Bah. The old coin guard is holding onto their Netscape and AOL, just sure that they are bullet proof because they're first.

People pissing on Ripple right now don't understand the game. Ripple is the battering ram that is going to bust the cryptocurrency doors wide open.

Do you seriously believe that the owners of Ripple are going to sell their 100 billion coins so they can buy ethereum? They hold 60 billion of these coins and they have a thousand banks that are coming online with their platform. Explain to me how selling their coins and buying ethereum is good for them and or their customers.

What banks are actually using Ripple? My understanding is they aren’t using the coin, just technology by Ripple. They don’t need the coin, therefore the price run up will eventually stop.

I bet if someone did an ICO for a new token, and named it "Poopcoin", then just found a reasonable name to associate to it people would be like. "This poopcoin is goin to the moon!"

https://image.prntscr.com/image/l54o...vtm5aN4wkw.png


The price run up will eventually stop, of course, because the whole point of XRP is to be a stable, transactable currency with a steady value. I suspect they will ensure a stable coin once their own stake is worth $1 Trillion dollars. That happens at a market cap of $700 billion dollars - quite a ways away. (This is just a guess on my part, though, but I think they're going to try to stabilize at a $20 coin in the long run).

No, banks don't hold XRP coins. The XRP coin is a proof of concept coin that they use to prove the viability of a closed system for the banks replacing SWIFT. The long term goal for Ripple is for XRP to replace Ethereum. The way things are looking, it's likely that they will be able to do that. Ethereum has scaling problems that Ripple appears to have figured out (not to mention Cardano, and any number of other coins that are better than Ethereum at what Ethereum is trying to do).

Already done. It's called Dogecoin, and it ranks at 35 in marketcap with a billion dollars, and a coin that is under a penny. I've considered buying some to be in on the joke, but there are much better coins to stake on.

The only factual statement in that entire uneducated rant.

Ripple in a Nutshell

Nodes or validating servers do not offer an incentive like the Bitcoin network’s proof-of-work (PoW) as the network is managed by independently owned servers. This has led to accusations that Ripple’s network is extremely centralized because most validating servers are operated by banks, market makers, and Ripple Labs. Financial institutions that have been using Ripple include Earthpoint, Fidor Bank, Bank of America, and HSBC.

No Proof-of-Work Created the Largest Pre-Mine Ever
With no PoW and just a group of validating nodes, all 100 billion XRP tokens were created during the initial launch of the Ripple network. 38 billion of these XRPs are currently in circulation, while the founders of the database and the company took the remainder of the XRP holdings. Skeptics say one of the scariest aspects of ripple markets is the fact that Ripple Labs controls over 60 billion XRP which is more than half of what is currently in circulation.

The Curious Case of Jed McCaleb and the ‘Founders’ Coins’
Is a Centralized Database With the Biggest Pre-Mine Really a Bitcoin Competitor?
One of the Ripple co-founders Jed McCaleb.
Ripple was established in 2012 by Ryan Fugger and Jed McCaleb and was initially called Ripplepay. The co-founder Jed McCaleb is well known for also helping Mt Gox get its start with Mark Karpeles. McCaleb at the time rebranded the Ripplepay company to Ripple and helped promote the public database until late 2013. McCaleb then left the company that year to start his own venture called the Stellar network which is basically a fork of XRP’s codebase but a different distribution process. In 2014 XRP markets dropped in value considerably as it was rumored that Jed McCaleb was planning to sell off his shares of 9 Billion XRP. It is still unconfirmed to this day if McCaleb actually followed through with the ripple sale.

Another Ripple founder, Chris Larsen, donated 7 billion XRP to charity roughly around the same timeframe. Then McCaleb appeared in the headlines again as publications ran stories about him trying to sell more of his founding XRP shares on the Bitstamp exchange. Ripple Labs decided that the sale was not in the best interest of the network so the XRPs were frozen.

A Distributed Ledger with Global Freeze Functionality
Is a Centralized Database With the Biggest Pre-Mine Really a Bitcoin Competitor?The “freezing” of McCaleb’s funds revealed an interesting feature tied to the Ripple public database. Ripple Labs can freeze XRP accounts using two possible methods: one can stop the functionality of an individual account while the “global freeze” can bring the entire network to a halt. The global freeze is not a rumor, and Ripple Labs issued a statement about it on August 1, 2014. Further, a Ripple Labs representative told the cryptocurrency columnist, Sean Wince, back in April of 2015 how the freeze works and supposedly users have a choice.

