Ideas for Ripple related business
Timón
1) Liability server
Some nodes can connect to others only if they can sue them when sometinhg is wrong. You can warranty the liability of nodes.
You charge for account creation. You can have different levels of liability: email, web of trust, full liability. For full liability, your client signs (maybe electronically, if the country has some form of electronic ID) that everything he signs with his Ripple node's key, is a legally valid IOU.
2) Proxy node
To increase Ripple liquidity, your company can act as a router. You accept deposits from your clients, and extend them IOUs for the same value they deposit. Then anyone can redeem your IOUs to you for the equivalent funds in reserve.
As you redeem your debts instantly, many nodes will trust you and you will become a highly connected node. It's useful to have IOUs from a highly connected node and that's why your clients deposit funds.
You rely on withdrawal fees.
The simplest way to create this service is by accepting bitcoin deposits.
3) Ripple server with POS payment
This will be less useful when there's decentralized Ripple and smartphone clients, but some people may be more confident with credit card like payments that with payments through the phone.
You rely on transaction fees.
4) IOUs printer.
Your clients give you their Ripple IOUs and you print hard to counterfeit printed IOUs (coupons).
The coupon holders can redeem them at your client's shop/restaurant/business in exchange of good and services or at your company in exchange of your own IOUs.
To redeem your debt with your clients, you have to destroy coupons (given to you by your clients or by the coupons holders).
Evgeni Pandurski
Here's some ideas for Ripple related business. Tel me what you think about them. If you like them, try them out.
1) Liability server
Some nodes can connect to others only if they can sue them when sometinhg is wrong. You can warranty the liability of nodes.
You charge for account creation. You can have different levels of liability: email, web of trust, full liability. For full liability, your client signs (maybe electronically, if the country has some form of electronic ID) that everything he signs with his Ripple node's key, is a legally valid IOU.
This sounds like selling guarantees for third-parties debts. I think this has always been a very tricky/deceptive business. Guarantors (or the court system that supports them -- and the court system generally does not support random people) have to have lot of power in their hands. This fact usually stays hidden, because it is more convenient to exercise power while staying in the shade. In any case, I think "Liability server"s are reserved for the most powerful players, which currently has a much more profitable ways to exercise their power. So, I would say: "Not in the foreseeable future".
2) Proxy node
To increase Ripple liquidity, your company can act as a router. You accept deposits from your clients, and extend them IOUs for the same value they deposit. Then anyone can redeem your IOUs to you for the equivalent funds in reserve.
As you redeem your debts instantly, many nodes will trust you and you will become a highly connected node. It's useful to have IOUs from a highly connected node and that's why your clients deposit funds.
You rely on withdrawal fees.
The simplest way to create this service is by accepting bitcoin deposits.
I like this idea very much. Actually, CMB (https://www.multiswap.net/) supports this "out of the box", although this might not be obvious.
3) Ripple server with POS payment
This will be less useful when there's decentralized Ripple and smartphone clients, but some people may be more confident with credit card like payments that with payments through the phone.
You rely on transaction fees.
4) IOUs printer.
Your clients give you their Ripple IOUs and you print hard to counterfeit printed IOUs (coupons).
The coupon holders can redeem them at your client's shop/restaurant/business in exchange of good and services or at your company in exchange of your own IOUs.
To redeem your debt with your clients, you have to destroy coupons (given to you by your clients or by the coupons holders).You rely on printing fees.
These seem to be reserved only for "the big guys" too, which are quite unlikely to be interested in the near future (well, I might be wrong).
5) A combination of some of the previous proposals.Feel free to share other ideas. Let's attract investors and entrepreneurs.
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Miles Thompson
2) Proxy node
To increase Ripple liquidity, your company can act as a router. You accept deposits from your clients, and extend them IOUs for the same value they deposit. Then anyone can redeem your IOUs to you for the equivalent funds in reserve.
As you redeem your debts instantly, many nodes will trust you and you will become a highly connected node. It's useful to have IOUs from a highly connected node and that's why your clients deposit funds.
You rely on withdrawal fees.
The simplest way to create this service is by accepting bitcoin deposits.
I like this idea very much. Actually, CMB (https://www.multiswap.net/) supports this "out of the box", although this might not be obvious.
--
Miles Thompson
Evgeni Pandurski
It is more like the "free banking", I think. Of course, free banking has its problems. The main problem, obviously, is that free banks can not create money (gold) out of thin air, while the central bank can. Here product/service-backed IOUs come to rescue -- you can create as much of them as others will want to accept (they will accept IOUs because they need the products/services you provide) .
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Miles Thompson
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Jorge Timón
>
> This sounds like selling guarantees for third-parties debts. I think this
> has always been a very tricky/deceptive business. Guarantors (or the court
> system that supports them -- and the court system generally does not support
> random people) have to have lot of power in their hands. This fact usually
> stays hidden, because it is more convenient to exercise power while staying
> in the shade. In any case, I think "Liability server"s are reserved for the
> most powerful players, which currently has a much more profitable ways to
> exercise their power. So, I would say: "Not in the foreseeable future".
