It's goodbye, kind of

[Graine 1,342]

    As I am writing this, the last of my market orders have been filled. To all those, who kept calling for me to sell, - congratulations on the job well done. Your continuous well wishes manifested in a way that had only one possible outcome. As of today, I have no stake in XRP.
I am aware I maybe following in Vinnie’s footsteps (the fact that many of you have no idea who Vinnie is deserves a separate topic entirely), so feel free to gloat, once this too comes true.
If this is the only thing you will take from this post, you may stop reading now.

I discovered Ripple after bitcoin found its way into the news. Used to stare for a long time at the animation of the IOUs that moved on the map of an old version of the website. Was surprised at how often Israeli shekel blinked on the screen. And how alien the concept of IOU felt for the nascent cryptocurrency crowd, where one token on one blockchain was the modus operandi, and the problem of debt settlement was a foreign banker’s concept that should be shunned.

Coming from a society where cash rules everything, it was especially hard to understand why one has to pay fees for paying for the use of the money one has already earned, and why the same dollar at one gateway may be worth less than on the other.  And yet it opened the road towards questioning the nature of relationships between money and value.
Something magical happens, once you understand that fiat is not the only form a value can take.

I remember the vigor xrptalk had towards building the future on RCL: the dream of JaiChai’s island, frequent brainstorming and grass roots initiatives, how people thought HaydenTiff was a dude.

Back then Ripple had an idea of thousands of gateways turning RCL into some sort of global FX cauldron. But they never made an effort to understand  what drew the community (however small) to their solution. It was always “we built rippled, here’s some docs, now buy our xrp; why don’t you buy? ”. Once they figured out, that people are not paying enough for their token, the pivot happened. There was no mention of XRP on the website, ILP took the spotlight ever since.

But before, we had an actual German bank transact on RCL, public and verifiable. Fancy a look? ~fidor-hot through snapswap-us allowed for eur/usd transactions. However, it stopped without notice quite soon.
Ripple never acknowledged why. Same story with ZipZap and other ‘partners’.  Eventually, Katz disclosed that banks abhorred the idea of being forced to purchase XRP (wonder why).  

I miss the people, who left, because with Ripple it was always “Witness me, the 20XX is the year live production happens”. I hope they held at least to see the “ten cents by Monday”. I hope they sold at the dollar parity and beyond. I wish we could chat again.

Donch’s front-running bot became the reason of months of insomnia-induced dive into technical side of things. Because of it, I gained enough knowledge to annoy Ripple’s PR detail (guilty pleasures), whenever they utter another concept that fails to pass reality check. In my country there’s a saying that someone somewhere is mentioning you, when you hiccup. I hope whoever is responsible for ‘blockchain-based xCurrent solution” is having a constant stream of hiccups for misleading people.

NBAD was an unbelievable surprise. At first. The biggest bank that chose RCL over ILP felt like a validation of our choice to stick around all those years. The excitement in the air; it felt as if we were ready to watch the baby make their first steps. Only to discover that somewhere in between hype-y news articles and inquiring tweets, there will be no RCL usage.
Months later Brad will laugh in an interview about some Middle Eastern banker that called him alarmed that all his transactions will be public for the world to see. Didn’t the banker know about public side of RCL from the trials they carried before going live? Why did they chose to go into production regardless? Spent all those money to call off the use after announcing it to the world? For cheap publicity? Why there was no transaction in the ledger on the day and after the announcement? Why didn’t Ripple address it afterwards?

I was incredibly saddened by Katz’s tweet

There were millions of crypto exchanged for XRP, people bought it with the fiat they earned. Without those people XRP would have the value of exactly 0. And suddenly “they don’t get to judge”?!..
Bitcoin distribution looks fair, because everyone had to solve the same task to obtain the reward. Satoshi didn’t gift himself 21M btc with a click of a button, and retained the 85% between his friends and the company.
He had to pay for those btc like everyone else with the power cost and processing time.

It feels like Ripple found their high horse attitude. Again. Good for them to have the reason to look down on people from position of strength. I guess.