“The Ripple protocol allows each gateway to decide its own policy, so users have a choice between using a freeze or no-freeze gateway, depending on their preference,” Monica Long, VP of marketing and communications at Ripple Labs told the reporter Sean Wince.

It is a necessary legal requirement for a gateway to operate in most jurisdictions. It also supports a healthy ecosystem by reducing risks and protecting users. If a user thinks his or her funds were unjustly frozen, he or she can take legal recourse through the appropriate channels.

Despite Ripple Naysayers, XRP Markets Are Up 22,400% in 2017
As 2018 approaches, skeptics and speculators are concerned about investors jumping into ripple believing it to be the “next bitcoin.” People are leery because the company holding more than half the currency’s reserves and the centralized XRP freezing features can theoretically censor anyone’s transactions including the entire network. Most cryptocurrency enthusiasts are not the biggest fans of ripple and believe that because it’s not a blockchain, it shouldn’t even be represented on Coinmarketcap. However within the thick of ‘ripple haters,’ markets are doing extremely well, and investors don’t seem to be worried about the XRP ecosystem’s flaws.

Hey Chiefrocka,

What do you like about Link?

I’m not trying to be an asshole in a civilized thread, but you should really do your own research into coins rather than relying on the opinions of strangers on the internet.

https://tenor.com/search/hes-right-you-know-gifs


Oracles are what will link blockchains to actual real world events. LINK is a first mover trying to accomplish that feat.

People learn by asking questions. What's wrong with that? Cryptocurrencies is a neverending series of rabbit holes to go through. It helps to borrow knowledge from people who've been down them and can at least give you the lay of the land.

I’ll be completely honest with you. I am not that educated in crypto. I bought into xrp after listening to a friend and so far it’s been great.

I’ve tried looking into 15 other coins, but I can’t find any real data. I refuse to look at reddit too bc it’s just people pumping up their preferred coin.

Let me rephrase:

What sites or twitter followers do you guys recommend to find the best info on these coins?

Nothing is wrong with that. I just fear he isn’t making educated decisions and is buying purely on speculation and will end up getting burnt.

Honestly I think reddit is a great source of info, but you’re right, you do have to sort out the shills. That’s why I recommend doing your own research on each coin.

Plenty of shit to wade through there too. I simply put in a $200 last week and got to learning. As such, TJ has great takes here, from my perspective. Dog him all you want about his compulsion for conspiracies, but he does do his homework.

He does seem to be knowledgeable about the subject, although we do disagree on XRP and his lack of BTC and ETH holdings. I do agree that VEN is a great purchase right now, could see $20 this year.

Here are some of the best resources that I know of in a sea of resources:

Data Dash - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCa...YrkVXdxXb4cGXw
This is probably my favorite Crypto youtuber. This kid is very smart, committed to the ideals of Crypto, and a super geek about the technology.

Altcoin Buzz - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGy...QtXyUwvcy7Gmyg
This is probably my favorite place for news updates about the altcoins, and then examinations of interesting altcoins. It's a team of dudes who run this channel and they've always got new stuff going up. A great place for a crypto news fix.

Suppoman - https://www.youtube.com/user/Suppoman2011
This guy can be a tad obnoxious at times, but he's very smart in how he approaches the Cryptos. He's got a great track record for picks because his approach to fundamentals is solid. For a guy who just got started in May, he's amassed way more hits than misses, by a long shot.


I listen and read plenty in this space, but these three are my go-to resources when I'm in the car or doing dishes or something.

Oh, there's one more I should metion:

BoxMining - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxO...Hk3p-7TU-IsDOA
The reason I like Boxmining is that he is able to give insight on a lot of the thoughts on asian adoption of cryptos, which is one of the amazing things about cryptos in general - the global nature of them.

Here’s the best reason I can say I don’t look at reddit for this stuff...

When I started trying to research there 3 weeks ago, everyone said it was stupid to think XRP could get to $2 because of the market cap.

