The goal of ethereum is to replace the Internet (DNS, email, facebook, ...). It's not even remotely comparable to the goals of Bitcoin. I very much doubt that Bitcoin can move in this direction, for many reasons. I mean, for example the accounting system is a mess and is going to be removed. If not even something which is in the core can be fixed, how could one take one such large goals? The last 16 bips of 39 bips are in draft mode. The last feature update of Bitcoin is now 20 months ago.
Anyone taking this seriously? Seems to me that innovation in the protocol is stalled. Anyone asking why? Is it the protocol architecture? Is it the core dev team (size, resources, politics)? I would think some of the venture money coming in would be paying attention (Andreesen, R. Branson). Oh, look, Branson just put money into TransferWise...
when these big names announce they are 'putting in' to some venture it's never clear how much money is actually being spent. For instance not very long ago Andressen backed Ning, and was really excited about improving PHP... what happened to that?
Ethereum is not consistent in their claims. I think much of it is just overly ambitious vaporware that was initially designed to sell these Ether credits.
there was this thread earlier:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6509979I think the idea of having special nodes validating the txs on behalf of most of the nodes breaks very basic operating standards of cryptocurrencies. Don't we like Cryptocurrencies because there is no central server? Now we want to make a central server and we pronounce it a 'fix'?
-bm