Web 3.0 (Ethereum) is happening, and most people have no idea what it even is.

[Coalission]

(Your ETH troll is there doubting results too lol.)

The man (or woman) is dedicated, I'll give them that lol

When someone demonstrates competency in a particular area I don't understand, I don't shoot them down. Solid, documented results (this guy said he traded successfully for years, and in my case, I provided documentation in my 30 page thread) speaks volumes. If I counter with skeptical questions its usually because someone has latched on to a concept where they clearly lack education, or they're making ambiguous undocumented statements, usually anonymously. ("I'm gonna load my account with $10K and trade futures with no experience!")

If I thought the ETH concept was a joke or something not worthy of a serious discussion (both sides) I would have NOT promoted it to NOTABLE, then GOLD. I appreciate how this thread has materialized into a wealth of information. The extensive links and commentary you and others have provided provides the solid foundation for someone like me to research it and make their own assessments... and that is what this forum is about.

(end thread hijack...)

I got you, I was just salty because I spent time getting information and I thought the thread was gonna turn into a shitfest, but you're right, it wouldn't be Gold if that were the case.

BTW, I don't know if you played online poker when Black Friday happened or if you still play, but this is one of the big projects I'm looking forward to, decentralized trust-less poker:

Not sure when it's launching but the demo looks good.

 

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[Practician]

Have been away for a while and saw this thread... funny, I have been thinking recently of shifting some of my bitcoins into ETH or other technologies.

Wanted to make a comment about investing in crypto coins... If I was serious (currently not, just playing for fun), I would invest the time to master these technologies such that I can be one of the early *creators*, not just a speculator or end user. It is high risk (wasted my time if it goes betamax) but high reward, with the offset that at least you gain tech skills you can advertise.

If I learn a random webdev stack, who cares, there are plenty of them out there. If I learn how to code blockchain tech, I am in a leading position to exploit an infant industry as it grows.

I've always been lukewarm about furthering my mediocre programming skills... something like blockchain would interest me enough to try it. But I would need to gauge it against other opportunities, business plans, etc. My priority is making money, not pursuing cool stuff.

 

[fhs8]

You are missing the point. Stop treating blockchain like a currency or a way to do a financial transaction only. Let's say that there is no credit or chargeback ability AS OF NOW - however that can be built because of the logic in ethereum.

Sure it can be built in but then you bring in that middleman again remember? Then you need a middleman for the consumer to get a refund since the consumer isn't running a server. There is NOTHING ether can do that software handling USD can't do right now.

You know how they do KYC right? They have Compliance people sitting behind their laptops, doing desktop research and pulling documents from their archives. It's a very manual process and every bank has its own department of people doing the exact same work as any other bank. What if there is 1 decentralized repository that they all use? So bank #1 does the due diligence on a customer; this process doesn't need to be done by bank #2 as they all have access to the same decentralized repository.
For example:
Cost of compliance and regulatory productivity | Deloitte US

You don't even know what KYC is. Also sharing customer information such as social security numbers with a decentralized repository is such a stupid idea. Any criminal will just set up a decentralized repository and collect all of the customer information or access it. KYC is also requried by US law and can't be completed by having banks share information.

You missed this point as well. DMPs are used in combination with SSP/DSP to programmatically buy advertising space from an advertising middle man. By using blockchain you could take away this middleman. What would be an example of this? Well, you could setup a value transaction where users trade their demographics/psychographics/etc/etc for incentives. This is already emerging in the pixel advertising exchanges that are popping up.
See here for example: Announcing a new Blockchain-Based Digital Advertising Platform

That's all a bunch of nonsense that will never happen. Almost every website runs Bing/Google analytics and uses that information to advertise for CPA bidding for example. Not only that you could just run plugins for web browsers that block the pixel tracking. Nobody would pay money to stop pixel advertising.

You are missing the cost of the entire infrastructure and the fact that: very little * a lot of transactions = $$$$
Also
Very little > nothing

"Highlighting the potential for banks, Santander issued a report in 2015 estimating that blockchain "could reduce banks' infrastructure costs attributable to cross-border payments, securities trading and regulatory compliance by between US$15 – 20 billion per annum by 2022.""

See: Beyond Bitcoin: The blockchain revolution in financial services

If that's true then it would cut banks' profits by just as much. Banks make money from credit/debit card transactions. No bank would be in favor of blockchain unless they could be a middleman and profit from it. There is no reason to use blockchain when USD works just fine so you'll never see blockchain at your bank. There isn't a team of people manually processing transactions. Everything at the bank is digital and so ether does not provide additional efficiency.