Welp..

Sweet! Thanks sir I’ll be saving those to my favorites

Tronix went from .12 to .26 since yesterday. My buddy is thrilled he got in on Monday

Yeah, TRX has been really good this week. I got in at a good time, myself. I'm currently in TRX, XRP, VEN, and trying to get into XRB.

Ripple deniers completely confuse me. They are way too invested in emotion. Could It go bust some day? Any of these could go bust some day. But Ripple is practically the only cryptocurrency with a use case that is being adopted by financial institutions. Hating Ripple because of that is like hating the internet because you're anti-war and the military uses it.

People should embrace Ripple for being the cryptocurrency battering ram that it is. It will knock down The cryptocurrency doors and blaze a trail of legitimacy for the entire space. The only thing that Ripple has to do to succeed is be faster and cheaper than the Swift system.

I challenge anyone to read this article and tell me the answer to that question:

http://treasurytoday.com/2017/07/rip...evolution-ttpv

Now ask yourself this:
If I'm Amazon, and I'm considering accepting crypto-currencies, what am I looking for?

1. Something that is cheap to transfer both domestically, and globally.

2. Something that has near real-time transfer times.

3. Something that can scale to millions of simultaneous transactions and still maintain speed.

Here's a graph that charts all three of these with the incumbents:

https://image.prntscr.com/image/4oZQ...MoJ_53rXBw.png


Don't take me wrong. I don't love Ripple. I'm completely unattached to any emotion about them. I'm just looking at the basic facts and asking myself which currencies make sense for what applications. For buying a home, I probably don't need a 3 second transfer time. I can probably be patient with an hour transfer time. But if I'm Amazon and I'm taking money for a trampoline that somebody bought on my website, I'm not going to want to wait an hour to validate that transfer. I'm going to look for the cheapest, most adopted coin for that, no?

Doesn't cost anything to accept bitcoin, but yes I see your point. I heard actually a couple of years ago Amazon accepted bitcoin for one day. I'm sure Amazon would love to accept bitcoin, but they are so heavily entrenched with law makers now that they decided it wasn't in their best interests. Whatever coin they do eventually accept will probably see a speculative boom in price once it announced or discovered by insiders.

Segwit wallets are already helping Bitcoin transaction fees. If you have a legacy wallet, that may be why your fees are so high. Also, use a wallet that allows you to customize your fee. You don't need to be sending bitcoin transactions at 999 sat/byte if you don't need them confirmed in minutes. I recently switched my more liquid bitcoin holdings to all Segwit wallets. Keep in mind though, Bitcoin is touted as being a very secure if stored correctly, RELATIVELY anonymous store of value. That is where it's value lies IMO. Without bitcoin, alot of these alt coins at exchanges would be screwed.

Electrum, Samurai, Green Wallet all have SegWit wallet options.

can ripple do the more complex (smart) contracts like ETH can.....?

To my knowledge, Ripple has moved away from that concept believing it to be problematic on the whole. They had something called Codius which they started but later released into open source. Smart contracts are not a focus for the company at present.

How do I buy ripple? I have some ETH I can use to buy it if necessary. I don’t know what exchange to use.

I like Poloniex.

To my knowledge Binance is no longer accepting new registrations because of the stampede. Maybe try Poloniex? I can't recommend it because I've never used it.

Bithumb might be an idea, but I wouldn't buy it over there right now - they're listing it at $4.08, well above the rest of the market.

Right now Ripple Labs is worth $225 Billion Dollars or the tenth largest company by market cap in the world per Mike Novogratz. The crash will not be fun and people should be very cautious, do your homework.

Why do you think Ripple is going to crash?

The same reason you bought Ripple.

Edit: I'm trying to help, not naysay...the main issues are centralization and supply.

So why is centralization going to be a problem for them? I'm genuinely interested in your opinion on this.

I know several people that have no clue about cryptocurrency or monetary policy, or even economics - just regular blue collar guys - who are begging me to help them get into Ripple because they want in on the action, and think "if the banks are using this, it must work."

It's not bad logic, really. I'd like to give them both sides of the coin, but just saying "they're a centralized authority" doesn't seem to put them off. Or me, for that matter. And I'm an open source, Ron Paul voter, with a 20 year career in tech.

