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Topic: Ethereum: 2nd gen cryptocurrency with contract programming, "dagger" hashing - page 5. (Read 84312 times)

hero member
Activity: 826
Merit: 500
I'm new to the concept of Ethereum (just learned about it from this morning's article on coindesk) but it appears to be worth investigating.

A few (related) questions I will be trying to answer:

1. Is Ethereum necessarily a competitor to bitcoin, or is it complementary?

2. Can Ethereum work in conjunction with bitcoin? eg can you write a contract in Ethereum that is denominated in bitcoin?

3. Could bitcoin be modified, in the words of Jeff Garzik, "to incorporate any highly desirable features into a future bitcoin revision" ? adopt the basic concept of Ethereum? From what I've learned so far, Ethereum seems sufficiently different from bitcoin that this would not be straightforward.

Ethereum seems to be focusing heavily on its contract function, as opposed to Bitcoin which appears to be more exclusively a currency or store of value. That doesn't mean that Ethereum can't or won't act as a currency, and thus compete with Bitcoin.

Ethereum should certainly be able to work in conjunction with Bitcoin. From what I've read, it will be possible to initiate Bitcoin transactions using Ethereum. I do not think that Bitcoin will incorporate the main functions of Ethereum. Take note of the fact that although Bitcoin could have had more functions, such as BitDNS, they were split into Namecoin instead. Bitcoin has its purpose and I don't think that the developers will try to deviate from that purpose to go in a different direction, such as where Ethereum is going.
full member
Activity: 140
Merit: 100

What is the point of investing in a currency with inflation ?

The value of Bitcoin is going up. The value of a currency with inflation go down. The difference between the two is huge growing gap.

So why ? I'm open minded, I just want to understand.

This is a good question. There is no sense unless the Ethereum rate of adoption exceeds the bitcoin rate of adoption. Unlikely in my view, at least in the initial years. But I'm no expert.
full member
Activity: 140
Merit: 100
To ignore coin and profit is to deny reality. Communism is a failed experiment. We laud your generosity to invest on possibilities and your wherewithal to invest 20 Btc on visionary projects. Thank you. However, your noble actions are somewhat diluted by your criticism of others.

Sorry, I'm not a communist, and that is not my intent with my post. My point is that it's like people are arguing about how many shares of stock Google has issued, and at what starting price, wodering how much their shares will be diluted, while ignoring the actual business plans and people behind Google who will actually make those stock shares be worth something. People focus too much on the supply/demand side of economics, not the network effects enabled by the capabilities of the coin software. Much like people who don't understand bitcoin complain about it's supply/demand, and complete lack of backing compared to FIAT and gold, while completelly ignoring the fact that bitcoin can replace most of our world's financial and legal asset systems.
Apologies if you felt I called you a communist. I was trying to use the concept of economic incentives not the political overtones. The point is that if you had $100 invested in google whether you should then invest in Facebook. That discussion is ok in terms of ROI comparing the two. Sure fb might do well but maybe google would do better. However, if you had $1 billion in google, throwing $200k into fb would be nothing to you.
sr. member
Activity: 490
Merit: 250
Quote
   Ether will be sold in a Mastercoin-style fundraiser at the price of 1 ether for 0.0001 BTC. Suppose that X ether gets collected in this way.
    0.25X ether will be given to the founders.
    0.25X ether will be given to the Ethereum organization as a reserve pool to pay expenses in ETH such as ETH salaries or bounties for those developers who want part or all of their compensation to be in this form
    0.5X ether will be mined per year forever after that point (ie. permanent linear inflation)

 Roll Eyes

Yes but - there's dilution baked in, and the founder's shares are timelocked for 12 months before they can spend it (think of it as vesting).

From Vitalik's Reddit account: "The units will be in a timelock contract for at least one year, so they will be at most 1/8 when they actually become spendable. Just from a Zipf's Law perspective, I think it's likely that a single person will put in at least 8% of the total investment into the fundraiser, so the largest ether holder will likely not be a founder. Also, the big difference from Bitcoin (and especially the 100% premined/fundraised Ripple and Mastercoin) is that, once again, the currency is linear-inflationary, so the percentages will go down over time. I think that's the main moral objection people have with wealth inequality in existing cryptocurrencies; that the Winklevosses have not just 1%, but 1% of all that will ever exist. With Ethereum we don't have that."

One big investor will have 8% of the total fundraiser???!!!

NOT IF I CAN HELP IT
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 1001
I'm new to the concept of Ethereum (just learned about it from this morning's article on coindesk) but it appears to be worth investigating.

A few (related) questions I will be trying to answer:

1. Is Ethereum necessarily a competitor to bitcoin, or is it complementary?

2. Can Ethereum work in conjunction with bitcoin? eg can you write a contract in Ethereum that is denominated in bitcoin?

3. Could bitcoin be modified, in the words of Jeff Garzik, "to incorporate any highly desirable features into a future bitcoin revision" ? adopt the basic concept of Ethereum? From what I've learned so far, Ethereum seems sufficiently different from bitcoin that this would not be straightforward.
sr. member
Activity: 478
Merit: 250
Clever enough to create a new financial system but stupid enough to use photos from FB on the site?