I will repeat myself: The ability for 2 parties to come together with a binding contract without an intermediary.

So no intermediary right? Where's the money for the consumer going to be stored then? On their computer? What if the computer crashes and they lose their data? You do know people have lost bitcoins because of this. 99.99% of people would never bother. It's not convenient without an intermediary.

Take a minute to step back and see what value exchanges you do on daily basis that require some form of 'contract' (verbal/physical/whatever) that uses a middleman. All of these middlemen can be cut out, making the process cheaper and more efficient.

I want you to specifically give me an example where the middleman is cut out. Would the consumer have to run software or access a website to get to the ether currency that they own? Do you think a website is going to do that for free? Also what if they run off with the money? Does there need to be a middleman to get a refund?

What I've noticed is that pro-ether people always talk about how ether can do this and that. However what they don't talk about is why people would prefer to use ether over digital currency. Digital money can do everything ether does and has far more stability and trust. Bitcoin has been out for over 8 years and almost no online retailers accept it despite it's huge market cap. All the market cap is purely speculation. It's like the tulip bubble in Buffett's words.

 

[fhs8]

I have just discovered the Achilles heel of blockchain.

Blockchain Size
Average Confirmation Time

Blockchain is unworkable. It's not uncommon to have an average confirmation time of 60 minutes. Sometimes it can last as long as 12 hours. No business would wait 12 hours to make sure the payment is good.

Bitcoin’s Big Problem: Transaction Delays Renew Blockchain Debate

Ethereum has the same issues. Not only that but the database for Ether is already so big that most people can't put it on their laptop because there's not enough room. It's not even being used in retail and it's failing. If it were to ever be used in retail the database would go in the petabytes. Even large datacenters would fail at handling all the transactions. Hackers could make malicious fake transactions going back and forth and basically do a DOS on the whole thing and send it crumbling down. The system for ether right now can't process more than 20 transactions a second.
Ethereum won’t scale like you’ve been told. – Yo Banjo – Medium

Blockchain is a huge step back technology wise.

 

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[parkerscott]

Sure it can be built in but then you bring in that middleman again remember? Then you need a middleman for the consumer to get a refund since the consumer isn't running a server. There is NOTHING ether can do that software handling USD can't do right now.



You don't even know what KYC is. Also sharing customer information such as social security numbers with a decentralized repository is such a stupid idea. Any criminal will just set up a decentralized repository and collect all of the customer information or access it. KYC is also requried by US law and can't be completed by having banks share information.



That's all a bunch of nonsense that will never happen. Almost every website runs Bing/Google analytics and uses that information to advertise for CPA bidding for example. Not only that you could just run plugins for web browsers that block the pixel tracking. Nobody would pay money to stop pixel advertising.




If that's true then it would cut banks' profits by just as much. Banks make money from credit/debit card transactions. No bank would be in favor of blockchain unless they could be a middleman and profit from it. There is no reason to use blockchain when USD works just fine so you'll never see blockchain at your bank. There isn't a team of people manually processing transactions. Everything at the bank is digital and so ether does not provide additional efficiency.



So no intermediary right? Where's the money for the consumer going to be stored then? On their computer? What if the computer crashes and they lose their data? You do know people have lost bitcoins because of this. 99.99% of people would never bother. It's not convenient without an intermediary.



I want you to specifically give me an example where the middleman is cut out. Would the consumer have to run software or access a website to get to the ether currency that they own? Do you think a website is going to do that for free? Also what if they run off with the money? Does there need to be a middleman to get a refund?

What I've noticed is that pro-ether people always talk about how ether can do this and that. However what they don't talk about is why people would prefer to use ether over digital currency. Digital money can do everything ether does and has far more stability and trust. Bitcoin has been out for over 8 years and almost no online retailers accept it despite it's huge market cap. All the market cap is purely speculation. It's like the tulip bubble in Buffett's words.

How many times do we have to repeat that being a currency is not really its primary function?

To you, and the rest of the naysayers, keep naysaying all you want. Im sure yall are a lot smarter than the 200+ fortune 500 companies that are sitting on a waitlist trying to join an ethereum consortium for enterprise solutions.