Actually I was thinking how to do it in Spain, where people can sign
contracts with the electronic identification card and I think it would
be quite simple.
Users would sign that the IOUs that they sign with their Ripple key are valid.
The liability server won't warranty anything, they will just give you
the signed contract and you would have to sue the person that didn't
pay you yourself.
Maybe the service also has specialized lawyers (it would be always the
same case) that are cheaper than regular ones.
>> 2) Proxy node
>
> I like this idea very much. Actually, CMB (https://www.multiswap.net/)
> supports this "out of the box", although this might not be obvious.
Cool.
>> 4) IOUs printer.
>
> These seem to be reserved only for "the big guys" too, which are quite
> unlikely to be interested in the near future (well, I might be wrong).
No, you don't need more security than say the tickets for a music festival.
Some friends get from their jobs tickets that allow them to pay in
local restaurants.
2011/7/31, Miles Thompson <utu...@gmail.com>:
> On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 10:49 PM, Evgeni Pandurski
>> 2) Proxy node
> This sounds exactly like a bank to me ;-)
>
> Its interesting. Such nodes would increase liquidity - like a bank - but
> also have, I think, issues of over-leverage and a single point of failure.
> That might weaken the overall network as opposed to a more distributed, many
> small points of failure behavior that *might* happen in the ripple network
> where all nodes are about equal in size (or obey a less steep power law).
Not a bank, no loans here. Just a way to complement Ripple with other
moneys to increase liquidity.
You may be right about the single points of failure, but nothing
prevents competition.
I disagree with your point that Ripple nodes must be about the same
size. Imagine mcdonals decides to use ripple. If many of its employees
accept to be paid with Ripple, that node would be huge.
2011/7/31, Evgeni Pandurski <epand...@gmail.com>:
>
> It is more like the "free banking", I think. Of course, free banking has its
> problems. The main problem, obviously, is that free banks can not create
> money (gold) out of thin air, while the central bank can. Here
> product/service-backed IOUs come to rescue -- you can create as much of them
> as others will want to accept (they will accept IOUs because they need the
> products/services you provide) .
I hate Morgan's definition of money. "Gold is money, everything else
is credit". We give credit/monetary value to gold just as we do with
silver or bitcoin today, or was given in the past to shells or salt.
Gold could (and should) stop being money if people decide it has no
monetary value. Also we already have a word to mean gold: gold.
Banks can create money out of thin air through fractional reserve. The
difference with the current situation is that today fractional reserve
is regulated in a way that the customer must accept it.
With free banking, banks would have different accounts with different
fractions, and customers would ask for more interest if the account
doesn't have full reserve.
You could say that the USD is backed by oil, since you can't buy it
with any other currency. Well Saddam, and Gadaffi wanted to sell it
for EUR and Dinars (gold) respectively and look what happened.
Evgeni Pandurski
I am not sure you are right. The tickets for a music festival are valid for few days: they are designed, and nobody knows how they will look like before the music festival starts. The counterfeiters have several hours (or days at max) to make exact copies -- not an easy task.
Take bus tickets as another example: they are cheap, so the incentive to counterfeit them is low; not everyone can sell bus tickets, so it is hard to obtain real money for the fake tickets; also ticket's colors and details usually change from time to time, so the counterfeiter should keep up continuously.
On top of that, in most countries, you will have very hard time to stay out of jail for printing any kind of money-like looking papers.
So, it seems to me that printing IOUs is not for everyone.
Sure, I said "gold" because historically free banking used gold as "power money". It might be bitcoins or pieces of moon-rock as long it can not be created "out of thin air".
Jorge Timón
http://www.edenred.es/ticket-restaurant
And don't think the security of the tickets is very expensive.
Also have you seen bitbills?
Doesn't look like a big company.
2011/7/31, Evgeni Pandurski <epand...@gmail.com>:
Evgeni Pandurski
Maybe you're right, but there's a lot of business in spain like this:
http://www.edenred.es/ticket-restaurant
And don't think the security of the tickets is very expensive.
Also have you seen bitbills?
Doesn't look like a big company.
http://bitbills.com/
They both seem to have either magnetic strip or a bar-code attached to the card. This is much more secure than printing, but needs an electronic device (and probably network connection) in order to verify the card/ticket -- so a third party can not verify with certainty if a ticket is valid. Is this correct, or I am missing something?
Jorge Timón
Your clients just need a camera and internet connection to verify the
coupons are valid.
Seth de l'Isle
Ripplepay. Also could be used to pay buskers. If you worked out
something with a soup kitchen they could be given to beggars.
2011/7/31 Jorge Timón <timon....@gmail.com>: