Everyone is missing the big picture - Focus of SWELL is on ILP and not XRP!!!

[cmbartley]

4 hours ago, tulo said:

XRP liquidity on Korean exchanges cannot be used on ILP, so useless for Ripple environment (i.e. banks cannot use it for cross border payments).

I don't know what this means. Is this now or ever?

[tulo]

5 minutes ago, cmbartley said:

I don't know what this means. Is this now or ever?

Ever, unless the exchanges connect to ILP, which is quite improbable.

[cmbartley]

15 minutes ago, tulo said:

Ever, unless the exchanges connect to ILP, which is quite improbable.

Isn't the whole point for exchanges to connect to ILP? They serve as pools of liquidity. 

[tulo]

9 minutes ago, cmbartley said:

Isn't the whole point for exchanges to connect to ILP? They serve as pools of liquidity. 

Nope, the only thing exchange need are trades at high frequency to get the most fees. And plugging to ILP is probably too slow for a "real-time" exchange.
But having exchanges connected to ILP would be a great boost of liquidity, but I don't see why they should do it and exactly how to do it in a proper way.

[cmbartley]

1 hour ago, tulo said:

Nope, the only thing exchange need are trades at high frequency to get the most fees. And plugging to ILP is probably too slow for a "real-time" exchange.
But having exchanges connected to ILP would be a great boost of liquidity, but I don't see why they should do it and exactly how to do it in a proper way.

Exchanges on ILP is part of the strategy. It's another ledger. It's a pool of liquidity. 

[Rossih2006]

30 minutes ago, cmbartley said:

Exchanges on ILP is part of the strategy. It's another ledger. It's a pool of liquidity. 

Aren’t coins on such exchanges privately owned? Would you give an exchange permission to lend someone your coins for liquidity purposes? Would you want a loan fee for lending such coins? Would have to be heavily regulated. Maybe a good start up business for someone with the right connections. Liquidzerps.com . Hmmm maybe i should have a go at it myself

[cmbartley]

1 hour ago, Rossih2006 said:

Aren’t coins on such exchanges privately owned? Would you give an exchange permission to lend someone your coins for liquidity purposes? Would you want a loan fee for lending such coins? Would have to be heavily regulated. Maybe a good start up business for someone with the right connections. Liquidzerps.com . Hmmm maybe i should have a go at it myself

The whole point of ILP is that it places assets in a escrowed subledger. The point is that the exchanges a) have much more liquidity than the XRP ledger right now 2) can provide some privacy for FIs given that all you'd see on the ledger are exchange-to-exchange XRP payments and 3) potentially reduce the number of transactions being submitted to the XRP ledger. Exchanges will need to be regulated and FIs can choose not to connect to exchanges that they don't trust. Maybe I've missed something fundamental but my understanding was that a part of Ripple's strategy was to increase fiat/XRP pairing on exchanges. Isn't this exactly what Miguel talked about on Epicenter? Joel has alluded to it too.

Edited October 19, 2017 by cmbartley

[Apollo]

1 hour ago, cmbartley said:

The whole point of ILP is that it places assets in a escrowed subledger. The point is that the exchanges a) have much more liquidity than the XRP ledger right now 2) can provide some privacy for FIs given that all you'd see on the ledger are exchange-to-exchange XRP payments and 3) potentially reduce the number of transactions being submitted to the XRP ledger. Exchanges will need to be regulated and FIs can choose not to connect to exchanges that they don't trust. Maybe I've missed something fundamental but my understanding was that a part of Ripple's strategy was to increase fiat/XRP pairing on exchanges. Isn't this exactly what Miguel talked about on Epicenter? Joel has alluded to it too.

Yep. Ripple's plan is to connect exchanges and other private ledgers through ILP so XRP can benefit both in terms of liquidity and more possible payment destinations. Ripple has been open about this for almost two years now. This is a big part of why they are so focused on adding new exchanges. 

