Bitcoin Forum

What is it:

Ethereum raised $15,000,000 worth of bitcoin in exchange for ether tokens & is listed as the 3rd largest crowdsale on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_funded_crowdfunding_projects).  It is intended to be a turing complete contract programming language that enables trustless contractual transactions in a transparent way.

The goal of the project is to push towards decentralized applications for law, interperson commerce (eBay, Uber, Reputation Systems), financial applications (Decentralized exchange, crypto pegged to fiat / crypto futures, prediction markets) by providing a robust language that easily empowers developers to quickly, stably & scalably develop on top of the blockchain (the core functionality of Namecoin can be reproduced in 5 lines of code)

History:  

It was originally intended to be built on top of Primecoin when the concept first started.  On more research - Vitalik stated that it simply was not scalable enough.  The PoC development language was released prior to the presale in August of 2014.  The testnet has seen ongoing development for a year as well as people programming demo applications on top of the testnet.

(See People's Republic of Doug (https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1009/the-peoples-republic-of-doug-ethereum-based-decentralized-organization) or IBM/Samsung ADEPT at CES (http://www.coindesk.com/ibm-reveals-proof-concept-blockchain-powered-internet-things/))

Who is behind it:

Originally the brainchild of Vitalik Buterin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin)

Audited by deja vu security (http://www.dejavusecurity.com/blog/2015/7/23/deja-vu-security-assists-in-ethereum-release)

Cloned by IBM PoC on IoT (http://www.coindesk.com/ibm-reveals-proof-concept-blockchain-powered-internet-things/)

“Ethereum has vast potential, whereas Bitcoin won’t ever do anything well beyond implementing a currency,”  ~ Nick Szabo @ Business Insider (http://www.businessinsider.com.au/ethereum-launches-ether-2014-7#ixzz38aF4FoeQ)

~ Vitalik Buterin

Issues


1.  I wish I could find the source.  But Charles Hopkins (who I loved btw) left the project around the time of the crowdsale.  Soon after - Ethereum marketing changed from what I described in original paragraph above to A platform for decentralized applications - Web 3.0 (https://www.ethereum.org/)

     Hopkins was fairly blunt about the scope creep of the project to try to include messaging, storage & ambiguous "everything to everyone decentralized web 3.0" wording.  Instead of a decentralized consensus language on top of the blockchain - Ethereum is now being marketed as "Web 3.0".  (I hope I'm not putting words in his mouth.)

2.   The release was originally supposed to be "Winter of 2014 / 2015".  During the final phase of testing over the last few months where the testnet was exposed to stress testing - there were a LOT of people with issues keeping up with the blockchain / blockchain forkings / etc.

3.   There is speculation that the Ethereum team is almost out of funding.  I believe I read somewhere that their burn rate will get them thru the end of 2015.  With current delayed timing that is probably only enough time to get Frontier working and somewhat stable.  No solid transparency of how crowdsale was spent outside of the continuing progress of the platform.

4.   There has been some controversy over the Ethereum team receiving both salaries & founder portions of Ether.  In addition to the Ether given to the Ethereum team - Ether was given to the Ethereum foundation to be sold to continue development.  Based on my research I didn't feel like it was out of line but others do.

Ethereum launch - Exchanges:

Happening (probably) this coming week.  Gatecoin Exchange (http://www.coindesk.com/press-releases/gatecoin-exchange-to-launch-ether-trading/) is allowing buy order sides in this week.  

Poloniex has stated (by mods unofficially) that they will have Ethereum listed on launch.

Ethereum team has stated "Several exchanges will support Ethereum on launch"

Pricing

Ethercoin - which is an "I owe you" by a group of individuals who CLAIM to have purchased Ethers and that they will give them to Ethercoin holders on Ethereum launch is currently priced at 0.0118 / $3.25.  

Ethercoin is 100% unofficial, could be a scam - but also the volume on Ethercoin is extremely low compared to the REAL ethers floating around.  Price could be significantly more or less (it's just the only gauge I know of).


Why did you write all of this shit?

There are only two coins I'm currently interested in & this is one of them.  Ethereum has largely stepped OUT of the altcoin community due to the constant attacks.  Frankly - I don't blame the "toxic environment".  The "altcoin community" is so full of scams - there is 1 legit project per 100 scams.

