Coinbase to Suspend Trading in XRP (opens in new tab)

I'm seeing a lot of valid concerns and criticisms of Blockstream's actions and methods. I dont think they can be dismissed with ad hominems.

I'm curious why you chose to use the term "bcash" to refer to BCH. No exchanges or mainstream projects use that term to refer to BCH. As far as I'm aware it's primarily used as a pejorative, so it seems strange that you'd use it here.

As far as BCH's additional value: I'd suggest researching the block size debate. This debate is BCH's entire reason for existing. This article [1] from 2016 by Mike Hearn contains a good primer on the block size debate itself. He ended up quitting development of Bitcoin, but others decided to raise the blocksize limit - with or without the majority, thus creating BCH. Succinctly, BCH is the continuation of big-blocker's vision of the Bitcoin experiment.

[1] https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experi...

The argument as far as I'm aware is that it's like Bitcoin, except with transaction fees low enough to make it actually usable as a currency as opposed to being a pure store of value.

Bitcoin cash is the only cryptocurrency I have regularly used in the past 3-4 years. Almost all the crypto payment options support bch seamlessly (because they aim to integrate bitcoin which results in no-effort integration of bitcoin cash).

I just can never get myself to pay the tx fees of bitcoin or ether. I recently discover that USDT exists on bch (but BitPay doesn't accept bch usdt) so I keep USDT on BCH and do JIT swaps to BCH and make almost zero fee payments.

Just to be clear, BCH will never dethrone BTC, but BCH is becoming a defacto layer 2 solution for Bitcoin. Now there are tokens and NFT tokens on BCH too.

Blockstream bought out most of the the btc devs who had commit ability. Their end goal is to cripple btc to where it is today. The goal of this is to build an unnecessary product they can charge for on a second level. Think skimming money like charge cards do, but offering no real advantage or service beyond that. So far they have found building a new network neigh impossible. Hence the memes: Lightning only 18 months away, after 3 years of "development." You can find hilarious round table interviews with Adam Back where one asks how they can use btc for transactions like at bars with the fees dwarfing the regular transaction. Adam Back suggested using an IOU network out of paper or maybe build an IOU app for that. Can you believe that? Hilarious!

Wall Street doesn't want Bitcoin to serve its intended purpose of removing their control over the money supply. They did this by co-opting the software project with venture capital money and making technical decisions that make Bitcoin ecommerce economically infeasible due to high fees. Initially they intended to replace Bitcoin with an alt-coin whose issuance was controlled by the Blockstream corporate entity. That project failed, and wall street investors pivoted to another alt-coin called Lightning that has failed to produce a reliable payment network after 7 years of investment, all the while the BTC fork remains unusable, which they are just fine with.

EDIT: The Lightning network markets itself as an improvement to Bitcoin, but it is a completely alternative settlement network that just happens to denominate in BTC. I don't think debating the use of the term "alt-coin" is material.

I don't think there are any major implications. The point of blockchain currencies is to be decentralized so hacking a random github repo shouldn't have major implications. It's not even the only bitcoin node implementation out there at this point.

misinformed take

Blockstream has almost no say at this point

some of the top contributors are either independent or work with Chaincode labs

over the last 10 years, Bitcoin is the most resilient to protocol changes and centralization

Ethereum, Bitcoin cash and Monero are all either centralized or bad implementations

Lightning is not reliable the way Bitcoin is, and correspondingly has not seen any real-world adoption. It is effectively dead.

I find LN's UX really painful. Ethereum's layer 2 solutions are far ahead in terms of user experience. The other day I had to settle an election bet, and either I settle it in stablecoin on high tx fees of ETH/BTC or try explaining one of the layer-2 solutions.

And no, I can't pay them in USDT on bch because that requires them to get a new wallet.

Raiden network which is Ethereum's LN like solution, faces the same problem. Whatever bitcoin folks envision, they will never get LN bitcoins to have the same network effect as bitcoin itself.

