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Ripple is everything you don't want in a cryptocurrency: - centralized (as witnessed by the fact that the SEC has an actual target to go after) - "pre-
by ur-whale 6y ago
Ripple is everything you don't want in a cryptocurrency:
- centralized (as witnessed by the fact that the SEC has an actual target to go after)
- "pre-mined" (initial Ripple crowd gave themselves everything and once in a while toss a handful of XRP to the plebs)
- controlled by scammers
I'm very glad the ecosystem is doing what it's supposed to: weeding out the weak and ill-formed.
- drchopchop 6y ago... but it didn't. The SEC did. XRP has a $40B "market cap", which sums up the crypto mentality in general.
- rhacker 6y agoMeh, I don't really get why people think "market cap" is the total valuation of something. If I sold Bob a billion XRP for 1 penny, then I sold Tim 1 XRP for $40, then told Bob not to sell, and Tim can sell his for $40 (because he wants to at least get that much back), then XRP's "market cap" is worth $40 Billion, but in reality it's probably worth $40. I get that there is a lot more money in it than that, but let's be honest about something, if half the people sold Bitcoin tonight - they HAVE to get out today, it's "market cap" would likely go from nearly half-trillion to probably $300M overnight. Even though technically it should only cut in half right?
- arcticbull 6y agoThere's no such thing as market cap for a currency (after all, market caps are measured as a function of currency), but nobody knows what on earth a crypto unit is supposed to be, do or mean, so it gets weird little slices of each finance category.
- boh 6y agoAccording to the SEC, XRP isn't a currency, so it does have a market cap.
- arcticbull 6y agoI understand within the community that opinions vary.
- LudwigNagasena 6y agoThis applies to every market cap? If every Apple stock holder would try to sell it today, the market cap would plummet.
- whatshisface 6y ago>If every Apple stock holder would try to sell it today, the market cap would plummet. This is often repeated but not necessarily true. I don't own a particularly large amount of Apple stock, but if the price dropped even a little bit, and if I knew the drop was due to nothing more than this weird thing where everyone was selling for some reason, I might decide to own more. If aliens sent out a mind control signal that caused every Apple shareholder to start selling, the buyers (whoever they were, maybe the aliens? ;) ) would compete with each other to buy. To give you a concrete example, let's say I am the only owner in the world of a flying car. One day, I decide to sell it. 100% of the owners of flying cars have decided to sell, but the price would clearly not drop to zero! The idea that everyone selling implies the price will drop to zero applies to pure Keynesian beauty contests where 100% of the value is in owning something perceived to be valuable. For currencies that is completely true, but for companies that is less true.
- boh 6y ago> This is often repeated but not necessarily true. This is always true. It doesn't have to go to zero to qualify as plummeting.
- whatshisface 6y agoI would suggest that my flying car example is one where it's not true. Another example would be intermediate industrial products: everyone who has intermediate chemicals is trying to sell them! Everyone who buys them uses them up as fast as they can, which means that at any given moment, virtually every owner of the intermediate industrial chemical is trying to sell it.
- boh 6y ago
- throwaway2245 6y agoYour example is collusion/price fixing, and is very illegal. I think no matter what is being traded in most jurisdictions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing If you remove the collusion, then market cap appears to me to be a fair valuation. If there is a shock to the system and everyone wants to immediately sell (despite previously wanting to hold), I would argue that to be a sudden change in the valuation.
- kqvamxurcagg 6y agoActually this thinking is incorrect, at least for company valuations. You're discussing shares being exchanged for arbitrary random values. In a regulated market prices will always be at the marginal level where buyers and sellers exchange at the equilibrium price. Market cap is only meaningless if the participants in the market are trading at random prices, which they're not. To validate this theory, just look at M&A. Companies get bought at close to or above their market capitalisation every day of the week.
- Denvercoder9 6y agoExcept we're not talking about companies, we're talking about currency. Companies have intrinsic value: they own assets, they produce something of value. Currency does not.
- aplummer 6y agoAre you trying to tell me crypto will not deliver internet 2.0
- lupire 6y agoLook at the market cap of a company in bankruptcy. Assets are a tiny fraction of a going concern's market cap. Facebook's main store of value is eyeballs, which can evaporate quickly.
- GoblinSlayer 6y agoNothing prevents you from selling a company for any price, and sometimes there's disagreement about company valuation.
- arthurcolle 6y agoAJRD was just bought by LMT this week for a 25% premium, as one example.
- lupire 6y agoPeople confuse acquisitions with selloffs. The reason an aquisition goes near share recent share price but a selloffs doesn't, is that an aquisition is new information that someone wants the stock, and a selloff is new information that almost no one does.
- newsclues 6y agoHow can someone track cash inflows to crypto currencies?
- cliftonk 6y agoThis is true for illiquid assets. XRP is a liquid asset, and you could probably move a hundred million dollars or more out of it in a matter of days. That said, it’s always seemed like a scam to me.
- bigbubba 6y agoLiquidity is not binary...
- eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y agoYou summarized this very well! A lot of post-Bitcoin "cryptocurrencies" are nothing but a cargo cult: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmlYe2KS0-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmlYe2KS0-Y
- morelisp 6y agoYour comment has an off-by-one error.
