a basis point - 0.002% -- minimum $2. $20 per million.
SIPC insured.

There's nothing the traditional BTC/ETH/etc cryptos do better than existing
systems except crime. The forex market is $5.1T/year, trust me. It's been
optimized.

~~~
mopsi
> _(1) Fees are irrelevant in the face of overwhelming volatility. Who cares
> if the fee is a couple of cents on your million dollar transaction when BTC
> regularly flings up and down 10%, or more? How could you willingly risk
> $100,000 on a million dollar transaction when your bank would charge you
> between $25 and $0 depending on your account size for the same transfer?_

The same thing is an issue with traditional international transactions, but
settlement systems like Ripple offer very fast transaction times (seconds
instead of days) and reduce exposure to exchange rates, which makes them much
cheaper to use.

> _(2) Fees only appear low because nobody 's using it. The minute people
> start using it, as we've seen, the fees absolutely skyrocket. BTC
> transaction fees hit $35 last time around._

BTC throughput is artifically capped by its developers to 7 transactions per
second (globally), which causes ridiculous bidding wars for transactions. This
is not an issue with most cryptocurrencies that have large throughput as one
of their main design goals.

> _(3) Fees only appear low because they 're being socialized through
> inflation/dilution. A single BTC transaction consumes 700kWh of power --
> enough to drive a Tesla from SF to New York. That's currently being absorbed
> by the system in the form of inflation/dilution ("block rewards"). But make
> no mistake, each transaction actually costs about $0.08/kWh in China = $56._

Cryptocurrencies do not have to rely on Bitcoin's way of doing things. There
are energy-efficient ways. A single Bitcoin transaction may consume 700 kWh,
but a Visa transaction consumes 0.006490 kWh and a Ripple transaction consumes
0.0000113 kWh ([http://papers.netrogenic.com/sid/eco-friendly-
money.pdf](http://papers.netrogenic.com/sid/eco-friendly-money.pdf)).

> _(5) Before you start on international transactions, those are really really
> cheap too. The cheapest option for small transactions is TransferWise,
> charging 0% on the USD-INR corridor up to 0.85% or so. Most credit cards
> charge nothing on forex._

These are not actual transactions. TransferWise can offer cheap rates only on
well-balanced corridors because then real money doesn't have to move. If
USD->INR payments have a volume of 1M per day and INR->USD also has 1M, then
they don't have to move any money and can bypass the whole international
transactions side of things and associated fees and locally pay out the same
money that was deposited into their accounts.

If international transactions were cheap, there would be no need for middle-
men like TransferWise.

~~~
arcticbull
> The same thing is an issue with traditional international transactions, but
> settlement systems like Ripple offer very fast transaction times (seconds
> instead of days) and reduce exposure to exchange rates, which makes them
> much cheaper to use.

Ripple is not decentralized, which is why it's cheap. That also just makes it
a direct replacement for SWIFT. You can do that without blockchain. You can
stand that up in a single RDS instance in about 5 minutes flat, and hash the
previously appended rows in a Merkle tree like we've done for eons.

> BTC throughput is artifically capped by its developers to 7 transactions per
> second (globally), which causes ridiculous bidding wars for transactions.
> This is not an issue with most cryptocurrencies that have large throughput
> as one of their main design goals.

There's no truly decentralized cryptocurrency that even comes close to
satisfying simultaneously having anywhere close to the transaction throughput
of Visa (just one of many processors) while also satisfying the verifiability
goals of being able to download the blockchain onto your computer. Because
they're competing goals.

> Cryptocurrencies do not have to rely on Bitcoin's way of doing things. There
> are energy-efficient ways. A single Bitcoin transaction may consume 700 kWh,
> but a Visa transaction consumes 0.006490 kWh and a Ripple transaction
> consumes 0.0000113 kWh ([http://papers.netrogenic.com/sid/eco-friendly-
> money.pdf](http://papers.netrogenic.com/sid/eco-friendly-money.pdf)).

Ripple is not decentralized which is why it's efficient. There are no
decentralized, efficient coins. It's also not even close to a fair comparison.
They're only counting the electricity consumption of a few validator nodes in
that link of yours, and they cap out at 1500TPS, Visa supports 50000TPS.

Further XRP is just a distributed inter-bank ledger. Visa isn't a comparison
for that, something like SWIFT is.