[Apollo]

6 hours ago, WillGetThere said:

@Logchain @Apollo

Let's not compare ETH to ponzi scheme, flower or paper please.

XRP investors are most inteligent ones? ETH investors/backers/supporters have no clue of what real-world use case is? All those corporations which back ETH have made zero analysis and back the system with no real-world use case, right?

Let me put it this way - i have a friend of mine who has been in crypto space from around 2011. Very intelligent guy, he has educated me about BTC first, later ETH. I was stupid enough to not invest as much as he had in either of given coins. He sold all his positions in BTC about half year after he had learnt about ETH. He's been very negative about BTC since  about 2015 due to outdated technology.

This guy has been in ETH since USD .1 per coin...! Now its USD 300 circa... He's made a fortune as his "never invest more than you can afford to lose" amount was impressive. He has invested in XRP as well. 

So to make long story short - crypto space is wild wild west. No real-world use case YET. Intelligent investor is the one who picks right investment target and makes better return on investment.

10

You are assuming that because ETH went up in value and corporations are "backing it" that means it must have a use case.

1. I think if you take a hard look at ETH's corporate engagement you will find the vast majority of it consists of companies exploring blockchain who are trying to market their activities. Ie. There are few if any real projects planning to use ETH's public network for anything.

2. If you believe that ETH has a use case that is viable and cost-effective... What is it? Keep in mind that when thinking about this you need to discount for risk and present value. You also need to compare the ETH solution to existing alternative (this is where I keep getting hung up). 

You are arguing that; because people have made lots of money on ETH and there is lots of activity with ETH this means that ETH must be legitimate. Every time there is a bubble people say "this time is different." Every time there is a bubble there is lots of activity. Every time there is a bubble people seem to make lots of money. So why is this time different? 

ETH either has potential use cases which can justify its value or it does not. If it does not, it's value is an illusion and people will see it as an illusion eventually. Once that happens people will lose everything. The exit will be packed full of people and the door will be jammed. There will be no one to take the other side of the trade. 

I know I sound harsh, but I am very concerned about the state of the crypto market. Too many people are valuing asset based on the opinion of other people or the opinion of the market and very few people are actually doing any reasonable due diligence. When everyone relies on someone else to find problems no one finds them. 

 

[cmbartley]

7 minutes ago, Apollo said:

1. I think if you take a hard look at ETH's corporate engagement you will find the vast majority of it consists of companies exploring blockchain who are trying to market their activities. Ie. There are few if any real projects planning to use ETH's public network for anything.

Everyone, including Vitalik, was very open about Ethereum not having the throughput or privacy necessary for large corporations to use for commercial business. Plasma is a partial answer to this problem but has to compete with project Bletchly which has a head start and is being developed Microsoft who has deep, existing relationships with corporates. I own Ether, but it is not commercially usable in it's current form. Vitalik himself says that real utility is at least 2 years off.

[Apollo]

1 minute ago, cmbartley said:

Everyone, including Vitalik, was very open about Ethereum not having the throughput or privacy necessary for large corporations to use for commercial business. Plasma is a partial answer to this problem but has to compete with project Bletchly which has a head start and is being developed Microsoft who has deep, existing relationships with corporates. I own Ether, but it is not commercially usable in it's current form. Vitalik himself says that real utility is at least 2 years off.

2

When I evaluate ETH I generally assume that throughput and privacy problems will be fixed. (Which I am not actually sure about) My real issue is that I can't seem to find a use case for ETH that cannot be more easily or better accomplished with some other system. WIth its current evaluation that use-case also has to be rather large.

[Guest]

51 minutes ago, Apollo said:

ETH either has potential use cases which can justify its value or it does not. If it does not, it's value is an illusion and people will see it as an illusion eventually. Once that happens people will lose everything. The exit will be packed full of people and the door will be jammed. There will be no one to take the other side of the trade. 

I know I sound harsh, but I am very concerned about the state of the crypto market. Too many people are valuing asset based on the opinion of other people or the opinion of the market and very few people are actually doing any reasonable due diligence. When everyone relies on someone else to find problems no one finds them. 

I agree.  ETH is overpriced.  And I think a lot has to do with ICOs.  It will be interesting to see how much value (if any as who knows) it loses once governments around the world start cracking down on these offerings.

[WillGetThere]

@Apollo i'm not putting ETH on a pedestal and i'm aware of the underlying issues.

I'm not saying ETH has a clear use case as of today.

Vitalik has stated couple of times that ETH is overpriced.

What I'm saying is that smart investor has made a good return on an investment into ETH. 

It's not about use case, it's about return, identifying right opportunity, taking risk, etc.

Whats the advantage of investing into a real use case (still remains to be seen) crypto asset like xrp, waiting to exit it VS. investing into, say ETH making XXXX fold return, exiting it and investing into XRP?

Bubble??? Perfect times and environment for an intelligent investor. Fortunes are made on bubbles and crisises.

Non olet pecunia! (and please do not tell me about Ponzi, drugs, weapon, etc as this is not the case).

Thanks!)

[cmbartley]

1 hour ago, Apollo said:

When I evaluate ETH I generally assume that throughput and privacy problems will be fixed. (Which I am not actually sure about) My real issue is that I can't seem to find a use case for ETH that cannot be more easily or better accomplished with some other system. WIth its current evaluation that use-case also has to be rather large.

I think the use cases for a Turing-complete computational system are likely myriad but given the current state of technology it's hard to imagine what they might be. Some of the use cases might not yet exist. The telephone was originally predict to be useful for teaching women to dance over the phone. The market for email was unclear as it could only replace a fraction of the parcel system. Ultimately, though, these technologies allowed for new modes of communication and expressivity and I imagine that Ethereum coul do the same. I see potential uses in terms of execution of wills, power of attorney, issuance and tracking of prescription drugs etc. I don't what Ethereum will ultimate be used for but the automated distribution of tokens has proven that certain simple contracts can be decentralized. I'm optimistic about the future of decentralized contracts whether it be Ethereum or something else.

[Apollo]

20 minutes ago, cmbartley said:

I think the use cases for a Turing-complete computational system are likely myriad but given the current state of technology it's hard to imagine what they might be. Some of the use cases might not yet exist. The telephone was originally predict to be useful for teaching women to dance over the phone. The market for email was unclear as it could only replace a fraction of the parcel system. Ultimately, though, these technologies allowed for new modes of communication and expressivity and I imagine that Ethereum coul do the same. I see potential uses in terms of execution of wills, power of attorney, issuance and tracking of prescription drugs etc. I don't what Ethereum will ultimate be used for but the automated distribution of tokens has proven that certain simple contracts can be decentralized. I'm optimistic about the future of decentralized contracts whether it be Ethereum or something else.

4

Not to belabor the point, I agree that ETH can do lots of stuff, but my issue is I haven't seen, anything which wouldn't be better accomplished some other way. This could be a failure of imagination on my part, but I think I am on to something here. 

For example, both executions of wills and power of attorney involve interactions with the legal system and therefore a court ruling needs to be able to modify the ledger. Clearly, a distributed ledger could be useful for that, but I see many problems and few benefits from using a public one. Effectively money is the perfect public blockchain use case. Most other systems don't need and are in fact damaged by complete resistance to government censorship of any type. 

My other issue is that as ILP, Quilt and other interoperability solutions grow, the value of doing everything on one blockchain is reduced, if not completely eliminated. If a private or semipublic leger designed specifically to track wills, trusts etc. works better for that solution, why put it on Ethereum? The security concerns for implementing projects on a Turing-complete system are nontrivial, to say the least. There is a real monetary cost to building something on a system with that kind of attack surface, and if there is no true benefit to counterbalance that cost than Ethereum will not be used. To sum up... Ethereum is just like sooo 2015.