What, exactly, is the argument you're making?

What is the best bitcoin accelerator right now? Lots of scam sites so want to find a recent legit one. Used viabtc before but their site isn't working correctly right now

The entire crypto-blockchain movement is a disruption of the legacy financial system that allows for 99% of the worlds wealth to be monopolized by the richest 1%. We are early witnesses to the greatest redistribution of wealth the world has seen. Banks will attempt to hold onto the power but will eventually fail. Ripple is an attempt at a permissioned bank ledger, which is merely just a federated database, it is not secured by decentralized consensus. IBM also tried for a money grab with "Hyperledger", another permissioned chain and it has failed.

Blockchain isn't coming for a slice, its coming for the whole damn pie. Decentralized markets, wallets, loan services, identity, title registry...etc.

Your friends want to buy Ripple because it is the cheapest coin on a list of the top cryptos and they want to hit the lottery.

This is the last I'll speak about it. I would advise to be very cautious and research where real value presents itself.


GO CHIEFS!!!

TRX is absolutely blowing up right now. Wish I had put more in, lol

How'd you buy it? Was thinking of getting some tomorrow

New people can't register for Binance or Cryptopia right now. Would be a good time to make a Chiefsplanet crypto exchange site. Founders..get on it.

XRP isn't exactly centralized. It's open by design, and anyone can run a validator. That said, most validators are run by Ripple currently (which is a different entity from XRP), but if adoption continues to increase, that will change. Not being mineable has definitely kept validators from popping up - there's no financial incentive to do so.

I bought it on binance. If you have an account, there are ETH and BTC trading pairs.

Folks should take a look at XRB. The technology looks good - it's fast, no transaction fees, scalable, a good team, and an interesting adaptation of blockchain (a block lattice). It's looking to be listed on binance soon, which has a good chance of increasing its value. It's a PITA to buy right now, but I'm taking a flyer on it, hoping it moons with the binance listing. Plus, seems like good tech.

I agree with you in RaiBlocks.

I get everything that you wrote but none of it answers why you think centralization is going to be the end of Ripple. The public isn't idealistic. I wish they were, but they're not. They don't care that Ripple is centralized. What they care about is whether or not they can make money on it/whether it works.

I admire the impassioned idealism, but I wouldn't recommend anybody trade on it. I do believe that decentralization wins the long game, but centralization is very good at the short game, much to my chagrin.

I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but I will not be surprised to see Ripple overtake Bitcoin in marketcap by Spring. If that happens - a considerable "if" - it will have some staying power.

I understand what the movement wants. The question, however, is what the market wants. So far as I can tell, the market wants a trusted coin that can scale, has low fees, and fast transaction times.

The market has determined (at this moment) that Ripple is currently the best solution for this, though I personally prefer RaiBlocks to it.

Converted 9000 Ripple XRP @ $2.84 to Bitcoin yesterday after the Coinbase statement. Because of the rise in Bitcoin since I made the conversion, this allows me to pull all of my original $26.5K crypto investment out, plus about $1K in profits. Leaves me with 1.1 Bitcoin, 10 Ethereum, 11.1K Ripple XRP, and 20K Verge XVR for "free". Playing with house money from now on.

I am in on XRB as well. But I recently went in pretty heavy on request. It's gonna be a long hold but I've read good things about it.

Minus those taxes you have to pay :D

I may be mistaken, but you don't have to pay taxes on your original stake - just capital gains after that.

What does that mean?

Coinbase said they have no current plans to list XRP, which was a rumor floating around.

Coinbase has been a sort of king maker since it's one of the only fiat exchanges. People expect that cryptos get big bounces once they're on coinbase, and trade on it. Part of Ripple's rise was on rumors that it would be listed on coinbase. As it started to overheat, coinbase made a cryptic announcement that they are not adding new coins "at this time." whatever that means. Coinbase will be adding new coins eventually, and it's hard to imagine that Ripple won't be one of them. If it is, great. If it isn't, it doesn't really matter. Bitcoin Cash shows that the coinbase bounce is just that: a bounce, and then correction back to normalcy.

Now that's how to work it. Good job!

The coins are starting to cool off. That's normal.