- heavyset_go 6y agoIs there an example of a cryptocurrency company that isn't centralized? You need to use centralized exchanges in order to buy in or cash out. Even small entities trading on platforms like LocalBitcoins need to adhere to KYC laws. If you were to use cryptocurrency as actual money, I can't see it being cost effective, legal or convenient to only trade with fly-by-night currency exchangers in South America in order to buy and sell cryptocurrency "anonymously".
- dannyw 6y agoBitcoin has centralized exchanges, but no centralized organization or exchange.
- heavyset_go 6y agoBitcoin isn't a company, though.
- kinakomochidayo 6y agoWell, the development of Bitcoin Core is highly susceptible to corporate influence as seen by what Blockstream did in the past (which is less now and more diverse), but still, it can happen again in the future should there be any contentious issues in the community. Why is it that Lightning Network seems to be the only L2 solution with Bitcoin? Because it’s a Blockstream product.
- wp381640 6y agoLightning isn’t a blockstream product - their L2 product was Liquid and it lost to Lightning
- kinakomochidayo 6y agoWhoops, you’re right. It’s still odd that Blockstream had significant number of developers working on the core protocol.
- lbarrow 6y agoThe US Securities and Exchange Commission is the crypto "ecosystem"?
- tw25510979 6y agoIf I understand the GP's point correctly, the SEC would be helping to keep the weak and ill-informed around.
- huntermeyer 6y agoWhat does GP mean?
- pas 6y agoThe GrandParent comment.
- huntermeyer 6y agothank you
- pas 6y agoI think GP considers SEC part of the ecosystem (at least as a regulator, or at least as an exogenous market force) that helps keep cull the weaklings.
- simias 6y ago"Weak"? What a strange adjective to use for such a situation.
- zenexer 6y agoAll of the bullets in your comment explain why Ripple is bad, and you’ve somehow twisted that logic into justifying that it’s good with your last sentence. It’s elitist at best, outright evil at worst. I’m not really sure what goal it serves. If your point is that we should just “take all the warning labels off of everything and let the situation resolve itself,” no thanks. I don’t have the time to research the exact origin of everything I put in my mouth. I have to trust that when I buy food, someone out there has at least made an attempt to minimize the chances that it contains loads of mercury. Are you running extensive tests on everything you eat and drink? The air you breathe? Sure, companies might not want to ruin their reputation by selling such goods, but, then again, we have Ripple. So which is it? Or maybe I just need to be more selective about which companies I choose, right? Despite seeing exit scam after exit scam, incompetent blunder after blunder, that will surely protect me better than the SEC et al doing their damn jobs. No. I want oversight. Sure, that doesn’t mean I can let my guard down; I still have to be selective. But at least there’s a pretty low chance that the brand-name toothpaste I use tonight—or the <insert snake oil here> I use instead—is slowly killing me.
- Isamu 6y agoPretty sure the last sentence was a joke. I know with cryptocurrency it is pretty hard to tell.
- zenexer 6y agoBased on OP’s comments in a duplicate thread, I strongly doubt that.
- loopz 6y agoIt for sure wasn't irony. We're basically all pretty evil dudes.
- zenexer 6y ago“We?” I made plenty of money off cryptocurrency, and I certainly don’t support this stance. I will never understand why such blatant toxicity is considered acceptable in many corners of the cryptocurrency industry.
- Keyframe 6y agoI wonder how that translates to stablecoins. Tether seems sketchy, but USDC seems solid.
- Zamicol 6y ago- USDC was regulated from the start and has been submissive to regulators. I don't foresee issues for them. - Ripple blatantly flaunted regulation from the start. - Tether is illegal for U.S. persons: "Any individual who is a U.S. Person and any entity that is a U.S. Person is prohibited from using the Site or any Services" (https://tether.to/legal/ https://tether.to/legal/) They are unregulated. I've called Tether "Satan hell spawn" to people that ask me about it.
- whoisninja 6y agoEthereum was also 60% pre-mined, somehow VCs behind it are able to protect it but i agree Ripple is the worst
- davidmurdoch 6y agoSaying "60% pre-mined" doesn't really make sense without more context since the supply changes over time and currently has no cap. There was 60 million eth pre-mined for the initial sale (and another 12 million for the devs). Which, all in, makes it approx 64% of today's supply.
- whoisninja 6y agothey're only fine because they did it cleverly via a Swiss Foundation if they did it via US company, they would be hit with similar lawsuit
- jb775 6y ago> I'm very glad the ecosystem is doing what it's supposed to It's still up 128% over the past year. I'd guess this will actually have a Streisand Effect and the added publicity will cause the price to rise in the semi-short term.
- paulpauper 6y agoripple is not the same as XRP ripple could disappear and XRP would still exist and and otherwise be functional
- xorcist 6y agoExcept for your third point, those are true for most cryptocurrencies that are actively being traded, with a few exceptions. It is certainly true for Ethereum, which pretty much invented or at least popularized the ICO concept, and that is the second most traded cryptocurrency in existence.