[Blaster]

I'm still having trouble identifying much in the way of real value for Ethereum.

In theory, it can be used for "decentralized apps," where you have a distributed network to store transaction data instead of having one company control it. It's clear how this concept could be attractive to people concerned with privacy and censorship.

The problem is that these decentralized apps are many orders of magnitude slower and more costly than centralized apps. This is due to the fundamental costs of maintaining a blockchain network. With current designs, I don't see any way for blockchain apps to come anywhere near the performance of a centralized app. So unless app-users care a lot about censorship and control, they will always choose the non-blockchain alternative.

The incentives to participate in network validation come exclusively in the form of in-network rewards (ETH, in this case). ETH will always have a real resource cost (electricity and computational infrastructure), which is necessary to guard against hacking. Thus ETH as an incentivizing reward is predicated on ETH's future value as a medium of exchange. Either you'll be able to spend your ETH in the network on something you want, or you'll be able to exchange it favorably into some other (fiat) currency so that you can buy what you want, which requires someone with fiat that wants to spend ETH on something. Which brings us back to ETH needing to be a viable to trade for something people want.

For example, World of Warcraft players want swords and potions or whatever, and can buy them with WoW Gold. WoW coin has in-network value is predicated on its utility for buying those virtual items produced by Blizzard's game algorithms.

What is the in-network value of ETH? Right now, it seems like the main thing people are doing with ETH is running other cryptocurrencies, including many fairly blatant ICO scams that are basically "fundraising" where founders take in bunch of money in return for made-up coins with absolutely no accountability whatsoever. Ok, so ETH has a purpose but this only moves the problem. If ETH is for hosting other cryptos, that means one of the other cryptos needs to have some sort of in-network utility.

Something needs to drive the price of ETH other than speculation and trading on the basis of vaporous promises about the future of computing. For something like Steemit... how big could that community actually be? You have to be able to trade tokens with other people in that network for valuable things directly for the USD exchange rate to be anything but a pure speculative bubble.

I think that, due to the inherently high costs, the potential non-criminal utility of cryptocurrencies is quite limited. The odds that a good one will ever be made is even smaller. Even Monero is structured like a scam. I am skeptical that any blockchain could maintain itself without the hype. It's taken me longer to evaluate Ethereum than Bitcoin, but ultimately I've reached a similar conclusion.

[oilbreh]

You are mostly right Blaster, I dont know how long we have to go before people start realizing this. I bought into the ethereum hype but once I dug in, I realized what a joke it was. The new game in town is selling the next "ethereum" on ethereum, so we are going to have a round two of all this again.

[Giacomo Casanova]

Ethereum without limits in the last few days as we expected it was extremely undervalued. The number of daily active ETH addresses for the first time in the crypto age exceeds the one of BTC. It will be interesting to see how they will deal with the scalabiility due to the rise of traffic.

[MaceTyrell]

The beauty of ETH rising while BTC & XRP fall.

Will be trading the $10 worth of BTC i received from Coinbase for REP.

[MPD]

It'll be very interesting to see how Casper changes things and that's expected to happen soon. I'm still not versed enough predict specific outcomes but I believe it'll be very good for holders, at least up to the medium term.

ETH is near the top of my list for potential survivors once the onslaught begins and coins start dropping left and right. Maybe not in its current form, but the concepts definitely have staying power.

[StackGsMan]

Two questions about the USD Wallet on Coinbase and purchasing ETH. Is it safe and how is it done?

I ask if it is safe because I've read a few people on Reddit complaining that their money got stuck and they couldn't buy anything or get a response from Coinbase even after a ton of verification.

I'm just hoping to get all my money in ASAP and these weekly limits are a pain in the ass.

[Thaitanium]

At the moment it is quite easy for me, though I deposit in euros. About two weeks ago it could take a day or two before it was at coinbase from my account and then also a day or so before I could forward eth to other places. Now it all goes pretty fast. At coinbase within a few hours from my account and then also forwarded to another (if you want that) to places like binance or kucoin.

[stefpdt]

Relevant article about the Crypto Castle and Crypto Crackhouse in Silicon Valley:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/st...aires.html

These guys have good things to say about the future of ether.

[StackGsMan]

Does anyone know of any good price forecasts for Feb 2019 ish? Looks like I'm going abroad for a while and depending on how things go I'd prefer to hold until at least that time to get the tax reduction (mainly buying in Jan 2018).