> These are not actual transactions. TransferWise can offer cheap rates only
> on well-balanced corridors because then real money doesn't have to move. If
> USD->INR payments have a volume of 1M per day and INR->USD also has 1M, then
> they don't have to move any money and can bypass the whole international
> transactions side of things and associated fees and locally pay out the same
> money that was deposited into their accounts.

I have no idea what this means. You do know bags of money don't make their way
onto boats every time you make a forex transaction right? The exchange rate is
determined by the price that requires no physical currency to leave one
country and move to another. Which makes it incredibly efficient. And very
real.

> If international transactions were cheap, there would be no need for middle-
> men like TransferWise.

They're a provider of cheap international transactions. International
transactions are cheap.

~~~
mopsi
> _Ripple is not decentralized, which is why it 's cheap._

Their ledger is inherently decentralized. It runs without a central operator.
Consensus is formed by independent parties.

> _I have no idea what this means._

No international transactions take place between financial institutions, they
just change a few lines in their internal database table.

> _They 're a provider of cheap international transactions. International
> transactions are cheap._

They serve limited cases and their volume is tiny, only 4B a month. They are
no way an indication what international transactions cost.

~~~
arcticbull
> Their ledger is inherently decentralized. It runs without a central
> operator. Consensus is formed by independent parties.

"Ripple Controls The Network And Who Gets To Validate Transactions, Making It
A Centralised And Permissioned Blockchain" [1] That means it's no different
than an RDS instance with a Merkle tree. That's not comparable to the other
coins we're discussing.

> No international transactions take place between financial institutions,
> they just change a few lines in their internal database table.

That's literally how SWIFT works. It's literally how TransferWise works. It's
how every international exchange mechanism works, and it's what you described
as "not actual transactions."

> They serve limited cases and their volume is tiny, only 4B a month. They are
> no way an indication what international transactions cost.

Generally, the less you serve, the _more_ expensive your service, not less,
due to economies of scale. TransferWise represents an upper bound on cost, not
lower. As I explained before, at scale, InteractiveBrokers will charge you
0.002% ($20/million) for any Forex transaction you like, up to $1B per month,
and will charge you progressively _less_ as you go up from there.

[1]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomassilkjaer/2019/03/07/14-co...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomassilkjaer/2019/03/07/14-common-
misunderstandings-about-ripple-and-xrp/#1de0612471d0)

~~~
mopsi
> _" Ripple Controls The Network And Who Gets To Validate Transactions, Making
> It A Centralised And Permissioned Blockchain" [1]_

The quoted part is a misunderstanding that's refuted in following paragraphs.
I fully agree with it - Ripple isn't centralized.

> _That 's literally how SWIFT works. It's literally how TransferWise works.
> It's how every international exchange mechanism works, and it's what you
> described as "not actual transactions."_

Nope. There's no way for me and you to directly access SWIFT for deposits and
withdrawals like we can sign up with TransferWise or send funds directly from
one crypto wallet to the other. We have to go through our banks, who route
transactions through chain of trusted intermediaries, who add their own
processing fees.

TransferWise cleverly bypasses this in balanced corridors where no money has
to be moved though the network of financial institutions, but that's a very
limited business. They are very far from serving the whole world at cheap
rates, and their niche business is no indication of how much a typical
international transaction costs.

> _InteractiveBrokers will charge you 0.002% ($20 /million) for any Forex
> transaction you like, up to $1B per month_

How reassuring. Sadly, banks do not pass on the savings to customers, and the
entry barrier for newcomers with better pricing is very high. Even smaller
banks are getting fucked, let alone retail customers.

~~~
arcticbull
Look I think we're talking past eachother here but to re-iterate one last
time:

> The quoted part is a misunderstanding that's refuted in following
> paragraphs. I fully agree with it - Ripple isn't centralized.

They didn't refute it at all. There's one company that publishes a list of
trusted nodes. That's the definition of centralization. There's no proof of
work, or proof of stake protecting the system. There's one company that
publishes a list of a few other companies that they also trust. That's. Not.
Decentralization. Not in any meaningful way. Try getting on that list and let
me know how it goes.

They could skip a lot of steps and just, again, run all this through an RDS
instance with some Merkle trees and publish a feed.

> Nope. There's no way for me and you to directly access SWIFT for deposits
> and withdrawals like we can sign up with TransferWise or send funds directly
> from one crypto wallet to the other. We have to go through our banks, who
> route transactions through chain of trusted intermediaries, who add their
> own processing fees.