Its all just a scam though, and its never going to work. A few guys on a forum have watched a quick youtube video and now they have all the information they need to confirm its a broken system.

"That automobile is never going to work because there will not be enough gas stations"

 

[parkerscott]

I have just discovered the Achilles heel of blockchain.

Blockchain Size
Average Confirmation Time

Blockchain is unworkable. It's not uncommon to have an average confirmation time of 60 minutes. Sometimes it can last as long as 12 hours. No business would wait 12 hours to make sure the payment is good.

Bitcoin’s Big Problem: Transaction Delays Renew Blockchain Debate

Ethereum has the same issues. Not only that but the database for Ether is already so big that most people can't put it on their laptop because there's not enough room. It's not even being used in retail and it's failing. If it were to ever be used in retail the database would go in the petabytes. Even large datacenters would fail at handling all the transactions. Hackers could make malicious fake transactions going back and forth and basically do a DOS on the whole thing and send it crumbling down. The system for ether right now can't process more than 20 transactions a second.
Ethereum won’t scale like you’ve been told. – Yo Banjo – Medium

Blockchain is a huge step back technology wise.

lololololololololololololololololololololol

hold on let me catch my breath

lololololololololololololololololololololololololol

Raiden Network

there you go o wise one.

 

[maverick]

Sounds fancy eh? It isn't. You can already make X funds released when A happens in any application.

Another long post that misses the point. Blockchain is NOT JUST cryptocurrency.

Simply put, the Blockchain is a shared single version of the truth of anything digital. It is a database technology, a distributed ledger that maintains an ever growing list of data records, which are decentralised and impossible to tamper with. The data records, which can be a Bitcoin transaction or a smart contract or anything else for that matter, are combined in so-called blocks. In order to add these blocks to the distributed ledger, the data needs to be validated by 51% of all the computers within the network that have access to the Blockchain.

Almost any industry that deals with some sort of transaction, which would mean any industry, can and will be disrupted by the Blockchain. This is not something you can pull together with PHP...

Just take a look at the companies backing blockchain, the amount of funding that is being put into it, AND the examples that are already out in the market (e.g. RWE + electric car charging). None of this ever materialized for software defined networking.

BTW, IPv6 was introduced because we're running out of IPv4 addresses. Once that happens we will all be forced to adopt IPv6 so not sure how you came to that comparison.

Full disclosure mode: I have no investments in blockchain stock ;-)

 

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[maverick]

Sure it can be built in but then you bring in that middleman again remember? Then you need a middleman for the consumer to get a refund since the consumer isn't running a server. There is NOTHING ether can do that software handling USD can't do right now.



You don't even know what KYC is. Also sharing customer information such as social security numbers with a decentralized repository is such a stupid idea. Any criminal will just set up a decentralized repository and collect all of the customer information or access it. KYC is also requried by US law and can't be completed by having banks share information.



That's all a bunch of nonsense that will never happen. Almost every website runs Bing/Google analytics and uses that information to advertise for CPA bidding for example. Not only that you could just run plugins for web browsers that block the pixel tracking. Nobody would pay money to stop pixel advertising.




If that's true then it would cut banks' profits by just as much. Banks make money from credit/debit card transactions. No bank would be in favor of blockchain unless they could be a middleman and profit from it. There is no reason to use blockchain when USD works just fine so you'll never see blockchain at your bank. There isn't a team of people manually processing transactions. Everything at the bank is digital and so ether does not provide additional efficiency.



So no intermediary right? Where's the money for the consumer going to be stored then? On their computer? What if the computer crashes and they lose their data? You do know people have lost bitcoins because of this. 99.99% of people would never bother. It's not convenient without an intermediary.



I want you to specifically give me an example where the middleman is cut out. Would the consumer have to run software or access a website to get to the ether currency that they own? Do you think a website is going to do that for free? Also what if they run off with the money? Does there need to be a middleman to get a refund?

What I've noticed is that pro-ether people always talk about how ether can do this and that. However what they don't talk about is why people would prefer to use ether over digital currency. Digital money can do everything ether does and has far more stability and trust. Bitcoin has been out for over 8 years and almost no online retailers accept it despite it's huge market cap. All the market cap is purely speculation. It's like the tulip bubble in Buffett's words.

I will leave you with this:

 

[nordien1978]

It is interesting the blockchain technology.
Still would be interesting to see with JavaScript and Solidity what kind of application / services can be build on Ethereum to provide to the user base.

