Ethereum

[YarkoL]

@cbeast

You know, you could already right now put out a contract that issues currency every time an ETH block is mined and distributes it to whoever you please.

 

[Erdogan]

Assume that MySpace and Facebook were both available on the exchange, and someone took 75% of their MySpace investment and put it into Facebook.

There is a difference. MySpace did no hold a monoply to anything. Bitcoin has the liquidity. For the value of money, liquidity is crucial, because without liquidity, there is no point in holding them. Because you can't eat them, you know, the value for direct use contra the value for indirect use.

 

[Matthew Light]

There is a difference. MySpace did no hold a monoply to anything. Bitcoin has the liquidity. For the value of money, liquidity is crucial, because without liquidity, there is no point in holding them. Because you can't eat them, you know, the value for direct use contra the value for indirect use.

I'm not following you here.

US treasury bonds have orders of magnitude better liquidity than BTC. Does that mean they are a better investment?

What matters for investors is the prospects for the value of their investment to grow relative to the alternatives.

I feel that Bitcoin is a dead end for many reasons, some of which are related to the actions of the current Dev team, but others are due to being a 1.0 project in a brand-new field.

BTW the reason the price is going is up some now is in celebration of the small-blockers victory over the large blockers. Resolution of uncertainty is almost always bullish in the short term. Of course, long-term, limiting growth is absolutely fatal to the value of Bitcoin.

Now that Adam Back and his ilk have succeeded in capturing Bitcoin as their personal fiefdom regardless of the caliber of their decision-making, I hope the rest of you will consider how much of your hopes and financial investment you want to leave in their capable hands and how much of it you will invest in greener pastures.

It is ultimately not Bitcoin that matters but the founding idea of Bitcoin - a global, scaleable, decentralized money for all the people of the earth. Ethereum takes that idea and refines it even further - making the ledger programmable so that we can create safe crypto accounts that anyone's mother or grandmother can use without fear of a hacker stealing all their money, corporate accounts firewalled against embezzlers, and automatic disposition of funds upon the death. All those things could eventually be added into Bitcoin, assuming competent and visionary devs, HODLers and miners. But Bitcoin lacks that.

 

[Erdogan]

Bitcoin is useful to many, most people don't know it good enough to enter, but they will know. That means, currently bitcoin can expand, and increase liquidity. With increased liquidity, it will work in new situations,

Bitcoin:
1. Useful for some types of trade, for people who know -> more people will know and use it for the same type of trade -> increased liquidity -> other types of trade will be practical -> go to 1.

US treasury bonds have better liquidity in the moment for large quantity conversion to USD. But it can not be used as payment for goods, does not work 24/7, can not be infinitely divided. And they are not the same. different maturities means low fungibility. And it is a ponzi. Not money at all if you ask me (but their existence reduces the value of the dollar).

The point is, bitcoin has greater potensial, because liquidity will increase without change of parameters. It is a waiting game.

Ethereum is interesting, but I like it simple. Bitcoin is sound, private money for the world.

 

[Matthew Light]

Ethereum is interesting, but I like it simple. Hard, private money for the world.

I agree with you fully. Hard, private money for the world.

Bitcoin decided not to grow. Therefore it is going to be pushed aside for a crypto that will. QED.

A person studying Ethereum in depth will realize that despite all the discussion about Dapps, etc. Ethereum is really primarily about true and fully programmable money on the Blockchain, which is what is needed in order to make digital money useful for the average person (ie: not easily stolen by hackers).

 

[Bloomie]

By the way, recent trading patterns for Ethereum and Monero look very similar, which implies the lift-off could have been related to Bitcoin or other external factors and not on Ethereum's own merits.

 

[Matthew Light]

Ethereum has been rallying since January 1 though, and its market cap grew past every other coin except Bitcoin. It certainly has been benefiting from the civil war in Bitcoin and I expect it to, after a bit of consolidation, benefit from the idiocy of Core and the miners rejecting growth.

 

[Matthew Light]

Some of you may be interested in this post where I wrote about why the killer apps of Ethereum are monetary, and why Ethereum is much better digital money than Bitcoin:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/45u4rt/the_killer_apps_of_ethereum_are_monetary/

 

[humanitee]

Hasn't it been shown how PoS is effectively broken? I recall reading several posts about this years ago, how it further encourages centralization of big holders.

What is the inflation schedule for Ethereum now?

These are things that kept me from investing in Ethereum during the initial investment phase, combined with the abilities of rootstock on the Bitcoin blockchain.

This just looks like a pump to me. Go read r/ethereum, looks like the exact same pump and dump rhetoric you've seen on every crypto pump. "We have x feature, these people are supporting us, also this thing, this thing, this thing." People are just getting hyped because of the emotional roller coaster involved in the pump and dump, IMO.

