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As much as I like Ethereum, it is not as "sticky" of a brand name as Bitcoin is. A lot of us that are deep into this space already see all the nuances, but the

As much as I like Ethereum, it is not as "sticky" of a brand name as Bitcoin is. A lot of us that are deep into this space already see all the nuances, but there's a fat tail of people out there who are only just warming up to the idea that Bitcoin is not a scam. They're not quite ready to make the jump to Ethereum and smart contracts. Admittedly, most of these folks are the older generation that are not "digitally native" (i.e. millennials and younger). "Bitcoin" conjures a physical, visual image. That golden coin image with the "B" logo. Ethereum has chosen, for better or worse, a more ethereal representation for itself that I think is tougher for people to grasp. Remember when the internet was such a new concept that no one knew how to describe it? What did they call it? An information superhighway. Bitcoin achieves this in its brand name. At any rate, that's my theory for why it sticks so much better than Ethereum, and it's harder for people to remember ETH the first time they hear it than Bitcoin.

brightball 6y ago
You’re not wrong, but it’s only a matter of time until it’s use is widespread enough to become common.
- wsinks 6y ago
  If you want to help it stick, just abbreviate it as "ETH" and pronounce it "eeth". Ethereum can be a challenging word for non-native speakers, and shortening your words will help you save time when you talk about it. Bitcoin is a better name because it combines a new concept with an old concept. "Bit" + "Coin". Or maybe the new answer is to call ETH "Eeth-coin". What do you think?
  - brightball 6y ago
    I personally would go with ETH and Ethereum because everything else is some flavor of the week “coin”. Adding coin to anything but Bitcoin comes off as just another money printing scheme.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    I like the convention of calling the currency "Ether" (pronounced ee-ther).
  - devmunchies 6y ago
    YEah i like eeth. that B that bitcoin uses really does have a good parallel to fiat currencies. needs a symbol too. an E with a line like $1,800USD per Ɇ1
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      Ξ is the symbol most folks use for ETH. Some use: ♦
mulmen 6y ago
As an older millennial it is alarming to me that the generation that invented and built the internet (boomers) are dismissed as not understanding it. > Remember when the internet was such a new concept that no one knew how to describe it? What did they call it? An information superhighway. This is exactly the thought I have had recently. In my humble opinion in 20 years we may consider a phrase like “crypto” to be antiquated. This time is exciting because we don’t know what happens next. Or said another way, blockchain is to Millennials what the internet was to Boomers.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Haha, certainly there were some brilliant boomers that built the internet, but the vast majority of boomers missed on the biggest applications of the internet. I used to sell cell phones to boomers back in the early 00's. It was difficult to sell them on more than an emergency plan and then to get them to make the leap further that they needed a wireless internet plan? They thought it was a toy that they didn't need. Now, of course, they all have iPhones, but in the early days it was a tough sell. I would say my generation never even questioned the value of having a cell phone or an internet connection or texting.
  - mulmen 6y ago
    Ok but was that unreasonable at the time? My dad is a boomer and eagerly adopted technology into his business at that time. I can think of many examples of this. How many boomer parents of millennials provided us with computers and Internet access? Maybe I’m just sensitive to the ageism but I don’t buy in to these generational stereotypes.
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      It's not an insult. But there is fundamentally different worldviews that form based on the time you were brought up in, and these worldviews persist as "memes" across the population. Of course there were savvy boomers that understood some or most of the implications of the internet, and will readily purchase the latest game console and are interacting with DeFi already...but my experience as a former computer technician and cell phone salesperson is that broadly speaking, that generation learns and experiments with technology at a slower rate. For boomers, network television and radio were the primary forms of entertainment in their formulative years. Because PCs either didn't exist or were so expensive and hard to use, very few boomers grew up with this stuff. It's like being a native speaker of a language. You master the language in a way that is very difficult for non-native speakers to achieve. That's nothing on "non-native" speakers of a language, but it's just that your earliest years shape how you think and use these tools and that's hard to overcome. @mulmen - can't reply to your thread below, but understand that these generational differences are broadly recognized and apparent in consumer behavior and well-documented. I'm not making up the generation gap with regards to digital technology. The fact that people close to you happened to be savvy with tech (were they mining BTC in 2011? were they crowdfunding Oculus in 2012? were they on Instagram in 2010? did they do a startup during the mobile boom?) doesn't discount broad demographic trends. Like the example I used above, the existence of non-native speakers that speak perfect English does not discount that fact that vast majority of people that learn a language past childhood struggle to develop that mastery. PCs did not reach mainstream adoption until the 90s. For boomers, they were already in their late 30s to 50s by the time this happened. You can even see this example in the cryptocurrency space. How many bloggers, podcasters, developers, etc in the blockchain space are boomers? Relatively few compared to their representation of the world population. This space has been largely driven by younger generations. That's a fair statement.
woah 6y ago
Bitcoin has gotten the biggest free ride ever from Ethereum. 2 bull cycles now have been driven by increasing usage on Ethereum (icos in 2017, and now DeFi and NFTs), while Bitcoin absorbs most of the dumb money who hears about “blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin” in the news.
- rawtxapp 6y ago
  Bitcoin is the reason we have Ethereum in the first place, so I'm not sure if your statement is fair. ICOs were a pump-and-dump fad. DeFi is proving to be useful and there are already DeFi projects coming up on Bitcoin (rsk, sovryn) and the jury is still out on NFTs.
  - suikadayo 6y ago
    That’s kinda what we heard about Lightning and payments, but we can currently see that there’s more BTC on Ethereum, than there is BTC on Lightning according to http://btconethereum.com http://btconethereum.com. I doubt there’ll be any significant value locked in RSK/Sovyrn, when most of the liquidity is on Ethereum. Plus, it’ll take time for BTC developers to learn Solidity, and most of the DeFi network effect will be on Ethereum and other EVM compatible chains.
    - rawtxapp 6y ago
      I agree with you on the network effects of eth having most developer mindshare, but one thing to keep in mind about lightning is that a lot of end-user channels are private, so if you're just counting the number of channels or liquidity locked up on lightning as growth, you won't see the full-picture.
  - randomopining 6y ago
    Check out STX - Stacks on bitcoin as well
  - woah 6y ago
    The Bitcoin smart contract landscape is impoverished. Rsk is a custodial service which has somehow convinced people it is "on Bitcoin". When you use Rsk, your Bitcoins are held by these 11 companies: https://www.rsk.co/powpeg/ https://www.rsk.co/powpeg/ (their private keys are held in a special "tamper-proof" box).