…These years passed in a blink of an eye. I am so tired. I can finally try to untangle myself away from being overinvested into an entity that clearly doesn’t need it.
I have had a privilege to be around most intelligent and kind people from all walks of life. I wish I had more time to ponder them with questions.  

The uncertainty is terrifying. But I have no choice, other than to make this leap of faith.  

 

[Guest]

Pretty damning verdict. Thanks for sharing. 

[Amigo 1,562]

Quite a beatiful piece @Graine. While I look at things differently, it's the differences that make life beautiful. It made me like your critical thinking. It makes me like Ripple in being different than the rest. I even love the hate of Bitcoin maximalists towards XRP sometimes. Enjoy life, try to stay away from computers for a while and enjoy the ones you love. And do not feel bad when XRP does happen to pass a former high again; you probably made plenty, and real hapiness comes from within.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To all others: I can't wait for the green candle kicking in when the SEC brings clarity, SBI VC comes online, or even when those get postponed again, just seeing Cobalt taking XRPs speed beyond anything we have seen before. ?

[Guest]

Sorry to hear this @Graine   I hope you made a significant profit on your investment.

This community will be the poorer for losing your valuable input.

 

[nvok 388]

Ouch, this will be the biggest mistake of your life. You can invest and own something without being consumed by it.

There’s nothing wrong with selling for personal reasons (such as selling for profit or because you fear price might drop) but selling for the wrong reasons (some of the reasons you listed above) and then be proven wrong later will haunt you and make you regret.

But most importantly, people should stop buying/selling and speculating on XRP solely based on what Ripple announces. They ARE separate.

Eventually, there will be many big players using XRP in ways we can’t imagine today. XRP ledger is capable of doing so much more than what you seem to understand.

 

1 hour ago, Graine said:

I was incredibly saddened by Katz’s tweet

What he said is 100% true and accurate.

1 hour ago, Graine said:

Bitcoin distribution looks fair

It’s not

1 hour ago, Graine said:

It feels like Ripple found their high horse attitude. Again. Good for them to have the reason to look down on people from position of strength. I guess.

Simply put, haters are getting repetitive and becoming less creative day by day. As one of many participants in the XRP ecosystem, Ripple’s responses seem confident rather than arrogant.

p.s. market orders are for noobs. please use limit orders next time!

Edited June 17, 2018 by nvok

[xrpmeplease 454]

value...it's all so subjective, really it's just made up, you shouldn't take all quite so serious...

i'd have preferred you hedl...i'll hodl and wish you well

[Trickery 6,032]

Noooooooooooo! you're one of the few sensible voices we have, a very sad day indeed.

[PG1 1,429]

I enjoyed reading your reality checks @Graine  Even your parting words contain some interesting insight.  I truly hope you reconsider.  Best of luck to you.

[Gepster 514]

2 hours ago, PG1 said:

I enjoyed reading your reality checks @Graine  Even your parting words contain some interesting insight.  I truly hope you reconsider.  Best of luck to you.

This!

[OzAlphaWolf 11,537]

Even though I haven't been here long, I'm actually sorry to see you go. You're one of the few intelligent and reasonable counter-balance voices on the forum. I truly wish you well in your future endeavours whatever they may be.

[invest2lose 1,846]

Sorry to see you go. Wish you the best and good luck! Also, did we ever find out the reason why vinnie left ripple?

[2zerps 51]

i remember a post just like this one before the december run. i think it was by maxentropy. good sign to see people loose faith, close to the bottom guys.

[Chewiecoin 14,459]

Cheers @Graine Thank you for being a great contributor to this forum. We all have to make the best decisions in life for ourselves. I hope this is a good one for you. 

Enjoy not being focussed on price for once and enjoy your life. 

Edited June 18, 2018 by Chewiecoin

[Plikk 13,422]

Sad to see you go. I wish you the best of luck and enjoy life at the fullest!

[Guest]

thanks @Graine for all your awesome posts and good luck to you out there!