One thing I will say is that the ethereum team really knows how to engage, market, and create awareness, along with being very strong technically. Very impressed with their technical achievements, but also equally impressed with their website and ability to market and make the currency easy for the average non techie to purchase. One of the most professional websites I've seen for any alt coin project as well.
For that reason alone, they are likely to get a lot of attention, and attention equals dollars, and dollars equals hiring more devs. Pretty virtous cycle that XMR should have but doesn't seem able to make happen. They have already sold over 1 million USD worth.
Maybe that's about the right time to look into another direction: Etherium (ETH)
The Ether guys just started the pre-sale, and I'm wondering how you all think about this new coin and its presale. Some quick questions/points from me side:
- Will ETH be a threat to Monero?
- Is the presale (2000ETH per BTC right now) a reasonable investment chance? (I couldn't find an upper bound on the coin supply for the presale.)
- Is there a chance that ETH will make it against Mastercoin and Counterparty?
- Would Bitshares-X (similarly Bitshares-PTS) be a better investment? (ETH and Bitshares seem to share some goals, e.g., decentralized organisations/companies, etc.)
Regards.
OMG: Read this blog post by Vitalik Buterin (one of the main dudes behind Etherium):
https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/launching-the-ether-sale/Some of his points made:
- The price of ether is initially set to a discounted price of 2000 ETH per BTC, and will stay this way for 14 days before linearly declining to a final rate of 1337 ETH per BTC. The sale will last 42 days, concluding at 23:59 Zug time September 2.
- The annual issuance rate is 0.26x the initial quantity of ether sold, reduced from the 0.50x that had been proposed in January. [...] We make absolutely no promises of this, except that the issuance rate will not exceed 26.00% per annum of the quantity of ether sold in the Genesis Sale.
- We reserve the right to use up to 5000 BTC from the pre-sale while the pre-sale is running in order to speed up development.
This reads like a birthday party for the devs. Bring all your BTC and we start OUR party. You get some totally weird coins/promises in return. WTF! Also, the shortcut, ETH, is funny, because it relates to the well-known university in Zurich/Switzerland which has nothing to do with the whole thing. To me, the Etherium project seems more than odd. (In addition, check out this Etherium related website
www.ursium.com, yet another site without any real content or information.)
ADD1: Honestly, I hoped Etherium becomes something good (I would have liked to invest), but now I feel like Alice in Weirdo Land.
ADD2: Just found this statement on the official Etherium website: "EthSuisse will not place a cap on the number of ETH that can be purchased by the community." WTF!
ADD3: "EthSuisse will restrict any single entity, person, corporation, or group from controlling more than 12.5% of the total ETH sold by the end of the Genesis Sale." WTF!!
EDIT: OK, I stop here. I can't take it anymore. Etherium could be (become) one of the biggest ripoffs in the crypto history... without me.