In the crypto currency the margins of gains are high but also high losses if you are speculating and no idea what the company that provides the coins will do or is cashing in on your investment...
Because people don't know it it has a form of an entry barrier the ones that understand it can win and the ones that have no knowledge learn it by losing money.

Would be nice to be the one selling shovels in the new gold frontier rush.

 

[StevieB]

In this case, you're missing the basic premise that we're talking about ETH as a platform. It's not analogous to bitcoin, which is a currency. It's not analogous to IPv4, which is a protocol. It's not analogous to software defined networking, which is a set of virtualized applications. These are all comparisons that you made, and none are analogous.

I assure you I have the technical background and aptitude to understand what Ethereum does and what it offers. Given I've only researched it since reading this thread.

It's for this reason that I am skeptical of it's "ground breaking" technology because I don't see anything new here. The comparisons I gave weren't comparing Ethereum to them specifically, it was comparing other "ground breaking technology it's going to change everything as we know it!" that's been released in the market. AZURE is another one more recently released. I hear this stuff all the time.

Oh and Ethereum is a protocol.

BTW, IPv6 was introduced because we're running out of IPv4 addresses. Once that happens we will all be forced to adopt IPv6 so not sure how you came to that comparison.

Wrong. Just because we run out of IPv4 ip addresses doesn't mean we'll be forced to convert to IPv6. All those that already have IPv4 won't need to budge, only companies that need a new public IP address if their ISP is sold out of them will they be forced to convert to IPv6. Even then it may be worth it for them to de-commission an existing public IP address and re-purpose it for the new application because it would be easier.

 

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[maverick]

It would make this debate a lot more valuable if people with opposing views would reference material that substantiates their views. Simply saying that you have years of experience, or vast amounts of knowledge, without coming back with good substianted arguments has no value.

I am in no way interested in engaging in a p*ssing battle. The way I see it, entrepreneurs should always be open to substianted views and opportunities that present themselves. I am very open to hear opposing arguments (and would welcome them!) but I have not heard 1 compelling argument from the opposing side.

 

[StevieB]

I'm not really sure what documentation you're wanting.

I thought it was self-evident that programming languages can do the same thing as Ethereum and more. The only thing new they came up with, which was genius, is instead of calling it an application it's a smart contract.

It was mentioned that php can't do this, well it can actually if you give it enough resources. Just like python can. The only thing you're doing is putting the records in public instead of private when it boils down to it. This can help with fraud, but it also makes things a lot slower since it's one giant list. I also would be very careful to say it's impossible to hack... if there's one thing the tech industry should have learned by now is that nothing is impossible to hack. There's some ancedotal evidence the NSA has cracked diffie hellman, and that was 'unhackable'. If there's enough money and resources involved there will be a lot of people interested in making that happen (including the US govt).

To be clear I do believe this technology will be adopted and used by many companies, but I don't think it's going to take over of "how we do things" in the financial industry. It's simply one technology of many that may or may not be adopted by the various companies out there.

 

[Mineralogic]

That's an excellent point, in your specific example you wouldn't use Ethereum or any other blockchain protocol, you'd whip up a database and just have someone manually keep track.

Make the "100 people" into "100 million people" in 95 countries around the world, and then you start to understand the benefit of a trustless contract with no 3rd party. You'd need multiple very trusted 3rd parties, as well as pay a ton of fees along the way to middlemen, FX fees, gateway fees, processing fees etc. It can accomplish your example, just like I'm sure it's possible to program my ceiling fan to connect to my phone so it can sense when I walk into the room and if the phone detects a temperature above my designated comfort level, it turns on automatically. Doesn't mean its practical or makes sense aside from the cool factor when I can just lift my left arm up and turn it on myself if I'm hot.

New technologies tend to solve large-scale problems first before solving the mundane, and some things never really need to be solved, but you'll always have companies trying to overcomplicate and shove the promising technology into everything they can, which is why the "Internet of Shit" Twitter account is so funny despite IoT being a legit thing: Internet of Shit (@internetofshit) | Twitter

great info and posts by you man. Exactly, ETH/Ethereum is not just another I O Shit platform or sales trick. IMHO, Ethereum is the 1st crypto to actually maximize what the Blockchain is. Bitcoin is not it.

 

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[Mineralogic]

Great thread! Thanks to those who contributed on both sides. I'm a BTC investor, but see way more potential for ETH.

