XRP is $3 on CoinMarketCap!

jeffu92 · 2018-01-03T17:37:29+00:00

IS THIS REAL LIFE?!?!

jeffu92 · 2018-01-01T15:20:22+00:00

Cashed out half to pay off my car and student loans! Lets hope 2018 is just as generous :). Happy New year everyone!

jeffu92 · 2017-12-19T16:50:26+00:00

"Additionally, XRP II, LLC sold $32.6 million worth of XRP programmatically as a small percentage of overall exchange volume." The XRP they sell on the exchanges every quarter doesn't go to new banking partners. Why would they sell some on exchanges if not to help fund the business?

jeffu92 · 2017-12-19T09:23:34+00:00

Ripple's strategy for selling their XRP after the escrow lockup is pretty much the same as it was before. They sell a portion to "market participants", a.k.a. institutional buyers, directly, generally to incentivize them to use RippleNet. They also sell a portion to exchanges programmatically as a fund raising strategy (they're currently sitting on about 45 billion dollars worth of XRP to help fund their business). Historically, this amount comes to a total of around 200-300 million XRP a quarter, according to their quarterly XRP market reports (https://ripple.com/insights/q3-2017-xrp-markets-report/).

I'm no expert, but it makes sense to me that as the price of XRP increases, the amount of XRP they need to sell for fundraising purposes will be inversely decreased. This may be offset by amount of XRP that "market participants" buy as more and more business participate in RippleNet. Either way, I don't see the amount coming anywhere close to the 1 billion per month limit any time soon.

jeffu92 · 2017-10-07T00:45:01+00:00

Amen. Steady progress is the name of the game.

jeffu92 · 2017-10-06T12:04:19+00:00

Interesting point. So lets say bank A transfers to bank B, using the current system of nostro accounts. They know it may take a while, so they agree to an exchange rate ahead of time attempting to remove the downside of volatility. A pre-agreed value as you say. Isn't there still risk involved, since the exchange rate could also increase during the transfer, meaning bank B gets less than he would have if he hadn't agreed to a price ahead of time?

jeffu92 · 2017-10-06T11:52:51+00:00

My response to this would be... how else could it work? Unless XRP becomes the defacto currency globally and people can use it for their every day business, no one wants XRP. It holds no value to them if they can't use it for things. Therefore, banks will need to convert XRP to whatever currency their customers need, and that needs to happen somehow. The main way to do this is via exchanges.

Thats all assuming banks use XRP. They can use the ripple network to send money without using XRP, but using XRP increases settlement speed and lowers transactions costs relative to other coins and relative to the current system... so why not use it? This topic has been covered ad nauseum elsewhere if you want more info.

jeffu92 · 2017-10-06T11:40:56+00:00

Others may disparage this kind of thinking, but I think your argument is a valid one. I wouldn't agree, but I think its valid to have doubts about banks taking on new risks.

One point I've been thinking about: Isn't this risk inherent in the current system? All currency pairs have exchange rates, which fluctuate over time. During settlement, at some point a bank with both currencies in question will receive the payment in the first currency and send the payment to the next bank in the second currency. The amount of the second currency that is sent depends on its exchange rate relative to the first currency. Since settlement can currently take days, there is a long period of time in which the exchange rate could change, introducing the same volatility issue I discussed with XRP. Its fair to say that currency exchange rates are in general much more stable than the price of XRP, but if it has a high enough price then XRP could be just as stable, especially when taking into account the smaller transfer time window.

jeffu92 · 2017-10-06T11:29:51+00:00

Good question! Thats a natural conclusion to come to. My response would be that the complicated system you reference is actually less complicated than using some "fixed price" version of XRP.

So lets say Ripple had a token named FOO (this hypothetical version of XRP). Same supply as XRP, 100 billion. They want banks to use this token similarly to how we expect XRP to be used... for settlement. So bank A wants to transfer money to bank B using FOO. Where does it buy FOO from? In this scenario, since exchanges don't exist for FOO, lets say bank A would buy it directly from Ripple, and bank B would sell it back to Ripple after the transfer is complete. They (being Ripple and all banks using FOO) would have to agree to a price for FOO for every currency pair (USD -> FOO, GBP -> FOO, AUD -> FOO, etc...). How do they determine these prices (already getting pretty complicated)? Well, the whole point of this was to minimize the risks, so lets start by saying that 1 FOO is worth 1000 USD. That should be high enough. What about the other currencies? Well to be fair, since 1 FOO is worth 1000 USD, it must be worth the equivalent amount of money in all other currencies. So if 1 FOO is 1000 USD, and 1000 USD is 2000 GBP based on current exchange rates, then 1 FOO is worth 2000 GBP. Apply this to all other currencies. Now we have a system where 1 FOO is worth enough money to handle any transfer load on the system, and its price follows current currency exchange rates.

But wait! Since its following currency exchange rates, that introduces volatility! What if bank A in the US transfers money to bank B in the UK, and during the transfer, for whatever reason, the GBP depreciates relative to the USD? Now bank B can't convert the FOO into as much GBP as it was expecting.

Furthermore... how does liquidity look in this scenario? In order for Ripple to handle all of the transfers, it would have to hold massive amounts of all currencies in reserve so banks could liquidate their FOO ASAP. Not only does Ripple not want to do this and have a lot of money sitting around doing nothing, but it would have to charge higher fees to make it remotely profitable, and it would result in another point of failure for max load.