I haven't looked at cryptos long, although I've looked at their history, so I don't have a feel for their price movement as I would for something like NFLX or whatever that I look at daily. I get that they can be boom and bust, but I really have no idea where ETH is going to go. As crazy as this sounds or as stupid as I may look I can see how anything from a big crash could occur to staying about the same (let's say around 2k) up to a tenfold or so increase to 13k. I'm both hoping and predicting at least a 3-5 fold increase this year and unless there is a major crash for something like political reasons or whatever, I don't see why it can't grow even more.

Not predicting 2017 rate of returns, but anywhere from 2x-10x doesn't seem totally out of the picture.

Thoughts or links?

[MaceTyrell]

12,800th post!

So this pullback.

[StackGsMan]

The pull back is great for me. I plan to HODL, or at least for a year, and I've only been able to put half my money in up to now.

This is all from today's China news.

If the US goes the way of China or the way of Japan with regards to crypto, that will be the biggest determinant of whether us crypto holders get the first flying cars.

My hope is that either the US stays relatively quiet on the issue through early 2019, or else goes the Japan or S Korea route. The reason I got in on crypto despite my early misgivings and huge returns aside was because I decided that the US would at least be nuetral towards crypto and bring it into the fold like a regular equity that is regulated.

I understand all the arguments against this possibility, but it is my belief and the US is supposed to be "something" of a free market economy, so it isn't TOTALLY out of the realm of possibility that they wouldn't want to potentially destroy hundreds of billions of dollars of their citizens' lives, although that isn't totally impossible either.

[Giacomo Casanova]

Ethereum has been incredibly strong in the last few days, the flippening is only matter of time, maybe a few months.

A few facts:
- ETH is getting an increasing adoption in the exchanges in terms of trading pair
- Every dip, people are exiting alt coins to get deep in ETH, regarded as a "safe refuge" during a storm
- Casper/Sharding phase 1 roadmap has been released, speed and scalability will be no longer an issue in the future thanks to the contribution of thousands of developers accross all world
- some governments start to evaluate to build blockchain based on ETH.

Moment to be extremely bullish in ETH as a low risk coin.

[[email protected]]

It really does seem like ETH will soon flip Bitcoin. Bitcoin is on the steady decline and ETH is on the way up. If the Sharding thing works out BTC will be left behind within a couple months

[rottenapple]

You guys are completely leaving out of the equation the fact that while ETH has some nice updates coming out, BTC does so as well. Hence there is no real reason to think the flippening will happen in the near future (next couple of months). And at the same time others like NEO are taking shares of the utility of ETH as a platform, so as always in cryptos, nothing is really certain.

[Samseau]

Behold the genius of ETH's creator:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/commen...aged_with/

[JohnKreese]

(01-30-2018 11:55 AM)Samseau Wrote:  

Behold the genius of ETH's creator:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/commen...aged_with/

I actually prefer this. When it comes to crypto personalities, the more socially awkward, the better.

[RedPillUK]

Lol, he also got annoyed on twitter about moon and lambo memes, seems kind of gamma.

[dasher]

(01-30-2018 11:55 AM)Samseau Wrote:  

Behold the genius of ETH's creator:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/commen...aged_with/

Using his thumb?

[Gas]

(01-30-2018 08:23 AM)rottenapple Wrote:  

You guys are completely leaving out of the equation the fact that while ETH has some nice updates coming out, BTC does so as well. Hence there is no real reason to think the flippening will happen in the near future (next couple of months). And at the same time others like NEO are taking shares of the utility of ETH as a platform, so as always in cryptos, nothing is really certain.

What's happening with BTC?

[whiteknightrises]

Lightning Network (since 2015 lol) and probably some other shit.

Apparently they released the testnet or whatever and people are running some nodes on it and shit but my bets are on ETH (much more dedicated/united team and community)

[Giacomo Casanova]

Ethereum is again the safe haven in this bloody market. Seems like the regulators and governments continue to shoot on bitcoin but in the same time give credits on the technology of blockchain with Ethereum as main actor.
Incredible to see the price that compared to Bitcoin over the 24h is up 10%: flippening is happening.

[MaceTyrell]

Ethereum is down the least of top 10 on a 24 hour basis.

[JayJuanGee]

(02-01-2018 07:33 AM)Giacomo Casanova Wrote:  

Ethereum is again the safe haven in this bloody market. Seems like the regulators and governments continue to shoot on bitcoin but in the same time give credits on the technology of blockchain with Ethereum as main actor.
Incredible to see the price that compared to Bitcoin over the 24h is up 10%: flippening is happening.

Apparently, you can watch such projected upcoming flippening here:


https://www.flippening.watch/

[MaceTyrell]

Not a single post in over 3 weeks, and it is the #2 crypto by market cap. Ethereum is the value play of crypto.

[SamuelBRoberts]

What do you mean?