Regarding people getting on board...this just came out:

Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari said on Tuesday that blockchain technology has more potential for being adopted in the future than bitcoin itself.

"I think sentiment has shifted in the markets, in the Fed," Kashkari said in a speech at a technology conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. "I would say I think conventional wisdom now is that blockchain and the underlying technology is probably more interesting and has more potential than maybe bitcoin does by itself."

exactly, and while I don't like this guy Kashari he did crystalize the truth there. Bitcoin is NOT the Blockchain. Its a hot potato crypto assets that commies, some wall st types, and fast money anarcho traders latched on to in a statement of anti-government/anti fed. Ethereum/ETH is the first to truly maximize the potential of the blockchain and the UTILITY of it for business and consumers. All these apps will run on it and provide entrepreneurship opps for people especially programmers who wake up and get their head out of creating the next social media app or "gaming" appto run on the web. LOL

 

[fhs8]

Raiden Network

That's not a viable solution to the long processing times. You still have to wait to convert your own Ether to the ether in the private blockchain. There is a middleman and the one advantage everyone was talking about with ether is gone. Also it makes everything too complicated. Consumers do not want to deal with complicated things and would want their money with Wells Fargo not the Raiden Network.

Once again I have yet got a satisfactory answer on why the consumer would start to use ether since it offers zero advantages to the consumer. If it's not going to be used by the consumer then it's nothing more than tulip trading so "investing" in it is a really bad idea.

You can't make money off the Ethereum platform by buying Ether and it solves nothing.

 

[Sheps]

It seems that Ethereum will be huge, but it's complicated. There's probably going to be a lot of money for anyone who can simplify it or make an app to make average Joe's use of it easier. So if I inspired you to do that, 1% is all I ask


I'd bet even tutorials would be huge on youtube etc.

 

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[parkerscott]

That's not a viable solution to the long processing times. You still have to wait to convert your own Ether to the ether in the private blockchain. There is a middleman and the one advantage everyone was talking about with ether is gone. Also it makes everything too complicated. Consumers do not want to deal with complicated things and would want their money with Wells Fargo not the Raiden Network.

Once again I have yet got a satisfactory answer on why the consumer would start to use ether since it offers zero advantages to the consumer. If it's not going to be used by the consumer then it's nothing more than tulip trading so "investing" in it is a really bad idea.

You can't make money off the Ethereum platform by buying Ether and it solves nothing.

Have you not been reading the thread? You sound like you are not reading the thread, because we have countered your "consumer" argument a few times now, and we have stated multiple times that its function is not primarily as a payment system.

Please learn how to read or go somewhere else.

 

[fhs8]

Have you not been reading the thread? You sound like you are not reading the thread, because we have countered your "consumer" argument a few times now, and we have stated multiple times that its function is not primarily as a payment system.

Please learn how to read or go somewhere else.

The consumer argument was not countered and it's not being used anywhere in commerce which proves me right. If it's not primarily a payment system then why is it needed and why did you buy ether? That makes no sense. Ethereum is not needed.

 

[G-Man]

Thought I'd weigh in on this Ethereum debate:

 

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[StevieB]

Perhaps, but what you've written so far doesn't indicate that that's the case...



Typically, a protocol sits within a single layer of the OSI stack. In fact, most protocols sit towards the bottom of the stack in the data link, network, transport or session layers. Most of the current implementation of Ethereum sits in the application and presentation layers, but there are plenty of other pieces of the implementation that can sit further down the stack -- everything from secure messaging, to tokenization, to file systems, to registries, etc.

In other words, Ethereum is a PLATFORM -- not a protocol -- that can touch nearly all layers of the OSI model.

Fair enough, I don't disagree with it being a platform. Except the OSI model isn't used anywhere. It was just a theoretical model that's used on paper but has never been implemented in the real world.

The real world uses TCP / IP. With this model (that's used in the real world, not on paper to explain things) the Application stack is essentially everything but the network.

Name 1 single thing that Ethereum can do that coders can't do in Python.

I mentioned SDN before because many people that are pushing it say the same things. "Brand new tech, it's going to change everything!" -- "Nothing like it before, your company will never be the same!". All they did was take old technology, improve it, then rename it to re-sell it.

Again, I'll re iterate, I believe this will make it's way into the market and be adopted by some players out there. However it's nothing "revolutionary". Some companies will pick it up, some will choose not to, just like AZURE, SDN, and a many number of other platforms that have been introduced.