My friend sent me some stuff on slock, it just looked like a 21 inc type company. Is this more or less correct? I see they are releasing some DAO.

Thanks, I enjoyed this thread. Caught me up on dat knowledge.

 

[Matthew Light]

Hasn't it been shown how PoS is effectively broken? I recall reading several posts about this years ago, how it further encourages centralization of big holders.

Blockchains and proof of stake have evolved greatly in the last several years.

What is the inflation schedule for Ethereum now?

It looks like inflation will end when the Serenity release happens, hopefully around December 2016. Until then inflation is much less than Bitcoin's was during its first four years.

These are things that kept me from investing in Ethereum during the initial investment phase, combined with the abilities of rootstock on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Rootstock hasn't shipped yet, and the Bitcoin blockchain is full anyway.

This just looks like a pump to me. Go read r/ethereum, looks like the exact same pump and dump rhetoric you've seen on every crypto pump. "We have x feature, these people are supporting us, also this thing, this thing, this thing." People are just getting hyped because of the emotional roller coaster involved in the pump and dump, IMO.

In this case, Bitcoin has voted for stagnation and lack of transaction growth. Meanwhile most / almost all new Blockchain projects are going with Ethereum.

My friend sent me some stuff on slock, it just looked like a 21 inc type company. Is this more or less correct? I see they are releasing some DAO.

Don't know much about slock.it, sorry.

Thanks, I enjoyed this thread. Caught me up on dat knowledge.

Sure thing!

 

[humanitee]

Blockchains and proof of stake have evolved greatly in the last several years.

Can you elaborate on this a little more? What prevents the bulk issuance going to the largest holders?

It looks like inflation will end when the Serenity release happens, hopefully around December 2016. Until then inflation is much less than Bitcoin's was during its first four years.

So they aren't going to be issuing Ether after that? I thought it inflated infinitely, that it had no hard limit. Did that change?

 

[VeritasSapere]

@humanitee I do not think that POS is fundamentally flawed in any way.

However when Ethereum does go POS it does imply that it will be inflated infinitely, at a fixed rate, it is a implication of POS, unless some of the tokens are burned in some other process within Ethereum but I did not think that was the case.

 

[Matthew Light]

However when Ethereum does go POS it does imply that it will be inflated infinitely, at a fixed rate, it is a implication of POS, unless some of the tokens are burned in some other process within Ethereum but I did not think that was the case.

The lead developer of proof-of-stake has indicated the likelyhood that there will be no coins issued after proof-of-stake. The validators (same task as miners) will be paid with contract gas fees and transaction fees only.

Ethereum has evolved quite a lot in the two years since it was initially conceived. So far, all the changes have been for the better, including this one if it pans out.
[doublepost=1456266504][/doublepost]

Can you elaborate on this a little more? What prevents the bulk issuance going to the largest holders?

The proof-of-stake validators will likely be paid by the transaction fees and contract gas fees only, not by any additional issuance.

 

[VeritasSapere]

Interesting, one of the points behind proof of stake is that it does incentivize people to run full nodes. Since they gain a percentage of interest in return for doing so. I find this a bit puzzling because I can not imagine the transaction fees being high enough to incentivize such behavior. Anyway I am sure this does please many of the critics of POS because it does avoid some of these problems like the bulk issuance going to the largest holders, which personally I never considered an issue, though I can see how a lot of people might be happy with the solution Ethereum has come up with.

 

[Matthew Light]

Just sold the last of my BTC position for ETH. Have been winding down my position over the last month and today sold the last 1 BTC.

If BTC shows some sign of life like a good shot of increasing blocksize / price moving over $500 I'll certainly buy back in with some fiat reserves.

Until then, I want to get as many ETH as I can before price is too high. I'm afraid we aren't far from a "market cap transfer event" between BTC and ETH unless the cap gets raised very soon.

 

[solex]

Just be alert that the moment of maximum hope and future promise is the time to sell (even if the goal is a very long-term stake). Re-buying will be possible for a lot longer than the sell window lasts.

When BTC hit $1100 my elderly neighbours asked me about Bitcoin as they remembered that I mentioned it about a year earlier. Nevertheless, they were suddenly a lot more interested in what it was. Peak Hype via the media had been reached, but I didn't realise until afterwards. Clearly that was the time to sell the lot, plenty of time to re-buy later. (I did sell a small percentage, so don't feel too silly about it).

The ETH chart is going to resemble the Bitcoin spike in 2011 as time passes, whether successful or not.

 

[Matthew Light]

The ETH chart is going to resemble the Bitcoin spike in 2011 as time passes, whether successful or not.

I'm in it for the long haul.

I think cryptocurrencies are the future of money, and right now I think Ethereum is the most likely to win the race.

