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Comment by amingilani | Hacker News Reader

Objectively, here's what this does:

1. FUND MILLIONS OF STUDENTS (I don't think anyone can overstate how awesome this is)

2. Give Ripple Labs good press and put them on the front

3. Increases the supply of XRP which:

  - Means more XRP in the market in the market for more users

  - Drops the value per XRP making transaction costs cheaper

All that aside, let's all give Ripple a virtual high five for funding education. This is amazing!

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> Increases the supply of XRP which

Wait, it does? I thought one of the unique aspects of ripple was that all of the coins were pre-mined so the supply is finite. Right?

Circulating supply.

They were pre-mined but the supply is infinite, as I understand there is nothing preventing them from creating more at any point.

The supply isn't infinite, and they won't create more.

Is the reason they won't create more technical or philosophical? I don't know enough about Ripple.

It would require a change to the protocol

Its both. They won't create more for philosophical reasons because the value would plummet. They won't create more for technical reasons because it needs an 80% majority of nodes to approve a change for it to occur.

Some people will tell you they control the validating nodes, but thats only really a half truth. Ripple controls 3 out of 50+ nodes, and also controls the default list of approved validator nodes. There's no reason why you can't deviate from the default list of validators, but its hard to say if anyone actually does in practice.

But they could, nothing in the tech is stopping them from creating more.

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