 

[Coalission]

Name 1 single thing that Ethereum can do that coders can't do in Python.

Do you think you are smarter than the collective intelligence of governments, banks, hedge funds, universities, etc.? You may be smarter than one of the individuals, but all of them?

One of the biggest Ethereum development houses now called Consensys, is run by the ex-VP of Technology at Goldman Sachs. You think he overlooked your points? Are all these banks just overlooking what StevieB on The Fastlane Forum is saying?

JPMorgan, Microsoft, BP, UBS, Credit Suisse, Intel, and more are forming a new blockchain alliance

Or is it at all possible that in your brief skim of the thread where you first learned about Ethereum you don't magically understand the technology like you're some sort of savant? Maybe you missed something, or can your ego not handle that?

 

[Coalission]

Have been away for a while and saw this thread... funny, I have been thinking recently of shifting some of my bitcoins into ETH or other technologies.

Wanted to make a comment about investing in crypto coins... If I was serious (currently not, just playing for fun), I would invest the time to master these technologies such that I can be one of the early *creators*, not just a speculator or end user. It is high risk (wasted my time if it goes betamax) but high reward, with the offset that at least you gain tech skills you can advertise.

If I learn a random webdev stack, who cares, there are plenty of them out there. If I learn how to code blockchain tech, I am in a leading position to exploit an infant industry as it grows.

I've always been lukewarm about furthering my mediocre programming skills... something like blockchain would interest me enough to try it. But I would need to gauge it against other opportunities, business plans, etc. My priority is making money, not pursuing cool stuff.

It seems that Ethereum will be huge, but it's complicated. There's probably going to be a lot of money for anyone who can simplify it or make an app to make average Joe's use of it easier. So if I inspired you to do that, 1% is all I ask


I'd bet even tutorials would be huge on youtube etc.

Lots of devs already working on it.

https://dapps.ethercasts.com/

Color-coded for Live, Work In Progress, Concept, Working Prototype, etc.

 

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[fhs8]

Disintermediation of economic transaction (not just financial transactions),

All completely false.

There are more intermediaries with ethereum. Both the seller and the buyer need to have a separate account (wallet) with a third party because it's way too complicated otherwise. Consumers do not want to deal with key files. Then consumers have to fill up their account when it gets low by depositing USD which takes 1-2 days since most wallets only accept ACH from USD. What transactions would occur that aren't financial under ethereum? What I notice is that specifics are never given.

with increased security,

There is less security. Someone getting your ether wallet login is far worse than getting your bank login information. If someone breaks into your ether wallet they will empty everything and you'll have no recourse in getting your money back. No way to reverse transactions. If the login to your bank account is stolen the thieves can't transfer money out or do anything really.

immutability

Immutability? You mean if some vulnerability is found or it goes too slow it can't be changed?

and decentralization.

Decentralization is a disadvantage. It results in long processing times to complete transactions even though hardly anyone is using ether yet.
What's going to happen is that people are going to pay higher and higher processing fees to middlemen get their transactions processed.
Bitcoin Fees for Transactions | bitcoinfees.21.co

The simple fact is that with the way ether is built it is a terrible way to do financial transactions. The whole system can't even handle more than 20 transactions a second. It tries to solve something that doesn't need to be solved and it's not a viable solution to anything. Imagine going to McDonald's and having to wait 30 minutes for your Ether transaction to get confirmed. That's how long delays can take right now. It will only get much worse if more people use it.

As an investment into the success of the platform.

Why would the platform be successful if it sucks and when nobody is using the currency ether?

I have a better idea. Why not create a service that handles consumer transactions but instead of ether/blockchain you use dollars?

 

[Coalission]

blah blah blah

Remove the ability for Ethereum to be used as a person-to-person currency, and remove the ability for the average consumer to interact with it directly, and the value of the ecosystem is still in the trillions.

You created a strawman that says "Ether will replace the US Dollar", and you keep arguing furiously with it.

 

[Pete.Watson]

I think I'm going to go ahead and wade into this debate

This has been repeated a few times before and I think people are slowly getting the message.. But the potential lies in Blockchain technology and the potential applications of a blockchain rather than a specific crypto-currency that is managed on a blockchain ledger. Whether you want to speculate on a particular crypto-currency is a completely separate debate which needs it's own thread.

