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I think Ethereum is much more technically interesting and has more capable leadership. I'm surprised the rise in ETH has been so muted comparatively. Any conjec

I think Ethereum is much more technically interesting and has more capable leadership. I'm surprised the rise in ETH has been so muted comparatively. Any conjectures?

santiagobasulto 6y ago
Not an expert. But for me the most important factor is that Bitcoin’s supply is limited, whilst Eth’s is unlimited.
- djohnston 6y ago
  Is is? I thought they both ran on similar deflationary policies related to diminishing block rewards
  - capnorange 6y ago
    Ethereum operates on "Minimum viable issuance" so unlike Bitcoin there is no hard cap. Eth wont be deflationary until EIP-1559, maybe never.
    - intotheabyss 6y ago
      It's not like Bitcoin has a hardcap in any of our lifetimes. Coin yearly inflation is the metric people should be concerned about. BTC is less than 2%, whereas Ethereum is around 4% today. With PoS, this figure will drop to <2%, so equivalent to Bitcoin. The whole "ETH supply is infinite" is such a lame argument. It's not infinite, because your life isn't infinite. It has a finite yearly inflation, just like Bitcoin.
      - alwillis 6y ago
        BTC is less than 2%, whereas Ethereum is around 4% today Let's not forget Bitcoin's block subsidy (currently 6.25 BTC) is cut in half every 210,000 blocks or about every 4 years. Bitcoin is deflationary—88.44% of all Bitcoin that will ever be produced have already been issued. We have no idea where Eth is with its production of currency.
      - capnorange 6y ago
        > It's not like Bitcoin has a hardcap in any of our lifetimes. You must be a EMH denier :) > ETH supply is infinite I never claimed that ETH supply is infinite, just that the issuance is unpredictable.
christiansakai 6y ago
ETH is still undergoing migrations, which will be completed in 2 years. I expect ETH to be muted for a while.
unnouinceput 6y ago
Because is also much more technically complex than Bitcoin. Also none of them are solving real problems, but ETH has the capability to become that with DApps, once the current generation of politicians die and the next one, that is more technically capable will replace them. Going to be at least another decade before that happen though.
- alwillis 6y ago
  Also none of them are solving real problems, but ETH has the capability to become that with DApps… The problem Bitcoin solves is creating a non-sovereign store of value that can't be manipulated/inflated by governments and central banks. That's a problem worth solving. Bitcoin started with smart contracts on day one, but the focus has been on robustness. However, there's plenty of work going on with layer 2 and side chains to for DApps, etc. https://blockstream.com/2020/10/22/en-blockstream-amp-issue-securities-stablecoins-attested-assets-and-more/ https://blockstream.com/2020/10/22/en-blockstream-amp-issue-...
rusty__ 6y ago
Cardano is an even more interesting prospect to me.
saalweachter 6y ago
I can make three conjectures off the top of my head: 1. Bitcoin has some sort of "first mover" advantage which gives it a critical number of investors/PR that allows it to keep trading high, and no other coin will ever be able to catch up to it. 2. Bitcoin is actually technically superior to other coins, and it won't be supplanted until whatever the special sauce is, is replicated. 3. Something is hinky in the Bitcoin markets, eg, Tether, and this explains its divergence from other coins.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  Does Tether have a direct relationship with Bitcoin in a way that for example Ethereum doesn't? I was under the impression that all places that trade USDT do so with all major cryptocurrencies.
- 4AoZqrH2fsk5UB 6y ago
  Re: technically superior Can you elaborate? I was under the impression that it had notable failings, including privacy, compared to something like Monero
  - saalweachter 6y ago
    Shit, I don't know; I'm conjecturing here.
  - lccarrasco 6y ago
    Lower privacy can be a failing from a consumer point of view, but an advantage for regulated businesses.
    - meowster 6y ago
      Don't businesses like keeping their financials private? (At least that's what I learned in a business class 20 years ago.) Perkins Coie released a report [0] saying that privacy coins are compatible with regulation. [0] https://www.perkinscoie.com/en/news-insights/anti-money-laundering-regulation-of-privacy-enabling-cryptocurrencies.html https://www.perkinscoie.com/en/news-insights/anti-money-laun...
lordnacho 6y ago
