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Why is bitcoin price surging so high when Ethereum exists and seems like a superior technology? Is it because Ethereum is slower and more expensive?

by nikivi 6y ago

garmaine 6y ago
Ethereum is most definitely not a superior technology stack.
- nikivi 6y ago
  Do you have a link going over the ways in which Bitcoin is superior to Ethereum?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    It’s not even trying to solve the same problem. Bitcoin is a store of value, Ethereum is an universal computer with a Turing-complete language. I personally use Bitcoin because it has a smaller attack surface, and it’s excellent for my needs. The bug in the multisig contract in one of the Ethereum implementations a few years ago was where I decided never to trust Ethereum as a store of value, as multisig is very important for me. Another important difference is that with Bitcoin I can verify the whole blockchain on my computer, with Ethereum it’s much harder. Also the hard forks in Ethereum means that it’s not yet ready to be a store of value.
    - davidmurdoch 6y ago
      To be clear to others, the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) wasn't the problem, it was a smart contract (software that runs on Ethereum) that had a bug.
      - chriswarbo 6y ago
        From my outside perspective, it sounds like Ethereum makes it hard to avoid subtle bugs when writing contracts. Some of its competitors specifically try to avoid this, e.g. https://docs.cardano.org/en/latest/ https://docs.cardano.org/en/latest/
        xiphias2 6y ago
        The most probable language that’s safe enough to be adopted by Bitcoin is Simplicity. It’s based on algebraic data types, tries to be a superset of the Bitcoin scripting language, but still guarantee a verification time that’s linear to the program length (not Turing complete)
      - xiphias2 6y ago
        It was not just that bug that decreased my confidence, but the lack of testing for the smart contract. Even the bug fix commit didn't have any unit tests. We're talking about a type of smart contract that holds billions of dollars for store of value, not some rare edge case. Also for Bitcoin I myself was able to read and verify and understand the whole smart contract code base (a few hundreds of lines altogether in 1 file), which increased my confidence.
      - garmaine 6y ago
        But it's also important to be clear that a complex script large enough to have (critical!) security holes was required to do something as simple and as foundational as multi-sig: the basic building block of all distributed or decentralized protocols. How can possibly expect something more complex to be secure? Bitcoin, on the other hand, builds these core crypto competencies into the base layer, so that scripting can exist purely in the application domain.
  - 627467 6y ago
    Bitcoin ecosystem (so far) is focused in maintaining a secure system with a predictable monetary policy VS ethereum which is trying to do the same and everything else that a global computer is supposed to allow you to do.
  - garmaine 6y ago
    I don't know if there is an excellent writeup out there I can point to; this field is full of a bunch of BS advertisement articles, and a quick google search found nothing worthwhile on either side of the debate. My opinion in the parent post to yours is based on my decade of experience with bitcoin, and having been there every step of the way in its evolution and the birth and erratic journey of Ethereum. In short summary, Bitcoin seeks to provide a secure, stable, no-BS minimal base layer upon which financial contracts of all sorts can be written. The Lightning Network is an example of a smart contract on Bitcoin, one that has been quite stable and secure compared with frothy DAO, ICO, DeFi, or whatever the latest marketing term for smart contracts is in the Ethereum space. Bitcoin adds small, targeted features to the base protocol after a truly intense amount of work goes in to proving their correctness and the way in which they interact with other parts of the base layer. Ethereum chases after whatever the fad of the moment is and crams everything into a gigantic toolbox of everything and the kitchen sink, and makes you use all that complexity for even things as simple as multi-sig and replay protection. To stretch an analogy, Bitcoin is a minimal RISC architecture while Ethereum is x86, with all the history of legacy features and obsolete stuff included. Now your task as a cryptocurrency application engineer is to build a secure protocol that must survive without mercy from attackers. Would you rather do this on x86 or a minimal, proven-correct RISC platform? The choice to me is obvious. Going into the details of why is way more than could possibly fit in a HN comment, however.
capableweb 6y ago
We can argue back and forward which one is the most superior technology but it doesn't matter. Same as with stocks, currencies and more, the price is not set based on technical abilities or superiority, it's set based on what the people who are buying/selling feel the price should be at.
- jgalt212 6y ago
  > t's set based on what the people who are buying/selling feel the price should be at. OK, so what's driving the buyers of bitcoin to be more comfortable with ever higher prices and is that feeling not permeating over to ethereum?
  - capableweb 6y ago
    I put why in my original comment, it's in the part that you quoted. Because of feelings.
qertoip 6y ago
Bitcoin aspires to survive global crackdown, hence laser focus on decentralization, reliability, security, monetary soundness etc. Ethereum aspires to have fun.
- bhaak 6y ago
  Try transferring your magical internet money when there's no infrastructure left. There is a narrow gap where Bitcoin or Gold could potentially be useful if some kind of breakdown happens. But if it's global, you can forget that anybody will be interested in them. Bitcoin as well as Gold are pretty useless in the zombie apocalypse.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - zepto 6y ago
    Gold is actually great in the zombie apocalypse. It’s portable and you can trade it without infrastructure. Unlike Bitcoin. It’s value during a collapse is based on the idea that there will be a future recovery of some kind, but we don’t have to recover very far before gold is good, whereas we need to get back to the level of silicon fabs before Bitcoin can be useful again. If it’s really an ‘apocalypse’ that we can’t recover from, then you only need one bullet.
iamacyborg 6y ago
Tether's printing more fake currency.
chrispeel 6y ago
Bitcoin has much better name recognition, and its supporters clearly see it for what it is (digital gold). It's an easy meme. Even if Ethereum is at present better technology (I think it is), it's also trying to become even more (scaling and PoS and more). That progress has been slow, and has many competitors with great technology. Labeling Ether as "digital oil" gives one useful mental image, but that's certainly not as sexy as "digital gold". I attribute the continued market cap dominance of Bitcoin over Ether almost entirely to Bitcoin being (at least for now) a better meme.
kordlessagain 6y ago
While complicated, Bitcoin's implementation isn't nearly as complicated as Ethereum's. The main reason might be attributed to the fact Bitcoin scripts don't have for loops and Ethereum does allow looping and other more complicated operations. That Ethereum seems superior is just an effect of marketing and language around their scene. It helps they have people who can quickly say seemingly smart things (think GPT-3) that no sane person can parse in a short amount of time to arrive at knowledge. The system is overly complicated for a single individual to understand and trust easily. It may well be very difficult or impossible to tell if a given contract is secure or not. In reality, there are very few mainstream "killer" use cases being served by Ethereum, although they do entertain themselves by trying to "break" each other's contracts. The most famous case was when the authors of Ethereum rolled back the chain to get their own coins back from a clever "hacker". The fact is, that individual followed the rules and still lost the coin they were due them by contract! That's not happened with Bitcoin, at least on mainchain.
- drchopchop 6y ago
  Additionally, Ethereum has positioned itself as a "platform" for all kinds of terrible altcoins, which cleverly makes itself seem more foundational.
sktrdie 6y ago
I also think Bitcoin is limited in quantity much more than Ethereum? Making it more scarce. But not 100% sure about this.