I've got my eyes open though - and will certainly switch horses again if I find evidence that my thesis is mistaken.

 

[YarkoL]

Someone asked (maybe in the GCBU thread) if it would be possible to implement Bitcoin as an Ethereum DApp. I was thinking about it last night and it seems to me doable. It is interesting, as "Bitcoin" there would be a single contract that keeps track of all balances and transfers tokens. All transfers would be broadcast to token holders, who would then construct blocks and mine them. When block has been found, the header is sent to the contract to be validated. The contract then broadcasts the new block and updates the difficulty.

So there is only single validator in the system, its decentralization level is dependent on underlying decentralization level of Ethereum. What's more, there cannot be any forks, indeed the rules are really set in stone forever in the form of smart contract.

Of course, with the processing power of 20th century smartphone, Ethereum can hardly sustain a large throughput, not to mention that it has scalability issues of its own. Still it's an intriguing concept, and once I have the time I might make a PoW altcoin DApp just to see what happens, (unless someone already has done this, I have no idea.)

 

[jl777]

can someone explain how a 20GB/yr blockchain before any major usage is anything that can be run in a decentralized way? I know, sharding, but if using shards what happens when a dapp intentionally uses data across all shards

also last I checked ripple uses 5 validator nodes, all corporate ripple nodes. This is a feature though, since it allows them to make whatever change to the ledger that is needed. historically it was to patch up problems with consensus, I am sure they would never abuse it (let's not count when they simply froze Jeb's accounts)

The bitcoin core devs might be doing the bidding of their corporate masters, but bitcoin protocol is the only one that can be made lightweight enough for mass market use. And there is at least one independent bitcoin core being developed, specifically for mass market use. I do not see how it is even possible to make a non-SPV version of ETH for mass market use and that path with inevitably lead to KYC and essentially a duplication of the current system, just where cash is replaced by fully trackable tx.

Since getting any bitcoin replacement to be adopted is a practical problem, I will be updating bitcoindark with iguana during this year. Then people can see how it is possible to have a bitcoin protocol for the mass market and that should help sway people away from the corporate bitcoin.

If you like my iguana work and want to support me, just buy 1 BTC of bitcoindark. It is not a very liquid market and has a micro-marketcap as I havent done any marketing for it, yet. Please dont buy crazy amounts, just 1BTC will be enough. It is using PoS and not a PoW coin, but 99% of the PoS/PoW coins are the same. Also I have a proposal to allow any weak chain to inherit some of BTC's security, which will also justify to the world the reason BTC is burning so much electricity, ie it is the heart of all crypto and the security BTC gets from this expenditure is utilized by all the other cryptos.

My plan is to demonstrate things with bitcoindark and then this will make many of the fear and doubt about scalability go away. Instead of debating endlessly of what should be done and how, etc. I will just code something up that demonstrates it. Then if the community likes it, it will get adopted. I am pretty sure I will need to add features in to maximize revenues for miners.
[doublepost=1457705548][/doublepost]centralizing all crypto in the largest and fastest growing blockchain ever is probably not a practical thing. I cant see anyway that ETH blockchain can be delivered to the mass market, so that makes it DOA for mass market decentralized use. However, if a KYC'ed SPV solution is fine, then sure, virtualize everything as it will make it most convenient for the authorities.

Also, can anybody tell me a single Dapp that cannot be created on top of bitcoin? I cannot think of any. using ETH is like using DB for bitcoin. Probably a good way to get a proof of concept implementation, but a general purpose solution rarely if ever outperforms a custom one.

It is like CPU mining vs ASIC mining. If you are not sure what you want to do, use CPU so you can change it. If you know what you want to do, make an ASIC. So ETH is going backwards from a custom solution that bitcoin is to a general. However, I made decentralized poker proof of concept and it builds on top of bitcoin and by optimizing everything, it will be the most efficient decentralized poker implementation possible.

General purpose things are good for early stage things or when performance is not an issue. Custom made things are good when you want mass market.

I claim it is possible to create ANY Dapp on top of bitcoin that ETH can create and the result will be more efficient and lightweight and even mass market possible. So dont let the current chaos with the existing bitcoin devs get you depressed.

There is a new dev in town
[doublepost=1457705873,1457705061][/doublepost]

Now that Adam Back and his ilk have succeeded in capturing Bitcoin as their personal fiefdom regardless of the caliber of their decision-making,

Can you explain how an open protocol can be captured? With a significantly better tech that has no financial negatives for miners, I would think we can free bitcoin from captivity

 

[_mr_e]

Jl777 has some excellent points here. The whole reason we are even in this mess is because bitcoin, already specialized and (somewhat) efficient is running up against scalability issues that will be 1000x more pronounced in the vastly more complex ethereum network. Bitcoin's job as money should remain as simple as possible, to ensure security and decentralization.