I dumped my TRON position last night and took big profits at $.25 from where I bought in at $.04. I'll get back into TRON once it finds a new support line. If it goes up and I miss the boat, I'm okay with that.

I put all my TRON profits into Verge for now. It's been holding firm at $.16. It didn't get the bounce it deserved from the Wraith launch because they were a day late and they had poor communication. No matter, it works. I expect it to bounce to $.50 at some point. When that happens, I'll have a decision to make.

Verge coin has a lot of enemies. It is a high risk, high reward coin. I could lose big on this play. I could win big too.

Have fun out there.

I was strongly considering dumping TRX yesterday when it spiked big, and kicking myself for not. Seems to be trending back up again, so will have to watch that one closely.

XRB won the Binance vote, so will be listed there shortly. Should be a boon, but we'll see - it may have spiked on the rumor already. Still think that one has good long term viability.

You are required to report those gains on every trade. You can’t just pull out your original stake and not pay any taxes because all your “profit” is still tied up in crypto.

I am not an accountant, but I am paying my taxes that are due. Uncle Sam will be coming down hard on people who haven’t IMO with the rise in value we’ve seen this year.

One of the reasons I mainly just hodl. Too much work otherwise.

I don't plan on selling what I have until I retire. I guess we'll see how that end up working out.

BTC is skyrocketing today. Yeesh.

Perhaps people are cashing in on their recent alt coin profits on the exchanges. They want to secure it on the most reliable & secure crypto currency.

Cointelegraph said to buy once it went to 15.5 and I didn’t get a chance to check it today till it was a little over 16k...of course coinbase buys have been disabled and it’s about 17250 now.

It’s gonna shoot all the way to 23-25k

Do you guys realize how much manipulation is going on with these cryptos? :hmmm:

Anyone here researched SAFEX? 3¢ right now. Thinking about grabbing 50K for $1500.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Disclaimer: SAFEX is the majority of my holdings. I ran numbers for weeks before I chose it - knowing it had technical problems and that it would be delisted from most exchanges. But I have, to my knowledge, never lost money on an investment. But take this with a grain if salt.</p>&mdash; John McAfee (@officialmcafee) <a href="https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/941552609420247040?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 15, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I know nothing about it, but I would be very, very, cautious about buying based on a tweet from McAfee, who has been known to be paid to endorse coins.

Oh, I don't know. He seems pretty stable to me...

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">When I predicted Bitcoin at $500,000 by the end of 2020, it used a model that predicted $5,000 at the end of 2017. BTC has accelerated much faster than my model assumptions. I now predict Bircoin at $1 million by the end of 2020. I will still eat my dick if wrong. <a href="https://t.co/WVx3E71nyD">pic.twitter.com/WVx3E71nyD</a></p>&mdash; John McAfee (@officialmcafee) <a href="https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/935900326007328768?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 29, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">One of my followers does not like the name &quot;McAfee&quot;. His DM, and my response explainng why I do not give a shit: <a href="https://t.co/gtJX98MX9J">pic.twitter.com/gtJX98MX9J</a></p>&mdash; John McAfee (@officialmcafee) <a href="https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/941509222730272768?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 15, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

And then it will drop back down to 17k before shooting back up to new support levels. Bitcoiners take profit and move it into alts. Then they abandon alt positions when they see bitcoin start to move and I get to buy new alt coins on sale.

I started with a $2.5k position, and have grown it to almost 10x that. I rode the bitcoin wave from $5700 to $19k, and then sold. I haven't stocked it since. It's too expensive, too slow, too many scaling problems. It's great as a 1.0 blockchain currency, and original geeks will clutch it to their graves, but it's not the future any more than Lycos was the future of search engines.

if you don't hold the tax software will get your trades from your app and do the work for you.

Is this true?
Turbotax can auto import from Binance and or Coinbase?

I doubt it. Try bitcoin.tax

Not turbo tax Bitcoin tax? I was worried because I had no idea how to calculate my gains but I put it in and it worked well.

Exactly this one. I lost my ass then did well towards the end. You can do first in first out or do whatever calculations you want.

I made 426 this year and my tax was like 101 or something.

Income tax is theft.

Pretty much but I was literally sleeping when I made that money

Hot take there, Ayn.