Bitcoin transactions over Ripple Network

I am interested in using the ripple network in conjunction with bitcoin transactions, but am curious as to interplay between the ripple ledger verification and the bitcoin blockchain verification.

I understand that the ripple network operates as essentially a series of IOUs and allows the ledger to be verified in an order of magnitude of seconds, however, a Bitcoin block takes on the order of magnitude of 10 minutes.

Does this mean that ripple transactions that involve bitcoin are entirely off the chain transactions or am I somehow missing something? I am just trying to get my head wrapped around the seemingly hand-wavy aspect that something that takes 10 minutes to verify can be used in a transaction that takes only 5 seconds to verify.

Bitcoin RPC works in bitcoin-cli but not in python-bitcoinrpc: No JSON object

I’m running a testnet node. I can use bitcoin-cli just fine:

>bitcoin-cli.exe getinfo
{
    "version" : 100000,
    "protocolversion" : 70002,
    "walletversion" : 60000,
[... snipped]

But when I run this python code:

from bitcoinrpc.authproxy import AuthServiceProxy, JSONRPCException
import logging

rpc_user = "rpcuser"
rpc_password = "xxxxx"

logging.basicConfig()
logging.getLogger("BitcoinRPC").setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

rpc_connection = AuthServiceProxy("http://%s:%s@192.168.1.39:8332/" % (rpc_user, rpc_password))
print(rpc_connection.getinfo())

I get this error:

DEBUG:BitcoinRPC:-1-> getinfo []

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<path>\rawtransactiondemo\raw.py", line 11, in <module>
    print(rpc_connection.getinfo())
[... snipped]
  File "C:\Python27\lib\json\decoder.py", line 384, in raw_decode
    raise ValueError("No JSON object could be decoded")
ValueError: No JSON object could be decoded

This is my bitcoin.conf:

testnet=1
rpcuser=bitcoinrpc
rpcpassword=xxxxx
daemon=1
rpcport=8332
rpcallowip=192.168.1.39
bind=192.168.1.39

I’m using the python-bitcoinrpc library.

Can one wallet send/receive bitcoins from/to multiple sources simultaneously?

Let’s say for example I put my public bitcoin address on a website for donations and multiple people for around the world deposit bitcoins simultaneously to that same wallet:

  1. Will all deposit transactions be valid on the bitcoin network or might some transactions “overwrite” the other?
  2. While receiving bitcoins from someone (not yet a verified transaction on the network), can I withdraw or pay bitcoins using the same wallet given the amount only include previous bitcoins and does include the new deposit?