brightball 6y ago

You’re not wrong, but it’s only a matter of time until it’s use is widespread enough to become common.

wsinks 6y ago
If you want to help it stick, just abbreviate it as "ETH" and pronounce it "eeth". Ethereum can be a challenging word for non-native speakers, and shortening your words will help you save time when you talk about it. Bitcoin is a better name because it combines a new concept with an old concept. "Bit" + "Coin". Or maybe the new answer is to call ETH "Eeth-coin". What do you think?
- brightball 6y ago
  I personally would go with ETH and Ethereum because everything else is some flavor of the week “coin”. Adding coin to anything but Bitcoin comes off as just another money printing scheme.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  I like the convention of calling the currency "Ether" (pronounced ee-ther).
- devmunchies 6y ago
  YEah i like eeth. that B that bitcoin uses really does have a good parallel to fiat currencies. needs a symbol too. an E with a line like $1,800USD per Ɇ1
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    Ξ is the symbol most folks use for ETH. Some use: ♦

mulmen 6y ago

As an older millennial it is alarming to me that the generation that invented and built the internet (boomers) are dismissed as not understanding it. > Remember when the internet was such a new concept that no one knew how to describe it? What did they call it? An information superhighway. This is exactly the thought I have had recently. In my humble opinion in 20 years we may consider a phrase like “crypto” to be antiquated. This time is exciting because we don’t know what happens next. Or said another way, blockchain is to Millennials what the internet was to Boomers.