Simple guess is that the institutions that are getting into the space are going to be conservative and dip their toes in the better known coin first.
zorked 6y ago
And OS/2 was better than Windows. Technical superiority doesn't matter. And to be fair Ethereum has more scalability problems than Bitcoin.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
didericis 6y ago
It’s too unstable and there was too much hype. I believe they proposed the essentials of 2.0 years ago, and there were a lot of tutorials and workshops related to dapps that made it sound like a scalable, global compute network was just on the horizon. Between that and the fork after the DAO got hacked, I’ve personally been staying away from it until 2.0 proves itself (phase 0 just came out this month). I agree it’s very technically interesting, and think they’re responsible for the bulk of the innovation in the crypto space (them and monero for advances in privacy), but I don’t follow crypto super close/there might be others pushing the same ideas or better ideas in better ways.
capnorange 6y ago
Bitcoin has enough dev power to implement any feature, the gatekeepers are the people running the node and to a smaller extent the developers and miners. There is a reason Bitcoin just is.
- djohnston 6y ago
  Do they though? As I understand it bitcoin has fundamental limitations that mean it will never be a distributed computer like ETH.
  - capnorange 6y ago
    Bitcoin is like any other software, the limitation is only on a social level. If it's a breaking change, you would need to convince enough people to migrate to Bitcoin2(similar to what's happening in ETH right now).
aazaa 6y ago
> has more capable leadership Have you considered the possibility that this is a bug, not a feature?
ur-whale 6y ago
>'m surprised the rise in ETH has been so muted comparatively. Well, there's the fact that Ethereum supply isn't finite. As a matter of fact, from a practical point of view, it's pretty much anyone's guess what the issuance's rate is (there is an algorithm buried somewhere in the code, but whenever you ask an ETH acolyte how many more ETH there will be in existence in X months, I've never gotten a straight answer).
ur-whale 6y ago
>I'm surprised the rise in ETH has been so muted comparatively. Any conjectures? ETH has been known to fork to change the blockchain and eradicate some transactions the leadership didn't like (see the DAO story). That may be a good thing in some people's book. In the Bitcoin world, this kind of thing is not very popular.
- bouncycastle 6y ago
  Bitcoin also has eradicated some transactions that the leadership didn't like. See the "Value overflow incident" of 2010, which was fixed with human intervention which ultimately rolled back 53 blocks through a soft-fork. Anyways, both this and theDAO incidents are far away in the past now.
qertoip 6y ago
Bitcoin aspires to survive global crackdown, hence laser focus on decentralization, reliability, security, monetary soundness etc. Ethereum aspires to have fun.
markkat 6y ago
As evidenced by the replies here, most people don't understand Ethereum, much less what is being done with Ethereum atm. Most people still don't know what DeFi means, or know that Ethereum has more nodes, processes more transactions per day, has thousands of more devs building with it, that real estate shares are issued on it (https://realt.co/ https://realt.co/), or that tokenized digital art is selling for millions on Ethereum (https://usaherald.com/beeple-an-iconic-digital-artist-sells-his-nft-collection-for-an-all-time-high-of-3-5-million/ https://usaherald.com/beeple-an-iconic-digital-artist-sells-...). etc. Most don't know that $2.3B (0.62%) of BTC is locked in custody to be traded as an Ethereum token (https://defipulse.com/wbtc https://defipulse.com/wbtc) as to get access to financial istruments built on Ethereum. Eventually this will be common knowledge, but it isn't yet. It's early days.
- atomi 6y ago
  No, we get it. DeFi is being able to trade unregulated equities or lend on their collateral on decentralized exchanges with transactions guaranteed by code. In other words, it's for degens that think avoiding taxes on shitcoin trading is peak crypto. There are other interesting things on blockchains that can be done outside of decentralized finance. But trading shitcoins is what people are getting off on right now. It reminds me of how porn is almost always first in new technology adoption.
cwkoss 6y ago
Ethereum software development has many perilous foot guns. Last time I looked, it's nearly impossible for a technical investor to validate the code in a contract themselves, because the compiled code from human readable languages produces hard-to-read machine code non-deterministically.