I'm not sure I can invest money in people that look like D&D players.

Those are exactly the people you want to invest money with.
newbie
Activity: 14
Merit: 0
Clever enough to create a new financial system but stupid enough to use photos from FB on the site?


I'm not sure I can invest money in people that look like D&D players.
legendary
Activity: 1680
Merit: 1035
To ignore coin and profit is to deny reality. Communism is a failed experiment. We laud your generosity to invest on possibilities and your wherewithal to invest 20 Btc on visionary projects. Thank you. However, your noble actions are somewhat diluted by your criticism of others.

Sorry, I'm not a communist, and that is not my intent with my post. My point is that it's like people are arguing about how many shares of stock Google has issued, and at what starting price, wodering how much their shares will be diluted, while ignoring the actual business plans and people behind Google who will actually make those stock shares be worth something. People focus too much on the supply/demand side of economics, not the network effects enabled by the capabilities of the coin software. Much like people who don't understand bitcoin complain about it's supply/demand, and complete lack of backing compared to FIAT and gold, while completelly ignoring the fact that bitcoin can replace most of our world's financial and legal asset systems.
legendary
Activity: 1680
Merit: 1035
To me, POW is such a waste of resources, we are spending millions on resources to mine BTC, it doesn't seem like the direction we should continue heading as the world struggles with limited resources.  The amount of power wasted mining BTC is absolutely atrocious. 

Limited resources = electricity gets more expensive = mining isn't as profitable = fewer miners waste electricity mining. As the mining rewards decrease, resources spent on mining will decrease too. Do you know how much power we are wasting supporting the current financial system? All the energy used to run the bank wire and credit card networks and servers, all the power needed to cool and heat banking buildings that to the same accounting and security that's done automatically by miners, all the money spend on security, bank vaults, guards, armored vehicles, etc. How much of that power are we wasting, compared to bitcoin?

Quote
Regarding your concerns with POS, read up on Transparent Forging.

Hmm, that is a good idea. So, if I have a majority of the coins in a PoW system, I would need the majority of other users agreeing not to use me to forge the next block in order for my fork change not to go through? What if I own the majority of coins, but they are split up in thousands of smaller amounts, each of which asks one of my own addresses to forge the neck block? How will my thousand "sock puppet" wallets compete against normal users?

Quote
POW is completely susceptible to corporate control, look at the mining pools, you are close to 51% with Ghash.io alone. 

Mining pools aren't mining hardware. They aren't the ones securing transactions. All they provide is a place for miners to coongregate, but miners are free to switch from pool to pool as they wish. This prevents pools from doing bad things, because doing so would cause miners to abandon them, and make the pool lose all its income. Look at the mining pools. They are close, but never go above 51%, because miners keep moving to keep the % below 50.
newbie
Activity: 53
Merit: 0
cryptocurrencies were designed so that inflation is NOT present as it is the root of all evil.

its not much different if the central bank prints money or ghash.io mines ethereum. its just a decision that devaluates your money.

Agree
sr. member
Activity: 280
Merit: 250
cryptocurrencies were designed so that inflation is NOT present as it is the root of all evil.

its not much different if the central bank prints money or ghash.io mines ethereum. its just a decision that devaluates your money.

At some point in the future, the rate of coins being mined will equal the rate of coins being lost.

That's more like currency maintenance than inflation.
hero member
Activity: 586
Merit: 501
cryptocurrencies were designed so that inflation is NOT present as it is the root of all evil.

its not much different if the central bank prints money or ghash.io mines ethereum. its just a decision that devaluates your money.
legendary
Activity: 1256
Merit: 1009

What is the point of investing in a currency with inflation ?

The value of Bitcoin is going up. The value of a currency with inflation go down. The difference between the two is huge growing gap.

So why ? I'm open minded, I just want to understand.


I'm not going to pretend to understand everything, or half of what I've read about Ethereum.  But where much of bitcoins assumed value comes from difficulty obtaining bitcoins, low supply and high demand.  It's more like collecting baseball cards in some ways than currency.

This looks to me more like the way it is structured to reflect a real economy.  The value is based more on widespread adoption and the complexity of the transactions available.  I hope the inflation is able to stabilize the value of the currency. 
legendary
Activity: 2142
Merit: 1131

What is the point of investing in a currency with inflation ?

The value of Bitcoin is going up. The value of a currency with inflation go down. The difference between the two is huge growing gap.

So why ? I'm open minded, I just want to understand.
legendary
Activity: 1148
Merit: 1000
When can I get this coin? And for what price? thanks a lot!
hero member
Activity: 586
Merit: 501
site is so bad and broken in chrome 26..  Shocked
legendary
Activity: 1470
Merit: 1004
Has the clock been pushed forward another week on http://ethereum.org/? I thought the clock was counting down to 24th.

Yes it has, I guess he needs for time to figure out orphaned block.
sr. member
Activity: 378
Merit: 265
Please, help me.
Where can I get from a client for linux?  Roll Eyes
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