I also saw the reddit thread.
I'm not sure why Vitalik Buterin has such a wide cult following, even being more famous than a real Bitcoin developer like Gavin Andresen or even an alternate developer like Charlie Lee.
Vitalik's fame was some obscure magazine which was only actively read by hundreds. It seems probable that an old theory is correct - Goldman Sachs needed a "hip young mascot" ("to appeal to the young Facebook masses") for their crypto currency, so they went with Vitalik.
Goldman Sachs ... umph ... I would think very carefully about participating something, which is touched by GS. And would reject even from the principal basis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%9308http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_15/b4173030234603.htmThey have former Goldman Sachs. Which you might otherwise excuse, saying someone's past shouldn't matter, but at the same time there's only so many people in the world who have worked for GS (we're talking tens of thousands in a planet with billions of people). It's not a coincidence that one would show up in coin which appears to have huge funding. There's plenty of developers and organizers without that sort of background.
That's not the reason why I dislike Ethereum. To me Ethereum is a copywrighting coin like Mastercoin and Maidsafe. Worse yet, they seem to be a copywrighting equivalent to Ripple.
They spam YouTube with these awful rhetorical rambles about politics and bankings which last over a hour and only get a few hundred views. They pump out equally boring articles which nobody reads. They have all these developers and people who don't work for free.. so where are these guys going to get their compensation?
IIRC - Ethereum (before it got in trouble with the Ontario & Canadian Government) admitted it wanted a $30 million IPO. I'm sure that money would be put to great use. Vitalik already vacations around the world but I guess he needs a Tesla automobile and a mansion in Thunderbay (or whatever constitutes a nice area of Ontario).
https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/107/why-30-million-why-so-inflationary(or, alternatively, just google "Ethereum 30,000 BTC" without the quotations)
It makes you wonder the point of even investing into Ethereum if it's a grand version of Mastercoin. I put in $1000? Ok that gives me 0.000033% of Ethereum... making it $10,000 to get 0.0003% makes no quantifiable difference for what is an extreme high risk investment (the people who invested into Mastercoin and Maidsafe know this. They would had made more money off Doge, NxT, Darkcoin, et al). Ponzi schemes ran by wealthy investors and greedy developers is just exactly what we all want *sarcasm*
Then there are the technical issues. I'm not a programming but I can say this: programming languages like Java, C++, et cetera, weren't born overnight and took as long as a decade or more to work out the kinks. I doubt Vitalik was busy programming his revolutionary new language when he was twelve. Not only will it take time for Ethereum language to be completed but there's also an education issue in that Ethereum language developers currently don't exist and they'll have to spend years to master the language and then pump out the code.
Ethereum, if you noticed, has exiled itself from Bitcointalk after it couldn't take any criticism. They've also banned and deleted many users from their own forums.
Stay classy Goldman Sachs
We should not just see the negative side of things. Vitalik's claim to fame was because he put a face to his name. He sold himself well. We shouldn't discredit that as each entity has its own objectives and motive for doing so. That's marketing 101. If he did not do that, would we be talking about him here?
Whether they can deliver ethereum is another matter. And to be honest, even with such exposure, they haven't even reach mainstream yet. I can say that it is not that easy to market a crypto these days, what with thousands of them being rolled out. Without a war chest of money, it is going to be difficult. Such is the evil of reality in which we live in.
Come the day, when NEM will have to do the same. No matter how great it is, it will not gain mainstream traction if we do not have deep pockets.
Bitcoin is five years old and it is only being used by a little over 2 million account holders (note, Account holders not necessary unique persons). About a couple of hundred million have been thrown into the project by investors all over and is moving at an extremely slow pace.
Unlike all Internet/mobile fast paced initiatives of the 21st, century, cryptos as a project which hold so much promise is moving at a snail's pace. Perhaps, it is important to ponder why.
Should we discuss this further in the nem forum? I have set up a link for that here :
http://forum.nemcoin.com/index.php?topic=2278.0