I think Ethereum is much more technically interesting and has more capable leadership. I'm surprised the rise in ETH has been so muted comparatively. Any conjectures?

santiagobasulto 6y ago

Not an expert. But for me the most important factor is that Bitcoin’s supply is limited, whilst Eth’s is unlimited.

djohnston 6y ago
Is is? I thought they both ran on similar deflationary policies related to diminishing block rewards
- capnorange 6y ago
  Ethereum operates on "Minimum viable issuance" so unlike Bitcoin there is no hard cap. Eth wont be deflationary until EIP-1559, maybe never.
  - intotheabyss 6y ago
    It's not like Bitcoin has a hardcap in any of our lifetimes. Coin yearly inflation is the metric people should be concerned about. BTC is less than 2%, whereas Ethereum is around 4% today. With PoS, this figure will drop to <2%, so equivalent to Bitcoin. The whole "ETH supply is infinite" is such a lame argument. It's not infinite, because your life isn't infinite. It has a finite yearly inflation, just like Bitcoin.
    - alwillis 6y ago
      BTC is less than 2%, whereas Ethereum is around 4% today Let's not forget Bitcoin's block subsidy (currently 6.25 BTC) is cut in half every 210,000 blocks or about every 4 years. Bitcoin is deflationary—88.44% of all Bitcoin that will ever be produced have already been issued. We have no idea where Eth is with its production of currency.
    - capnorange 6y ago
      > It's not like Bitcoin has a hardcap in any of our lifetimes. You must be a EMH denier :) > ETH supply is infinite I never claimed that ETH supply is infinite, just that the issuance is unpredictable.

christiansakai 6y ago

ETH is still undergoing migrations, which will be completed in 2 years. I expect ETH to be muted for a while.

unnouinceput 6y ago

Because is also much more technically complex than Bitcoin. Also none of them are solving real problems, but ETH has the capability to become that with DApps, once the current generation of politicians die and the next one, that is more technically capable will replace them. Going to be at least another decade before that happen though.

alwillis 6y ago
Also none of them are solving real problems, but ETH has the capability to become that with DApps… The problem Bitcoin solves is creating a non-sovereign store of value that can't be manipulated/inflated by governments and central banks. That's a problem worth solving. Bitcoin started with smart contracts on day one, but the focus has been on robustness. However, there's plenty of work going on with layer 2 and side chains to for DApps, etc. https://blockstream.com/2020/10/22/en-blockstream-amp-issue-securities-stablecoins-attested-assets-and-more/ https://blockstream.com/2020/10/22/en-blockstream-amp-issue-...

rusty__ 6y ago

Cardano is an even more interesting prospect to me.

saalweachter 6y ago

I can make three conjectures off the top of my head: 1. Bitcoin has some sort of "first mover" advantage which gives it a critical number of investors/PR that allows it to keep trading high, and no other coin will ever be able to catch up to it. 2. Bitcoin is actually technically superior to other coins, and it won't be supplanted until whatever the special sauce is, is replicated. 3. Something is hinky in the Bitcoin markets, eg, Tether, and this explains its divergence from other coins.

londons_explore 6y ago
Does Tether have a direct relationship with Bitcoin in a way that for example Ethereum doesn't? I was under the impression that all places that trade USDT do so with all major cryptocurrencies.
4AoZqrH2fsk5UB 6y ago
Re: technically superior Can you elaborate? I was under the impression that it had notable failings, including privacy, compared to something like Monero
- saalweachter 6y ago
  Shit, I don't know; I'm conjecturing here.
- lccarrasco 6y ago
  Lower privacy can be a failing from a consumer point of view, but an advantage for regulated businesses.
  - meowster 6y ago
    Don't businesses like keeping their financials private? (At least that's what I learned in a business class 20 years ago.) Perkins Coie released a report [0] saying that privacy coins are compatible with regulation. [0] https://www.perkinscoie.com/en/news-insights/anti-money-laundering-regulation-of-privacy-enabling-cryptocurrencies.html https://www.perkinscoie.com/en/news-insights/anti-money-laun...

