Comment by jxf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jxf | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for responding, Patrick. I appreciate you engaging in discussion on this matter.

I'm not sure that this actually answers my questions, though. You seem to have more or less restated what I said without specifically addressing anything.

For instance, I said, "Jed is also on the Stellar board, too, one of only three members -- and so wields a considerable amount of influence." Then you said that "the board is composed of Jed, Keith Rabois, and me".

I'm not sure how that allays any concerns that Jed, who was specifically criticized in a number of Ripple-related efforts, is now on a similar organization. All it does is restate what I earlier said -- that Jed is on a small board, and apparently has an equal vote, and apparently wields a lot of influence.

In any case, I'm more interested in hearing about how Stellar is or isn't like Ripple. Is it essentially the same technology with a different governance structure on top of it? If not, in what way(s) is it different?

> For instance, I said, "Jed is also on the Stellar board, too, one of only three members -- and so wields a considerable amount of influence." Then you said that "the board is composed of Jed, Keith Rabois, and me".

Sorry, mostly I was just alluding to the fact that most of the board is composed of external members.

> In any case, I'm more interested in hearing about how Stellar is or isn't like Ripple. Is it essentially the same technology with a different governance structure on top of it? If not, in what way(s) is it different?

There are technical differences (like the inflation), and they'll diverge more over time, but I think the technical differences are of secondary importance relative to the issues around coin distribution and governance. If a distributed financial network is going to succeed, I believe that it has to be run by an impartial organization.

How can you ensure that a financial network is impartial?

You can't, that's why bitcoin is build by trust on an algorithm, not on humans.

Why should there inflation be built-in at all? Or prohibited at all?

> If a distributed financial network is going to succeed, I believe that it has to be run by an impartial organization.

I'm not sure anyone in a high profile position can guarantee exclusion from being criticized. Having said that, I don't think it's fair to come in here an parrot some vague negative statement and then use it to question their motives. If you've got a specific beef with him, then you should just say what you mean instead of saying something that only serves to lay blame without rational.

95% of the coin is being given away and the effort is decentralized in nature. A 5% fee for the continued development of this platform and a fair amount of control over it's direction seems overly reasonable to me. Clearly Jed and his team care about creating something that is beneficial to everyone. I'd rather see speculation about the possible benefits than a rathole over something someone got bent about during the Ripple deal.

> If you've got a specific beef with him, then you should just say what you mean instead of saying something that only serves to lay blame without rational.

I think I was very specific in the OP and the WSJ reference.

But to spell it out: Jed McCaleb is a cofounder of MtGox and Ripple. MtGox collapsed, is defunct, and is under investigation by multiple governments and regulatory agencies. Ripple dropped 40% in one day when Jed liquidated.

I don't think it's unreasonable to wonder whether Jed is the right person to be on the board of a new digital currency, given the track record at the last two organizations.

To be crystal clear, we're talking about human evaluated trust here. You are stating you don't trust him to be the right person to sit on a board of a currency he developed and is spearheading.

If you want to establish reliable evaluations of trust in a human, you have to stay away from biases and blaming statements. Yes, Jed was a cofounder of Mt. Gox. Yes, Mt. Gox caught on fire and burned to the ground. However, to establish a logical connection between those two statements requires a truthfully evaluated statement regarding how Jed was responsible for the fire. To my knowledge, Mark was the one responsible for that fire, not Jed. Mark was responsible for the legal, fiscal, and operational health of that system. Not Jed. You have not pointed to a statement that causes this to evaluate the two statements together and provide correlation.

If you can't do that much, then it's just a blaming statement based an associative bias.

I've been in a bad situation before with co-founders and it didn't end well for anyone. I can't speak for what happened at Ripple with Jed, but the guy has a right to go out and work on what he believes in without being unfairly judged for taking actions that were well within his right of exercising in the past.

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