The Flippening

[Windowly]

Over in GDAX, the last twenty-four hours there has been way more trading in ethereum versus bitcoin. Not very good for btc's long term prospects if bitcoin doesn't get their act together soon.

Moreover, in South Korea where crypto-trading has really taken off ethereum is likewise the dominant currency being traded, at least on their largest exchange. These are the stats from Coinone.

It's great that there are so many good choices in crypto-currency at the moment, but rather disturbing for those of us (like myself) who pretty much still hold all my assets in bitcoin.

In the overall market and currency space, Bitcoin is still the leader by far. . . . but that will not last forever. And btc's marketshare could deteriorate faster than we realize. Just from anecdotal experience, it seems that people I know who are learning about cryptocurrency these days are getting into ethereum and bypassing bitcoin.

 

[Matthew Light]

All I can say is - the writing has been on the wall for a very, very long time, and this was discussed many times here and on r/btc.

 

[Windowly]

Yes.

Ethereum as a currency has a lot of problems imho, , , not least the fact that there is precedent for them rolling back contracts and payments. Still, it seems like it is getting (at least in some places) more liquidity than btc.

 

[VeritasSapere]

I can say that I am a fan of Ethereum.

I also do not think that precedent should even be a consideration when it comes blockchain governance, in the same way that people here understand that increasing the blocksize does not set a precedent for increasing the supply of Bitcoin, these decisions happen on a case by case basis and the market will want what the markets wants. It is the incentive and governance structure itself that matters. Forking in any change is justifiable, the market can decide for itself what it values.

We should keep in mind that when Ethereum split it was operating under the same governance/consensus algorithm as Bitcoin does, POW based governance, just like Bitcoin.

I would say that the same could happen to Bitcoin given a different community and culture but that is not entirely true, what a lot of people do not understand is that what happened to Ethereum is not the same as a roll back in Bitcoin.

This could stem from a misunderstanding in the differences of design. Rolling back the chain is also possible in Ethereum but that is not what happened. Ethereum has another layer known as the state layer, this is where the smart contracts live. What actually happened is that there was a change made to the state layer (contracting layer) in order to return the stolen funds to their rightful owners.

I think the best analogy here is that this is the equivalent to an interception of a bank robbery that was still in progress, not a bail out which some people have unfairly compared it to.

This was only possible because the DAO itself had a precautionary measure in place that delayed the exit of any funds from the DAO, all of this occurred on the state layer and not the transaction layer we are familiar with in Bitcoin. No transactions where reversed, the complete history is still there and no blocks where rolled back at all.

I just think it is healthy to have a fair and well informed insight into what is currently Bitcoins biggest competitor and one of the most common critiques of the project.

 

[Hyena]

Ethhereum never had Proof-of-Work consensus. It has Proof-of-Vitalik consensus. It's a shitcoin vapourware. Ethereum and the smart contracts are the dotcom bubble of the cryptocurrencies.