lordnacho 6y ago

Simple guess is that the institutions that are getting into the space are going to be conservative and dip their toes in the better known coin first.

zorked 6y ago

And OS/2 was better than Windows. Technical superiority doesn't matter. And to be fair Ethereum has more scalability problems than Bitcoin.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

didericis 6y ago

It’s too unstable and there was too much hype. I believe they proposed the essentials of 2.0 years ago, and there were a lot of tutorials and workshops related to dapps that made it sound like a scalable, global compute network was just on the horizon. Between that and the fork after the DAO got hacked, I’ve personally been staying away from it until 2.0 proves itself (phase 0 just came out this month). I agree it’s very technically interesting, and think they’re responsible for the bulk of the innovation in the crypto space (them and monero for advances in privacy), but I don’t follow crypto super close/there might be others pushing the same ideas or better ideas in better ways.

capnorange 6y ago

Bitcoin has enough dev power to implement any feature, the gatekeepers are the people running the node and to a smaller extent the developers and miners. There is a reason Bitcoin just is.

djohnston 6y ago
Do they though? As I understand it bitcoin has fundamental limitations that mean it will never be a distributed computer like ETH.
- capnorange 6y ago
  Bitcoin is like any other software, the limitation is only on a social level. If it's a breaking change, you would need to convince enough people to migrate to Bitcoin2(similar to what's happening in ETH right now).

aazaa 6y ago

> has more capable leadership Have you considered the possibility that this is a bug, not a feature?

ur-whale 6y ago

>'m surprised the rise in ETH has been so muted comparatively. Well, there's the fact that Ethereum supply isn't finite. As a matter of fact, from a practical point of view, it's pretty much anyone's guess what the issuance's rate is (there is an algorithm buried somewhere in the code, but whenever you ask an ETH acolyte how many more ETH there will be in existence in X months, I've never gotten a straight answer).

ur-whale 6y ago

>I'm surprised the rise in ETH has been so muted comparatively. Any conjectures? ETH has been known to fork to change the blockchain and eradicate some transactions the leadership didn't like (see the DAO story). That may be a good thing in some people's book. In the Bitcoin world, this kind of thing is not very popular.

bouncycastle 6y ago
Bitcoin also has eradicated some transactions that the leadership didn't like. See the "Value overflow incident" of 2010, which was fixed with human intervention which ultimately rolled back 53 blocks through a soft-fork. Anyways, both this and theDAO incidents are far away in the past now.

qertoip 6y ago

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

markkat 6y ago

As evidenced by the replies here, most people don't understand Ethereum, much less what is being done with Ethereum atm. Most people still don't know what DeFi means, or know that Ethereum has more nodes, processes more transactions per day, has thousands of more devs building with it, that real estate shares are issued on it (https://realt.co/ https://realt.co/), or that tokenized digital art is selling for millions on Ethereum (https://usaherald.com/beeple-an-iconic-digital-artist-sells-his-nft-collection-for-an-all-time-high-of-3-5-million/ https://usaherald.com/beeple-an-iconic-digital-artist-sells-...). etc. Most don't know that $2.3B (0.62%) of BTC is locked in custody to be traded as an Ethereum token (https://defipulse.com/wbtc https://defipulse.com/wbtc) as to get access to financial istruments built on Ethereum. Eventually this will be common knowledge, but it isn't yet. It's early days.

atomi 6y ago
No, we get it. DeFi is being able to trade unregulated equities or lend on their collateral on decentralized exchanges with transactions guaranteed by code. In other words, it's for degens that think avoiding taxes on shitcoin trading is peak crypto. There are other interesting things on blockchains that can be done outside of decentralized finance. But trading shitcoins is what people are getting off on right now. It reminds me of how porn is almost always first in new technology adoption.

cwkoss 6y ago

Ethereum software development has many perilous foot guns. Last time I looked, it's nearly impossible for a technical investor to validate the code in a contract themselves, because the compiled code from human readable languages produces hard-to-read machine code non-deterministically.