Here is blockchain and how we operate today explained in two simple pictures:

So this is how almost all information in the world is currently stored. Clearly this is susceptible to fraud as a user or hacker can intercept information and change information at any stage of this transfer or record of data. It also requires middlemen to manage the data and the master copy is usually hidden away in a filing cabinet or an internet server in a company.. dug out only at their convenience.

And this is how blockchain works. So information is stored on multiple copies of a database or 'ledger'. This eliminates the potential for fraud as each database is synchronised with each other and when speaking about the bitcoin blockchain, it is impossible to hack or manipulate - the only time bitcoin has had attacks is at the exchanges (the clients) where people store their bitcoins in online vaults but the actual ledger itself hasn't been compromised. It's a bit like having your wallet stolen and the thief then spends the $10 note that was in your wallet, but the actual $10 dollar note wasn't a fake note.

I hope this has cleared blockchain up for some people as it is a very simple principle, it gets complicated when you actually start looking under the surface and how mining works in crypto-currencies.

MY OPINIONS:

I think there is huge potential for blockchain technologies and they are already being implemented in banks and governments. But I don't believe that there is potential for a blockchain that is tied to a crypto-currency as all transactions would have to be converted from the original currency - to the crypto-currency - and then back into whatever currency that is needed. Everytime you convert money, it costs money. So essentially the crypto-currency is becoming the middle man and replacing the previous middle men that blockchain was thought to get rid of in the first place.

If we had the US Dollar on a blockchain system - now we are talking! Most companies and countries already operate in dollars and it would reduce transaction costs and volatility as I would only have to exchange the money once between two currencies rather than three times - between two currencies and then a crypto-currency on top.

You also have to remember that currencies today are controlled by governments and central banks. Whether you think that's right or wrong, it is pretty useful. It gives governments the ability to control their economy and tailor their economic policies to better the country (if done well ). If we all moved to a decentralised system where would that power be shifted to? You would have a private company that would control the money.. That could get pretty nasty. One good example of how decentralising a currency creates problems is the ECB - European Cental Bank. Look how they are powerless to help Germany thrive and help maintain it's status as a manufacturing super power and how the ECB is unable to help Greece's economy get back up from it's knees and recovering from it's debt crisis without tainting Germany's economy. You would have a similar situation if we all embraced a decentralised crypto-currency. By moving to a crypto-currency, you are asking governments to give up their sovereignty.. North Korea would be on the same level as America.. That's never going to happen. On a darker note, most central banks are private institutions and when you look back through time and learn about the history of currencies (the gold standard etc) central banks have manipulated their power and have in the past cause deliberate crashes through over and under supply of their currency. If the central banks are happy to do this, why would they ever want to give up that power to a crypto-currency?

If you're interested in this theory then I would advise you to watch this:

You might need to pop some proplus to stay awake though xD - anyone who does watch it through I will transfer all my rep to you!

So, if Ethereum ditched the currency and focused on other applications and their smart contracts I definitely think it has great potential and could blossom in the future. And for entrepreneurs, if Ethereum were to open up their platform and allow developers to implement their ideas freely - it could be an incredibly lucrative business, almost like a wordpress but instead of websites, blockchain applications.

Having said all that, someone did produce that poster with a lot of large corporations supporting Ethereum so maybe I am wrong

 

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[Coalission]

So, if Ethereum ditched the currency and focused on other applications and their smart contracts I definitely think it has great potential and could blossom in the future. And for entrepreneurs, if Ethereum were to open up their platform and allow developers to implement their ideas freely - it could be an incredibly lucrative business, almost like a wordpress but instead of websites, blockchain applications.

The platform is already open, and entrepreneurs are already implementing their ideas freely, that's what this thread is (supposed to be) about: https://dapps.ethercasts.com/

Ethereum doesn't need to ditch the currency, because it was never meant to be a currency in the first place! The creator itself said a long time ago that the ethers transacted through the system were never meant to be a "currency" per say, but they function as a sort of "gas" to power transactions and contracts on the network.

When people buy ethers, they are buying digital oil, or "blockchain fuel". Some people are purely oil speculators, some companies buy oil to hedge their prices because they use the oil in their industry. In turn, oil prices fluctuate. Some people lose or make a ton of money in oil futures, and we can debate whether it's a good idea to bet on "Ether futures", but do we really need to debate the legitimacy and usefulness of (ether) oil?

Of course, Ethereum is not as ubiquitous as oil, but I challenge someone to think of one single technology that has been backed by so many governments and corporations and NOT become ubiquitous.