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System - “The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for non-reversible services.” https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Average transaction fees are frequently $5-10 these days, which completely invalidates the original proposed use case for a system that would enable “small casual transactions.” https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...

Since transactions will only increase in price as demand grows (and the tx limit has been effectively capped for years), I don’t see Bitcoin ever improving in this regard. Bitcoin may be successful as a speculative asset and for other purposes, but as “peer-to-peer electronic cash” it’s a failure.

>bitcoin is 100% doing exactly what it was designed to do

Bitcoin was designed to allow low-fee small amount internet commerce. From the first paragraph of Satoshi's white paper:

>The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions [emphasis added]

This is clearly no longer the case with the BTC fork of Bitcoin:

https://privacypros.io/tools/bitcoin-fee-estimator/

Therefore BTC is not doing what it was designed to do.

I agree. There is nothing to suggest that something can't both behave in a regulatory environment and exist if that environment fails. Cars, for instance - They require registration so long as the body enforcing registration exists. If that changes, cars can still run.

What exactly makes XRP worth anything, though? Isn't it theoretically pegged to the USD?

This is also why the SEC can sue Ripple but not, say, Vitalik Buterin. They specifically do not consider BTC, ETH and other currencies as securities.

>XRP is centralized

Useless statement XRP is the token there is no definition what makes the token centralized or not. Half the tokens owned by one party? or maybe a quarter is enough already? Its a useless statement as there is no common definition. no one talks about token decentralization anyway. Its about the control over the network that should not be centralized.

>the ledger is permissioned

This is factually wrong. Anyone can transact on the ledger there is no permission required form anyone and no one has the power to exclude someone.

>so not just anyone can join the network in a meaningful way

Also factually wrong. You can "join" the network in any possible way (node/full node/validator/participant/developer/you name it). You can change the code and send in you amendment. If 80% think is worth adding its added. If not its probably because the proposal was garbage not because someone has the power to block your amendment. So far there has been 1 amendment not supported by ripple that still reached the 80% support. Ripple could do absolutely nothing against that.

XRPs existence is also not determined by the USA. XRP would exist without ripple or the USA as long some people run the software it exists. Even if all would go offline it could be restarted any time.

That would only work on a small scale. Large scale, truly massive adoption can't occur until the major financial institutions are on board. If businesses can't legally accept it, put it in a bank, make loan payments with it, all of the normal things you do with money-- or have off ramps to convert to currency to allow that-- then you won't get widespread adoption.

Without you giving a discount equal to their marginal tax rate, they would likely be both complicit in tax fraud and paying more after taxes.

Would you consider that be unethical?

lol, how do you propose to power your mining rig and connect to the internet without a government?

Yeah if you check the price history there was a massive drop from ~0.55 USD/XRP to ~0.25 USD/XRP shortly after SEC filed lawsuit against ripple.

Most sources put that at Ripple and/or its two top execs. They obtained these positions by virtue of the Ripple consensus protocol, which conjured the coins into being and granted the network creator (Ripple) sole ownership.

AFAICT, that's the crux of what SEC will be going after.

But that chart's tracking the XRP/USD price, not the market cap.

They don't have great legal grounds to attack bitcoin imo, only threat to national security or treason or some bs

This provides clarity on what constitutes a security. The SEC have been telegraphing this move for several years, ever since the crackdowns on ICOs and STOs. Bitstamp said they would delist XRP several days ago so coinbase are hardly unique in their response to the SEC's announcement.

How about both collateralized and mathematical?

If the platform supports programmatic proportional issuance and withdrawal (vs. mint and burn), vs. market-priced collateral, then negative-feedback loop controlled inflation/deflation can be implemented...

Sorry, missed that somehow. Still seems oddly suspicious that it coincides with Coinbase's IPO.

Yes I guess too haha

Unless they limit the right of market orders to themselves^^