Why is bitcoin price surging so high when Ethereum exists and seems like a superior technology? Is it because Ethereum is slower and more expensive?

by nikivi 6y ago

Why is bitcoin price surging so high when Ethereum exists and seems like a superior technology? Is it because Ethereum is slower and more expensive?

garmaine 6y ago

Ethereum is most definitely not a superior technology stack.

nikivi 6y ago
Do you have a link going over the ways in which Bitcoin is superior to Ethereum?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- xiphias2 6y ago
  It’s not even trying to solve the same problem. Bitcoin is a store of value, Ethereum is an universal computer with a Turing-complete language. I personally use Bitcoin because it has a smaller attack surface, and it’s excellent for my needs. The bug in the multisig contract in one of the Ethereum implementations a few years ago was where I decided never to trust Ethereum as a store of value, as multisig is very important for me. Another important difference is that with Bitcoin I can verify the whole blockchain on my computer, with Ethereum it’s much harder. Also the hard forks in Ethereum means that it’s not yet ready to be a store of value.
  - davidmurdoch 6y ago
    To be clear to others, the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) wasn't the problem, it was a smart contract (software that runs on Ethereum) that had a bug.
    - chriswarbo 6y ago
      From my outside perspective, it sounds like Ethereum makes it hard to avoid subtle bugs when writing contracts. Some of its competitors specifically try to avoid this, e.g. https://docs.cardano.org/en/latest/ https://docs.cardano.org/en/latest/
      - xiphias2 6y ago
        The most probable language that’s safe enough to be adopted by Bitcoin is Simplicity. It’s based on algebraic data types, tries to be a superset of the Bitcoin scripting language, but still guarantee a verification time that’s linear to the program length (not Turing complete)
    - xiphias2 6y ago
      It was not just that bug that decreased my confidence, but the lack of testing for the smart contract. Even the bug fix commit didn't have any unit tests. We're talking about a type of smart contract that holds billions of dollars for store of value, not some rare edge case. Also for Bitcoin I myself was able to read and verify and understand the whole smart contract code base (a few hundreds of lines altogether in 1 file), which increased my confidence.
    - garmaine 6y ago
      But it's also important to be clear that a complex script large enough to have (critical!) security holes was required to do something as simple and as foundational as multi-sig: the basic building block of all distributed or decentralized protocols. How can possibly expect something more complex to be secure? Bitcoin, on the other hand, builds these core crypto competencies into the base layer, so that scripting can exist purely in the application domain.
- 627467 6y ago
  Bitcoin ecosystem (so far) is focused in maintaining a secure system with a predictable monetary policy VS ethereum which is trying to do the same and everything else that a global computer is supposed to allow you to do.
- garmaine 6y ago
  I don't know if there is an excellent writeup out there I can point to; this field is full of a bunch of BS advertisement articles, and a quick google search found nothing worthwhile on either side of the debate. My opinion in the parent post to yours is based on my decade of experience with bitcoin, and having been there every step of the way in its evolution and the birth and erratic journey of Ethereum. In short summary, Bitcoin seeks to provide a secure, stable, no-BS minimal base layer upon which financial contracts of all sorts can be written. The Lightning Network is an example of a smart contract on Bitcoin, one that has been quite stable and secure compared with frothy DAO, ICO, DeFi, or whatever the latest marketing term for smart contracts is in the Ethereum space. Bitcoin adds small, targeted features to the base protocol after a truly intense amount of work goes in to proving their correctness and the way in which they interact with other parts of the base layer. Ethereum chases after whatever the fad of the moment is and crams everything into a gigantic toolbox of everything and the kitchen sink, and makes you use all that complexity for even things as simple as multi-sig and replay protection. To stretch an analogy, Bitcoin is a minimal RISC architecture while Ethereum is x86, with all the history of legacy features and obsolete stuff included. Now your task as a cryptocurrency application engineer is to build a secure protocol that must survive without mercy from attackers. Would you rather do this on x86 or a minimal, proven-correct RISC platform? The choice to me is obvious. Going into the details of why is way more than could possibly fit in a HN comment, however.