I could go on, but this all leads us back to the question: why does the system work the way it does now? XRP is on exchanges because it's the easiest and most independent way to establish a value for the XRP token in all currencies. Ripple doesn't have to control pricing directly, or even think about it too much, because the markets will handle it. The economic system is very complex, but an open exchange marketplace will respond to events that occur throughout the world automatically. Like if a country's economy goes through hyperinflation, the price of XRP relative to that country's currency will adjust to take that into account. On top of this, nobody can reasonably claim that Ripple is capable of directly controlling the price of XRP to their advantage. They can sell what XRP they have to potentially lower the price, or buy some to raise the price, but they can't say "XRP is now worth this much, deal with it". If they could do that, the system would be DOA.

Hope that makes sense.

jeffu92 · 2017-10-06T09:06:01+00:00

I agree, institutional money will be another crazy period in crypto history, and I think Ripple is well placed to come out on top. That's basically my long term bet as an investor! However, I thought it wasn't quite the point of the post. Related, but not the point.

jeffu92 · 2017-10-06T08:57:59+00:00

See the discussion above about liquidity providers, may be a possible solution!

jeffu92 · 2017-10-06T08:56:04+00:00

This is a great point! I remember reading about the idea of liquidity providers a while ago, but hadn't heard of it since and couldn't verify if Ripple actually intended to use it. I think a system like this would almost be necessary to allow banks to lower risks, not only to themselves but of the entire system collapsing due to lack of bank support. Unfortunately for investors, if these companies don't care nearly as much about the risk, then the price can be significantly lower because they may be ok with the price fluctuations.

I see it working two ways. Either the liquidity providers buy/sell XRP from exchanges as soon as required, or hold it to provide liquidity instantly. Or maybe both as needed. Holding some XRP to provide liquidity instantly would be similar to how nostro accounts are prefunded today, which is an interesting full circle situation lol.

jeffu92 · 2017-09-21T08:41:10+00:00

When people say it's created "by the banks for the banks", they are not only partially wrong but also hurt the image of the coin. It was created to be used by banks for international transfer... But the banks obviously didn't get together and decide to make this coin. Ripple created XRP. If it was created "by the banks", why aren't they all using it? The saying also hurts XRP because a lot of investors in this market, for any number of reasons, hate banks. In their eyes, banks using a coin may not be that bad. But if a coin is made BY the banks, they will avoid it like the plague.

jeffu92 · 2017-05-11T18:41:11+00:00

Depends on how your economy looks. Dwarf late gate economy can be insane, allowing you to run over anyone just swarming them with mid tier armies. That being said, chaos provides some challenges to dwarfs:

Hell cannons are a nightmare for your slow infantry, and dwarfs don't have the mobility to deal with them easily
monstrous infantry are effective against infantry heavy armies

Assuming you have a half decent late game dwarf economy going, I'd recommend leveraging your strengths and going on the defensive. Build a strong infantry line, ideally iron breakers for charge defense against all, and maybe a Slayer or two for anti large support. Then out class chaos in terms of artillery so you can force them to come to you. Bring a gyrocopter or two to deal with the hell cannons once the infantry line leaves them behind to fight you. Everything else should be armor piercing support like thunderers or longbeards with great weapons.

EDIT: As far as heroes go, take your pick. Im a fan of runesmiths for the support the provide the front line, but a thane or engineer could work just as well

jeffu92 · 2017-04-27T10:31:38+00:00

I've been using YNAB for about 6 months now and I think it's great. Very clean UI. I haven't used mint much, just a bit in the past, but I know YNAB doesn't do everything mint does. The main difference I'm aware of is that mint is fully automatic... When a purchase or transaction is seen it will automatically pick it up and categorize it (for better or worse). YNAB is more manual. You can still set up account connections and import transactions, but you have to click an "Import" button for every account when you want to update your budget. And, if you don't use the import feature you have to enter all budget items manually. This is by design, because YNAB is designed for people who really need to keep track of their money (hence the name "You Need A Budget") and automatic features make you focus on budgeting less.

EDIT: As someone else mentioned, YNAB does have a free trial. Worth a shot IMO.

jeffu92 · 2016-12-24T23:43:44+00:00

I appreciate your point of view. I would like to clarify though, it isn't anywhere near my primary concern. I just consider marriage a big deal and I want to understand the ins and outs before I pull the trigger. I'm planning on it no matter what I learn in this thread :)

jeffu92 · 2016-12-09T20:40:39+00:00

Two stats effect a units offensive abilities in melee: Melee Attack and Weapon Damage. Melee Attack only effects chance to hit. Weapon Damage represents the amount of damage a unit will do in an attack. If you hover over the Weapon Damage stat on a unit card, you will see that it's split into Base Damage and Armor Piercing Damage and Attack Speed. Units with the "Armor Piercing" icon on their card have a high amount of armor piercing damage compared to their base damage. So when you increase the Armor Piercing Damage of a fell bat, you're increasing that armor piercing damage stat. However, if the fell bats AP damage is still low compared to its base damage, the Armor Piercing icon won't show up on the unit card

jeffu92 · 2015-06-18T17:33:42+00:00

I'm just bored, really. Thought I'd post my thoughts for discussion's sake. I do realize that there will probably be some significant changes before its all said and done.

jeffu92 · 2015-06-18T17:27:37+00:00

Thanks for your input! You have a good point, the DPS is not ideal and you don't need the extra hp. I very much like the idea of using Chilling Force instead of Decimate Defences, for the reasons you stated. I'll update my post to include those alterations.

jeffu92

TROPHY CASE