From my point of view, Ripple is doing the wisest thing by pursuing progressive change instead of disruption.
No. Ripple is taking the easiest path to a quick profit. Its lazy and that is not the better route to progress.
That post looks like a bed time story for Ripple execs.. it's nonsense.
Ripple is a company. Generating value for its equity holders is the main goal of a company, but you know that already. In that perspective, homing on the steepest growth gradiant isn't lazy but effective. I'm not saying that I support that from a philosophical perspective, but I'm not here to discuss philosophical ideals but practical down-to-earth matters such as first-mover advantage and opportunities.
I agree with a lot of what have been said above about ideals, but ideals are just that: ideals. They are what the perfect world would be if it wasn't the way it really is. Unfortunately, the world is the way it is, and only things that take into account the reality of our world and come up with realistic solutions can have an actual impact on it. Had Ripple been following libertarian ideals, it wouldn't have seized the oppotunity to partner with banks, and it's about another firm we would be discussing instead.
It's not like the world has to choose a project exclusively among libertarian cryptocurrencies, and adapt itself to the project and its philosophical ideals. It doesn't work like that. The way it works is that there are opportunities that are reflecting the practical reality of the world in its current paradigm, and the project that will success to adapt to the requirements will prevail. Other projects will remain irrelevant for an undefined amount of time until the paradigm has changed enough to make them relevant.
The point of my post is down to earth: Ripple has smelt an opportunity with the banking sector, has managed to gain a strong foothold in the place and is creating some in-draft for other complementary projects. Bitshares is a good candidate to jump on the bandwagon.
The question is: will Bitshares act as the company it is and seize the profit opportunity, or will it act as a libertarian community and wait for future hypothetical opportunities that match better it's ideals?
Let's not put the cart before the horses: the finance industry and the state are not dying yet and they show interest in blockchain technology out of curiosity rather than actual need; they will laugh at technologies that pretend to replace them and pick the projects that make the effort to fit their requirements. There are opportunities now to be seized and they will be seized no matter what. I would prefer to see projects from the current crypto community seizing opportunities in the real economy and entering the current power stucture even if they have to tone down a bit on their ideals until the time is ripe. If no one steps up and seize the opportunities, the old guard will react and close the opportunity window and you'll see the same old Paypal, Visa, Master, Amex, Bloomberg, Reuters, Swift, Tibco, NYSE technologies and the like stepping in the cryptospace. What do you prefer? Wouldn't Bitshares have a stronger impact on the world and more influence to shift the paradigm if it's an established brand on the Street rather than some obscure group of libertarian philosphers on the Internet waiting for the perfect opportunity to come?
When you invent the internet, you do not work alongside existing alternates; you replace them.
Excellent analogy: the hypertext technology that we now call the web was in fact really invented by Ted Nelson and the Xanadu project but they failed to be the first to market because they couldn't compromise on their ideals and release something simply good enough. Tim Berners Lee picked the idea and ran with it and his stripped down version of Xanadu became what we know today as the web. Actually it's lucky that Tim Berners Lee was level headed because as it turns out Xanadu never managed to distance itself from its unrealistic ideals and are still vaporware 30 years later. Without Tim Berners Lee the web would probably be the private property of Xerox and IBM.
When you invent blockchain technology, you do not work alongside existing alternate trust mechanisms; you replace them.
Well maybe that's what you do when you are called David P Brown, but when you are a developer at Swift and your boss asks you to create some crypto-based middleware for the banks, you just clone the latest crypto and you crank up some closed source thing that will be good enough to handle realtime transfers and settlements among banks while keeoing your firm as a necessary middleman. For all its defaults Ripple is open-source, freeish and it's public infrastructure. So really at this stage it's a question of whether you prefer opensource initiatives like Ripple and Bitshares to become the new financial standard or some proprietary stuff from the old guard. Maybe 10 years down the line if the financial system collapses you'll get better opportunities at your own terms but by then the market will be saturated by competing solutions that may not embarass themselves with too much ideals either.
I would say this is the most significant from Klosure which to be honest I agree with everything you say but I like this the most
"Excellent analogy: the hypertext technology that we now call the web was in fact really invented by Ted Nelson and the Xanadu project but they failed to be the first to market because they couldn't compromise on their ideals and release something simply good enough. Tim Berners Lee picked the idea and ran with it and his stripped down version of Xanadu became what we know today as the web. Actually it's lucky that Tim Berners Lee was level headed because as it turns out Xanadu never managed to distance itself from its unrealistic ideals and are still vaporware 30 years later. Without Tim Berners Lee the web would probably be the private property of Xerox and IBM."
And if bytemaster doesnt become more than 8 bits and doesnt become mega bytemaster then we are screwed. We cant align ourselves being Libertarians we have to be like Stellar and be looked at as Utilitarians. (mostly the second definition)
u·til·i·tar·i·an·ism
yo͞oˌtiləˈterēəˌnizəm/
noun
the doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majority.
the doctrine that an action is right insofar as it promotes happiness, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of conduct.
We cant just have our ins as college profs, we need to be business people who are pragmatic. Mega bytemaster has proven hes pragmatic, he must not solidify his views. He may outcast more people, but more people will come. If you build it, they will come,
The real question is who would want to hold bitUSD at this point, you cant have leverage that is more than 30x like a futures contract, people wont trade for pennies, and you cant spend it yet at walmart.
We need to make the apps as easy as possible, Apple style. The key to the iPod was only becomes it did not need drivers to sync into your computer, your computer automatically recognized it, it was also useful and easy friendly, but I want through 4 Apple iPod like devices (not iPods, other companies) because I hated Apple at the time for making the gay colored macs we had in highschool. But once I came across the iPod, I was in heaven, it was just that easy, no driver needed. This was back in 2004 I believe.
We need to find honest uses for bitshares and the bitassets.
As a note I would consider my ideology utilitarian not anything else.
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