This is a true statement. Pure speculation is driving XRP prices. There is no justification for it other than greed.
And there's no justification for greed... except for human nature, so is that a design flaw? Could people be bidding XRP up because Ripple itself is difficult to understand?
Anyway, I believe I understand it, and I am unmoved by the anti Ripple arguments based on ideology or pre-mining, but I think it is even harder to explain to consumers than Bitcoin.
Coinseeker, can you summarize why you believe Ripple is iTunes in your analogy? IMO, iTunes was successful because it made it dead SIMPLE to purchase digital music at fair prices, not to mention it was tied to an incredibly well designed piece of hardware, and backed by a monstrous ad campaign. If you agree, how exactly does Ripple change the game like iTunes did?
I'm genuinely curious as I have no dog in the fight (never mined anything), and while I believe in Bitcoin, I'm certainly no fundamentalist.
What I mean when I use that analogy is that Napster started the music download revolution but in the end was killed and it was iTunes that came in and did it the right way.
The foundation of Bitcoin is solid but it's full of flaws the Bitcoin community refuses to address. Add to that, the continued refusal (As if it would even be possible to avoid) to submit to regulations. This will kill bitcoin on a mass adoption scale faster than anything.
Ripple, like iTunes is prepared to play nice and work within the confines of the law. Not to mention, doing all the things Bitcoin could have done, but didn't. For instance:
Imagine, Bitstamp, Gox and all the exchanges as Gateways. Then add Paypal, Bank of america, Citi Bank and any bank worldwide you can think of. In time, you can use ANY of them as your gateway to move fiat and BTC. You can also choose to NOT extend trust to any of them you choose. This gives the power back to the people.
I could theoretically buy BTC via paypal and send it to Gox. Then I could sell that BTC at Gox and send Euros to some bank in the UK. I can choose how and who I trust and when and where I utilize the gateways. Now this is a simplified version as Ripple is in between these transfers but the cost from ripple is .00001 or something like that. It's like nothing. This is what XRP's are for. To pay transaction fees. The average user wont need thousands of XRP. The biggest fees are going to come from the gateways, which they already charge too much, IMO.
