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Ethereum is interesting. Ether as currency is a disaster waiting to happen. https://medium.com/startup-grind/i-was-wrong-about-ethereum-804c9a906d36 https://m

Ethereum is interesting. Ether as currency is a disaster waiting to happen. https://medium.com/startup-grind/i-was-wrong-about-ethereum-804c9a906d36 https://medium.com/startup-grind/i-was-wrong-about-ethereum-... People are speculating on it because they have confused companies using the technology as using the currency itself.

lmilcin 9y ago
This is called market inefficiency. Don't fret, there will be a lesson or two and companies will catch up in understanding what this is about, exactly.
Diti 9y ago
Your article doesn't mention the other uses of smart contracts, of Swarm, and of Whisper. The article is embarrassingly one-sided in terms of arguments. (Disclosure: I bought ETH one month ago for development using these 3 tools).
- lawless123 9y ago
  I seen it's use of smart contracts with the DAO.. now that was embarrassing.
DennisP 9y ago
I watched the Enterprise Ethereum conference. They're using private chains for scalability and privacy, but hope to migrate a lot of their work to the public chain in a couple years. They think zksnarks, proof of stake, and at least the basic sharding plan will all work. In the meantime they're being careful to stay compatible, and contributing development resources to the public project. JP Morgan is working on an open source client that bridges private chains with public. Even using the public chain doesn't mean they're using ETH, but lots of startups on the public chain aren't using it either; nevertheless ETH seems to be maintaining its position as the dominant Ethereum currency, and it will play a unique role in proof of stake.
hrkristian 9y ago
Isn't this exactly what people were saying about BitCoin as well? BitCoin has a genuine inherent worth now and while it's still not nearly large enough to fend off crashes, it's there and it's growing. I don't see the argument for why Ethereum is different in this respect. Perhaps I'm just not getting the real point of the linked article?
- rsynnott 9y ago
  > BitCoin has a genuine inherent worth now Does it? Why? I mean, people currently want to buy it, but then in the early to mid noughties people wanted to buy securitised junk mortgages; simply having a potentially temporary demand does not mean it has an _inherent_ worth. If anything, it has less of a worth than before, in that its "success" has made it largely useless for actual transactions. Look at the current costs to actually get anything through; it's stormed past SEPA and threatening to hit Western Union levels of expense (it's already exceeded Western Union and friends for small transactions). What is it _for_?
  - Eerie 9y ago
    >simply having a potentially temporary demand does not mean it has an _inherent_ worth. Just to serve as devil's advocate here: Nothing has an inherent worth, unless you postulate the existence of "worth" as an immaterial label, like "soul". BitCoin clearly has worth to some people right now. They keep buying it.
    - rsynnott 9y ago
      Sure, but with most things, there is demand for them either because owning them yields dividends (stocks) or because they are required for doing something else (commodities); the demand is based on utility. Bitcoin obviously doesn't pay dividends, and is increasingly useless due to the ludicrous transaction fees, so it increasingly looks like the value is being driven mostly by speculation/expectation of capital gain. This is, historically, unsafe.
      - 9y ago

lmilcin 9y ago

This is called market inefficiency. Don't fret, there will be a lesson or two and companies will catch up in understanding what this is about, exactly.

Diti 9y ago

Your article doesn't mention the other uses of smart contracts, of Swarm, and of Whisper. The article is embarrassingly one-sided in terms of arguments. (Disclosure: I bought ETH one month ago for development using these 3 tools).

lawless123 9y ago
I seen it's use of smart contracts with the DAO.. now that was embarrassing.

DennisP 9y ago

I watched the Enterprise Ethereum conference. They're using private chains for scalability and privacy, but hope to migrate a lot of their work to the public chain in a couple years. They think zksnarks, proof of stake, and at least the basic sharding plan will all work. In the meantime they're being careful to stay compatible, and contributing development resources to the public project. JP Morgan is working on an open source client that bridges private chains with public. Even using the public chain doesn't mean they're using ETH, but lots of startups on the public chain aren't using it either; nevertheless ETH seems to be maintaining its position as the dominant Ethereum currency, and it will play a unique role in proof of stake.

hrkristian 9y ago

Isn't this exactly what people were saying about BitCoin as well? BitCoin has a genuine inherent worth now and while it's still not nearly large enough to fend off crashes, it's there and it's growing. I don't see the argument for why Ethereum is different in this respect. Perhaps I'm just not getting the real point of the linked article?

rsynnott 9y ago
> BitCoin has a genuine inherent worth now Does it? Why? I mean, people currently want to buy it, but then in the early to mid noughties people wanted to buy securitised junk mortgages; simply having a potentially temporary demand does not mean it has an _inherent_ worth. If anything, it has less of a worth than before, in that its "success" has made it largely useless for actual transactions. Look at the current costs to actually get anything through; it's stormed past SEPA and threatening to hit Western Union levels of expense (it's already exceeded Western Union and friends for small transactions). What is it _for_?
- Eerie 9y ago
  >simply having a potentially temporary demand does not mean it has an _inherent_ worth. Just to serve as devil's advocate here: Nothing has an inherent worth, unless you postulate the existence of "worth" as an immaterial label, like "soul". BitCoin clearly has worth to some people right now. They keep buying it.
  - rsynnott 9y ago
    Sure, but with most things, there is demand for them either because owning them yields dividends (stocks) or because they are required for doing something else (commodities); the demand is based on utility. Bitcoin obviously doesn't pay dividends, and is increasingly useless due to the ludicrous transaction fees, so it increasingly looks like the value is being driven mostly by speculation/expectation of capital gain. This is, historically, unsafe.
    - 9y ago