Having said all that, someone did produce that poster with a lot of large corporations supporting Ethereum so maybe I am wrong

You're not wrong at all when having the debate about it replacing currency, the large corporations and governments are supporting Ethereum because they have the power to build on top of it and use ethers to power the computational transactions. Bitcoin was never supported in that way because its sole purpose is as a currency, and that's just not interesting to governments, corporations, etc. but people will still trade them because people will trade anything with value, seashells, baseball cards, etc.

 

[Pete.Watson]

Missed that bit then!

So if Ethereum isn't looking to be a currency then it looks like a hell of an opportunity to get in to!

Just skimming through the link you sent me.. There's some crazy good ideas and still more to be found!

 

[StevieB]

Do you think you are smarter than the collective intelligence of governments, banks, hedge funds, universities, etc.? You may be smarter than one of the individuals, but all of them?

One of the biggest Ethereum development houses now called Consensys, is run by the ex-VP of Technology at Goldman Sachs. You think he overlooked your points? Are all these banks just overlooking what StevieB on The Fastlane Forum is saying?

JPMorgan, Microsoft, BP, UBS, Credit Suisse, Intel, and more are forming a new blockchain alliance

Or is it at all possible that in your brief skim of the thread where you first learned about Ethereum you don't magically understand the technology like you're some sort of savant? Maybe you missed something, or can your ego not handle that?

Or is it all possible that the "Ex-VP" of Goldman Sachs simply is pushing a sales pitch, stating it will "change everything" to make more money because he decided to invest in this technology?

Very likely.

As I stated, I hear this stuff all the time.

"It's going to change the internet" -- "It's something revolutionary that's going to change how the web works" -- "We've never seen anything like it before!"

You've all been suckered into the same old loop that's been spouted again and again.

Already there's other technologies that have surpassed Ethereum in stock market value. See 'Ripple' -- already Ripple has surpassed Ethereum, behind bitcoin. So let's start another debate about how Ripple is going to change the world. It's in fact more valuable right now than Ethereum after all. Let's get into the technical details of how it can make technology great again, and how much better it is than bitcoin. It's left Ethereum in the dust almost overnight.

Sure there's money to be made here, but please don't buy into the complete bullshit that this is some type of tech revolution.

I have a long technical background. This is nothing new. It can certainly be something to make money in, but it's not some golden bullet that's going to "change the world" like the internet did.

 

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[StevieB]

That's like saying, "Name one thing that Microsoft Windows can do that coders can't do in assembly language."

The answer is, "With enough time, effort and skill, there's not a single thing that MS Windows can do that can't be done in assembly language."

So, does that mean Microsoft Windows isn't a worthwhile technology?

Comparing this to Microsoft, is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

To use your own words, to debate further with you on the technical details would be like debating if the Earth is round because you've made it pretty clear your level of technical aptitude when you started explaining things with the OSI model that isn't even used in the real world.

 

[Coalission]

Or is it all possible that the "Ex-VP" of Goldman Sachs simply is pushing a sales pitch, stating it will "change everything" to make more money because he decided to invest in this technology?

Very likely.

As I stated, I hear this stuff all the time.

"It's going to change the internet" -- "It's something revolutionary that's going to change how the web works" -- "We've never seen anything like it before!"

You've all been suckered into the same old loop that's been spouted again and again.

Already there's other technologies that have surpassed Ethereum in stock market value. See 'Ripple' -- already Ripple has surpassed Ethereum, behind bitcoin. So let's start another debate about how Ripple is going to change the world. It's in fact more valuable right now than Ethereum after all. Let's get into the technical details of how it can make technology great again, and how much better it is than bitcoin. It's left Ethereum in the dust almost overnight.

Sure there's money to be made here, but please don't buy into the complete bullshit that this is some type of tech revolution.

I have a long technical background. This is nothing new. It can certainly be something to make money in, but it's not some golden bullet that's going to "change the world" like the internet did.

So you DO think JPMorgan Chase and Microsoft are wasting their time building on Ethereum and are just participating in a sales pitch? You believe you're smarter than them? How is Ripple, a closed system which specializes in one thing, in your mind comparable to Ethereum? You said you hear stuff like this all the time, like what? What have you heard that is like blockchain or Ethereum? Not things you've heard that had long words you didn't bother to learn about so you assumed you can cook it up in Python, be specific.