OpenCoin aims to build a better digital currency
Digital currency promises to solve some problems of the "real money" world, among them the difficulty of making quick, secure global payments without having to pay a middleman steep fees to exchange one currency for another. While bitcoins have proven they can do the trick, the currency comes with its own problems. Bitcoin can take 10 minutes or more to verify a payment (or transaction of any kind) ... and that's if you can find a retailer that actually accepts bitcoins. That's where OpenCoin hopes to step in with a more convenient alternative. Launched by two veterans of the online....
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Google Ventures and China-based IDG Capital Partners are the second group of tech investors in two months to place a bet on OpenCoin, the company behind the currently-in-beta Ripple open-source payments protocol. OpenCoin announced today that it had closed an additional round of funding -- the amount wasn't specified -- with Google Ventures and IDG Capital Partners. (Hat tip to GigaOM for the news.) Last month, OpenCoin wrapped up an earlier angel round of funding from another high-profile group of technology VCs: Andreessen Horowitz, FF Angel IV, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Vast Ventures....
At first glance, especially to a digital currency neophyte, OpenCoin might not look that different from Bitcoin. Look beyond the superficial similarities, though, and the two ventures in virtual money couldn't be less alike. That's especially true in terms of the people - and money - behind the currencies. Bitcoin, after all, was birthed in a way by a cipher ... a man (or entity) who isn't there. (Theories abound as to who or what Satoshi Nakamoto is or was.) Nor did Bitcoin enjoy the advantages of big names and big money as it grew: its popularity grew through its appeal to a certain....
At Bitcoin London yesterday, OpenCoin announced that Ripple users can now make bitcoin payments directly from the Ripple client. The so-called Bitcoin Bridge fulfils some of Ripple's promised functionality and connects its users to the whole bitcoin economy and ecosystem. This Bitcoin Bridge enables Ripple users to make payments in bitcoin without ever needing to hold any of the digital currency. Ripple's explanation video has shown that payments can egress the Ripple network in fiat currencies, plus bitcoin, via Ripple Gateways. That functionality is now there thanks to this new feature.....
OpenCoin, the company behind the Ripple payment system, has announced that it should finally be made available via an open source license next week. Ripple, which features both a payment network and its own ripple currency (XRP), began circulating some of the 100bn pre-mined ripples earlier this year. Since then, OpenCoin has drawn considerable flak from the community for maintaining a closed-sourced approach with Ripple. However, the founders (who retained 20% of the entirely pre-mined currency for themselves) have consistently said that they planned to open source it at some point in the....
1. What is Ripple? Ripple is the name for both a digital currency (XRP) and an open payment network within which that currency is transferred. It is a distributed, open-source payments system that's still in beta. The goal of the ripple system, according to its website, is to enable people to break free of the "walled gardens" of financial networks - ie, credit cards, banks, PayPal and other institutions that restrict access with fees, charges for currency exchanges and processing delays. 2. What does Ripple do? According to is OpenCoin, the company behind ripple, the currency addresses....