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Comment by drdrey | Hacker News Reader

The crazy part is how much XRP is concentrated in the company and its founders:

> XRP, being issued by a company, is less decentralized than many other cryptocurrencies. For instance, Ripple itself holds 61.3 billion XRP, including 55 billion that it keeps in escrow. Only 38.7 billion XRP tokens have been distributed.

> Cofounder and former CEO Chris Larsen, who stepped down in November 2016 and now serves as executive chairman of Ripple, has 5.19 billion XRP in his personal holdings and a 17% stake in the company, according to sources at Ripple. That gives him a net worth of $37.3 billion, using Monday’s exchange rate.

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The crazy part is that Ripple is really a total nonsense cryptocurrency it's centralized it as counterparty risk and if any time in the future Banks decide to use it, they will use the tech, not the coin, it's pure madness a lot of people will lose their investment, Ripple it's the "Pet.com" of the cryptocurrency bubble.

And btw the founder that as 17% stake is really a con artist.

I am always wondering about people saying this.

XRP is counterparty-free

I have studied their consensus protocol and it is indeed decentralized.

We are planning to use some of the ideas from it in our network.

As for founders having 20% of a startup company, that's common. Look at Mark Zuckerberg for instance. Why does that make them con artists?

Bitcoin whales and Satoshi control 40% of bitcoins while over 99% of the MONEY contributed its market cap came from regular buyerd who came just recently.

From someone with more authority than myself :) https://youtu.be/t66HFQDnezk?t=980

As in the video, people would say the same about Ethereum, and yet, Ethereum's community continue to grow and its exchange value continues to grow.

On the other hand, what does Bitcoin have to show? Its community has stagnated and fractured, use-cases have stagnated. As an outsider, it often feels like Bitcoin early adopters are just sitting back and just calling other people stupid.

Bitcoin has way more proof of work behind it than any other cryptocurrency ( I'm still trying to decide how important that is for bitcoins future)

But the currency is not required for banks to actually use the system? I'd be all over this, but it seems banks are only interested in the Ripple tech, and don't require (a lot of) XRP to operate the Ripple tech.

Correct xCurrent doesn't require XRP and just the xRapid product uses XRP to process payments. The thought is that XRP would be a universal currency for the payment processing portion and separated from the xCurrent ledger solution.

They don't have to use it, but they'll save 30% on the cost of a transaction by using XRP. Why wouldn't they?

> it seems banks are only interested in the Ripple tech

No bank has ever said that. Some have said that they're not using XRP yet, but that's because they're simply beginning trial runs of the technology.

If you want to see that same tech in action but on a public blockchain, check out Stellar.

distributed != decentralized

>XRP is counterparty-free

You have 100 USD and 100 XRP in your ripple wallet and the gateway you deposited USD to fund your wallet closes shop, you are now left with the bag in the hand and you must trade 'em for another gateway's IOUs, or try to find someone to buy them from you.

It's a decentralized network of centralized debt obligations.

Same with BTC

well, I see you don't understand how Bitcoin works.

I've been seeing a lot of news about Ripple taking over my feed, and I'd never heard of it before this week. I'm suspecting this is just a very successful viral marketing campaign applied to the cryptocurrency system as an elaborate pump-and-dump scam.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2018/01/02/meet-the-c...

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