chrisco255 6y ago
Haha, certainly there were some brilliant boomers that built the internet, but the vast majority of boomers missed on the biggest applications of the internet. I used to sell cell phones to boomers back in the early 00's. It was difficult to sell them on more than an emergency plan and then to get them to make the leap further that they needed a wireless internet plan? They thought it was a toy that they didn't need. Now, of course, they all have iPhones, but in the early days it was a tough sell. I would say my generation never even questioned the value of having a cell phone or an internet connection or texting.
- mulmen 6y ago
  Ok but was that unreasonable at the time? My dad is a boomer and eagerly adopted technology into his business at that time. I can think of many examples of this. How many boomer parents of millennials provided us with computers and Internet access? Maybe I’m just sensitive to the ageism but I don’t buy in to these generational stereotypes.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    It's not an insult. But there is fundamentally different worldviews that form based on the time you were brought up in, and these worldviews persist as "memes" across the population. Of course there were savvy boomers that understood some or most of the implications of the internet, and will readily purchase the latest game console and are interacting with DeFi already...but my experience as a former computer technician and cell phone salesperson is that broadly speaking, that generation learns and experiments with technology at a slower rate. For boomers, network television and radio were the primary forms of entertainment in their formulative years. Because PCs either didn't exist or were so expensive and hard to use, very few boomers grew up with this stuff. It's like being a native speaker of a language. You master the language in a way that is very difficult for non-native speakers to achieve. That's nothing on "non-native" speakers of a language, but it's just that your earliest years shape how you think and use these tools and that's hard to overcome. @mulmen - can't reply to your thread below, but understand that these generational differences are broadly recognized and apparent in consumer behavior and well-documented. I'm not making up the generation gap with regards to digital technology. The fact that people close to you happened to be savvy with tech (were they mining BTC in 2011? were they crowdfunding Oculus in 2012? were they on Instagram in 2010? did they do a startup during the mobile boom?) doesn't discount broad demographic trends. Like the example I used above, the existence of non-native speakers that speak perfect English does not discount that fact that vast majority of people that learn a language past childhood struggle to develop that mastery. PCs did not reach mainstream adoption until the 90s. For boomers, they were already in their late 30s to 50s by the time this happened. You can even see this example in the cryptocurrency space. How many bloggers, podcasters, developers, etc in the blockchain space are boomers? Relatively few compared to their representation of the world population. This space has been largely driven by younger generations. That's a fair statement.

woah 6y ago

Bitcoin has gotten the biggest free ride ever from Ethereum. 2 bull cycles now have been driven by increasing usage on Ethereum (icos in 2017, and now DeFi and NFTs), while Bitcoin absorbs most of the dumb money who hears about “blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin” in the news.

rawtxapp 6y ago
Bitcoin is the reason we have Ethereum in the first place, so I'm not sure if your statement is fair. ICOs were a pump-and-dump fad. DeFi is proving to be useful and there are already DeFi projects coming up on Bitcoin (rsk, sovryn) and the jury is still out on NFTs.
- suikadayo 6y ago
  That’s kinda what we heard about Lightning and payments, but we can currently see that there’s more BTC on Ethereum, than there is BTC on Lightning according to http://btconethereum.com http://btconethereum.com. I doubt there’ll be any significant value locked in RSK/Sovyrn, when most of the liquidity is on Ethereum. Plus, it’ll take time for BTC developers to learn Solidity, and most of the DeFi network effect will be on Ethereum and other EVM compatible chains.
  - rawtxapp 6y ago
    I agree with you on the network effects of eth having most developer mindshare, but one thing to keep in mind about lightning is that a lot of end-user channels are private, so if you're just counting the number of channels or liquidity locked up on lightning as growth, you won't see the full-picture.
- randomopining 6y ago
  Check out STX - Stacks on bitcoin as well
- woah 6y ago
  The Bitcoin smart contract landscape is impoverished. Rsk is a custodial service which has somehow convinced people it is "on Bitcoin". When you use Rsk, your Bitcoins are held by these 11 companies: https://www.rsk.co/powpeg/ https://www.rsk.co/powpeg/ (their private keys are held in a special "tamper-proof" box).