Not shilling, not shilling, not shilling. Disclosure - this is the only crypto I own!
I was surprised to see that there wasn’t a topic on here for Ethereum so I thought I’d start one.
The project/platform itself has always interested me as it seems capable of far much more than Bitcoin plus Vitalik Buterin is intimidatingly intelligent on everything across blockchain, economics, computer science and the finance sector.
Bitcoin has no uses so for sure it’s got more potential for being used in everyday life but I personally think they are 2 different coins aiming to be different things therefore shouldn’t effect each other. Bitcoin wants to be digital gold (be a store of value) , Ethereum wants to be used for everyday transactions although it can do the same as bitcoin (be a store of value). I think the community backing BTC is way bigger than the one backing ETH which will help keep BTC in the top spot, mention crypto to someone who doesn’t know anything about crypto and they are likely to have at least heard of BTC, not so much with ETH. Both great coins I’m not dissing either, in fact I own both and hope they both do as well as they can
Great points. I think another difference worth mentioning is that the creator of Bitcoin looks like it’s going to be an unsolved mystery forever where as Ethereum still has its Foundation ‘in charge’ of directing the project and pushing new features.
Oh and of course the Proof Of Stake change that’s coming to Ethereum which will render mining obsolete and hopefully dramatically decrease the network’s power usage. That’s supposed to be coming this year and will be an interesting turn. I wonder what it will do to the value.
I think Ethereum’s POS change will be big, the network will actually be able to process a reasonable number of transactions per second and it won’t require a truckload of coal to be burned for each one.
I think people are realising the flaws of bitcoin and want the benefits of blockchain without the environmental catastrophe or paying $50 for a digital transaction.
Not agreeing or disagreeing but why do you say pyramid scheme? Is it not the same as bitcoin in that sense? I’m not an expert but bitcoin is an odd one with no known owner/founder etc and many think is a pyramid scheme type thing so I wondered why you say it about Ethereum.
Then, some ETH is wasted in each ETH transaction (burning the gas):
And new coins are given to miners in rough proportion to their existing ownership.
So, using ETH for normal business causes inflation (good), which is roughly balanced by deflation which benefits users who hold a lot of ETH and don’t use it (maybe bad).
I’m not actually sure if this is bad or not, but it feels worse that POW, where the new coins were given on the basis of actually doing something, but agree that in principle roughly the same people will get the coin… Except it’s based on ownership, not willingness to help the network run.
That said, I’ve refused to buy into any blockchains to date because I was fundamentally opposed to the waste of energy, so I guess I should like this system as it may give a similar outcome without the energy waste.
I guess only time will tell if it works in practice.
I believe there are going to be “POS Pools” as well, Coinbase will be offering it in certain countries, where you can ‘lend’ your ETH to the pool for POS stuff and you’ll get a return (minus fees).
Actually, bitcoin massively benefitted the early adopters who held onto their coins (and it doesn’t look like many of them did - e.g. there was the guy who famously bought a pizza for 30 bitcoin and thought he was getting an amazing deal as there was nothing else to do with it), but the transaction history was started from scratch just after it was made public, so whoever created it didn’t allow themselves to take advantage of that.
A friend told me about Eth a good few years ago. It was my first step towards investing to some degree. I was quite fortunate and lucky with the timing - I bought 10 Ethereum at £10 each. I still have just over 5 left, after selling a few and trading for other cryptos to build more of a portfolio and become a little more diversified.
I still to this day have alot of belief in what Eth has to offer, and am excited to see what comes out of the crypto space generally in the near future.