capableweb 6y ago

We can argue back and forward which one is the most superior technology but it doesn't matter. Same as with stocks, currencies and more, the price is not set based on technical abilities or superiority, it's set based on what the people who are buying/selling feel the price should be at.

jgalt212 6y ago
> t's set based on what the people who are buying/selling feel the price should be at. OK, so what's driving the buyers of bitcoin to be more comfortable with ever higher prices and is that feeling not permeating over to ethereum?
- capableweb 6y ago
  I put why in my original comment, it's in the part that you quoted. Because of feelings.

qertoip 6y ago

Bitcoin aspires to survive global crackdown, hence laser focus on decentralization, reliability, security, monetary soundness etc. Ethereum aspires to have fun.

bhaak 6y ago
Try transferring your magical internet money when there's no infrastructure left. There is a narrow gap where Bitcoin or Gold could potentially be useful if some kind of breakdown happens. But if it's global, you can forget that anybody will be interested in them. Bitcoin as well as Gold are pretty useless in the zombie apocalypse.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- zepto 6y ago
  Gold is actually great in the zombie apocalypse. It’s portable and you can trade it without infrastructure. Unlike Bitcoin. It’s value during a collapse is based on the idea that there will be a future recovery of some kind, but we don’t have to recover very far before gold is good, whereas we need to get back to the level of silicon fabs before Bitcoin can be useful again. If it’s really an ‘apocalypse’ that we can’t recover from, then you only need one bullet.

iamacyborg 6y ago

Tether's printing more fake currency.

chrispeel 6y ago

Bitcoin has much better name recognition, and its supporters clearly see it for what it is (digital gold). It's an easy meme. Even if Ethereum is at present better technology (I think it is), it's also trying to become even more (scaling and PoS and more). That progress has been slow, and has many competitors with great technology. Labeling Ether as "digital oil" gives one useful mental image, but that's certainly not as sexy as "digital gold". I attribute the continued market cap dominance of Bitcoin over Ether almost entirely to Bitcoin being (at least for now) a better meme.

kordlessagain 6y ago

While complicated, Bitcoin's implementation isn't nearly as complicated as Ethereum's. The main reason might be attributed to the fact Bitcoin scripts don't have for loops and Ethereum does allow looping and other more complicated operations. That Ethereum seems superior is just an effect of marketing and language around their scene. It helps they have people who can quickly say seemingly smart things (think GPT-3) that no sane person can parse in a short amount of time to arrive at knowledge. The system is overly complicated for a single individual to understand and trust easily. It may well be very difficult or impossible to tell if a given contract is secure or not. In reality, there are very few mainstream "killer" use cases being served by Ethereum, although they do entertain themselves by trying to "break" each other's contracts. The most famous case was when the authors of Ethereum rolled back the chain to get their own coins back from a clever "hacker". The fact is, that individual followed the rules and still lost the coin they were due them by contract! That's not happened with Bitcoin, at least on mainchain.

drchopchop 6y ago
Additionally, Ethereum has positioned itself as a "platform" for all kinds of terrible altcoins, which cleverly makes itself seem more foundational.

sktrdie 6y ago

I also think Bitcoin is limited in quantity much more than Ethereum? Making it more scarce. But not 100% sure about this.