There's no way to use Ripple to just "move money" without leveraging a fiat
gateway. Exactly the same thing. You're comparing just the "swift" analog
(Ripple) to the entire banking infrastructure. For example, I've got $20. How
do I send it to my buddy in London with Ripple? I can't just "ripple" it. I
need a fiat gateway, an exchange, I need to get a bank account at a real bank,
deposit the money, move it to an exchange (1-2%, 3-5 days), then I need to pay
a transaction fee (and I better not mistype the address otherwise it's gone
for good) then my buddy needs to receive the Ripple, move it to his bank
account (1-2%, 3-5 days), and withdraw it.

Or, I can just use Transferwise. It's much, much easier, and frankly, a lot
less expensive.

> TransferWise cleverly bypasses this in balanced corridors where no money has
> to be moved though the network of financial institutions, but that's a very
> limited business. They are very far from serving the whole world at cheap
> rates, and their niche business is no indication of how much a typical
> international transaction costs.

What TransferWise is doing is how all forex works. Everywhere. SWIFT and
Ripple included. No money ever actually moves between borders, just ledger
entries. Ripple isn't doing anything novel.

> How reassuring. Sadly, banks do not pass on the savings to customers, and
> the entry barrier for newcomers with better pricing is very high. Even
> smaller banks are getting fucked, let alone retail customers.

Small customers can use Transferwise. Bigger customers can negotiate rates.
Literally anyone can sign up for an InteractiveBrokers account and get those
Forex rates. Probably easier than signing up for a shady fiat gateway/exchange
for crypto. Another common misconception: Western Union isn't at all
uncompetitive, and available the world over.

Small banks aren't getting fucked. They may not be passing on the savings but
they could use IBKR if they wanted to. And SWIFT is _not at all expensive_ for
banks.

You've a deep misunderstanding of how the global economy works, sadly, and I
suggest instead of getting swept up in this crypto madness, you learn more
about how the global economy functions. Many of the problems you cite don't
really exist, and neither do these supposed benefits.

~~~
mopsi
> _Look I think we 're talking past eachother here_

No, we're not talking past each other. At this point, you're arguing with your
own source whether Ripple is centralized or not.

~~~
arcticbull
I don't agree with my source's conclusions but I do agree with their
description: "Each participating node on the XRP ledger network has to trust a
number of validators on the network for the Consensus mechanism to work [...],
hence each node has a Unique Node List (UNL). All nodes are free to select
validators they trust, but while the Consensus mechanism requires a certain
overlap of nodes to ensure consensus amongst participants, Ripple issues a
recommended UNL" \-- that while not required for them to follow, in practice
they all do anyways because in lieu of that who on earth would they trust?
Unlike the conclusion my source drew, to me, this says:

1\. A centralized entity issues a trust list. This is not decentralized, and
it's not permissionless.

2\. You must trust the entity, and their trust list. This is not trustless.

Once you throw out decentralized, permissionless and trustless, you're left
with an RDS instance with extra steps.

I'll dig in more and see if I can refute my own conclusion.

------
joeblau
I just checked their block explorer[1] and it looks like 98% of the passports
are Chinese.

[https://ubic.network](https://ubic.network)

~~~
haal
The chinese UBIC coin reached a very high OTC price there. A passport would
generate about 4$ of daily income. This attracted a lot of people. Now that
figure has halved.

~~~
sfj
Do you have a source for this? It's not listed on any exchange, so I wonder
how people are using it.

------
elil17
The iPhone app can't actually scan passports - they should make this clear on
the website

~~~
haal
It does work, by putting the smartphone on the inner cover of the passport
because some have an Aluminium shell in the cover. The chip can be on the
first or the last page. Here is a video link:
[https://youtu.be/NqRPXYNtq7M](https://youtu.be/NqRPXYNtq7M)

~~~
elil17
Oh that worked - thank you!

------
wyldfire
This is no better than Libra or Fortnite VBucks: if you have to trust someone
or some group, it's not a cryptocoin, it's just entries on someone else's
ledger.

~~~
josh2600
I don't understand what you mean... Even in bitcoin you're still trusting some
group with a K of N majority agreeing on some software.

~~~
wyldfire
No, to verify the ledger you only need to trust the genesis block.