This thread was to TRY to provide an ongoing honest look at the Ethereum project and have a place to discuss.  Negative opinions are welcome.  Positive opinions are welcome.  Pages and pages of repeated trolling OR circlejerking are not.

Anyway.  When you see a new coin pop up on coinmarketcap next week - now you know what it is :-)

I created a thread few months where I discussed how scams are pushing away legit project. It's hard to tell which is legit and which is scam anymore. Sometimes good projects get bashed and I believe ETHER has been a victim. I found it interesting and innovative but it's definitely being pumped right now (may be that's why people are saying it's a scam)

I don't know why you think IPO coins don't deserve severe criticism when they're just cash grabs that recreate the central banker experience we already have.

Why IPO should be banned from the forum:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=443196.0

You can't ban IPO's without censoring free speech.  Where do you stop it - do you ban donations to projects (this message board for instance?)  People holding their projects hostage until they receive X amount of funding?  Premines?

Even if you disagree with IPO's - if the funds go to developers creating open source code.  When and if their project dies (or even if it doesn't) - the new cryptocurrency features can be copied to a non IPO coin (there's nothing keeping someone from doing this with Ethereum - it has been 100% open source since day 1).

You are honestly suggesting a ban on free speech / open market (buying and selling based on promises) and a ban on how most of the funding is going into crypto (greed)?

Do we ban pre-mines too?  We have the cryptonote protocol that is perhaps the best thing to happen to anonymous fungible currency since bitcoin.  Other projects forked the code and created coins without the pre-mine - and it wouldn't have happened without a pre-mine.

I disagree with you.  Ethereum is the ONLY presale I have found not to be a scam or incredibly shady.  Thousands and thousands of lines of code, working client that supports more than any other crypto in regards to turing, employment of developers from solid industries (not fly by night anonymous usernames), reviews from reputable sources & devs who spent almost a year working on the PoC code BEFORE asking for a dime & then another year after they were funded.

I agree with you that 99 out of 100 IPO's are scams.  I disagree that censoring free markets helps cryptocurrency in any way.

Because like I said in my post, the original Bitcoin mining reward is indepedent from the creator.  The IPOs are a bastardization of Bitcoin, changing it back to a central banker issuing currency for profit.  It's kind of the exact opposite ideology, to the point where it seems off-topic for the forum.

There is more than one way to look at this.  

The bitcoin creator owns a larger fraction of bitcoin than all of the Ethereum developers put together will.  How is that different in practical terms that affect the currency?

Ninjamines create a practical mining reward (ownership) that often goes to the creator.

Premines do the same thing.

Insider trading combined with pump and dumps (Truckcoin changed to Hypercoin with emissions and EVERYTHING changed ... dozens of these examples) also often does the same thing.

IPO's just put a public face on what's always going on under the table.  Everything is almost always a scam around here.  IPO's are just one flavor.

"Pumping and dumping" and "Highly inflationary PoW" both offset.  Inflationary PoW rewards miners.  Limited supply rewards big holders / pump and dumpers.  These are goals that fight against each other.

The pre-sale lasted a full month with a test client already built.  If the founders intending to create panic buying - they did a poor job of it.  They DID do a good job of maximizing their bitcoin raising potential (which again - seems to offset the accusation of intentionally creating panic buying while limiting supply) at the expense of being able to create panic buying now.  

Any current demand has been created by the completion of the project and taking away the risk that existed at the time of pre-sale.  Not the limiting of supply.  If there's an accusation - it should be that they maximized their bitcoin raising potential at the expense of letting people capitalize on panic buying (the accusation you are making).  Again - the way things were done don't work towards creating a panic buying scenario.  


It's a high enough profile project (outside of bitcointalk forum) with enough funds raised that I would suspect after nearly two years in the making something like this would exist already somewhere.  If you find or make something - link it here & I'll put it in the OP!  I would be highly interested in reading it.


Fair criticism.  Looks like about the same distribution as litecoin.

In my opinion, the way that the funds were drained, a competent team of people could have done much more. A few google tech's could put together what Ethereum wish to offer on a budget 10x less and produce 10x more.

That's not to say that Ethereum are a scam, just that it is incredibly insulting to suggest that after a year and multi-million pound donations, they are asking for more.

Useful piece with good summary, the OP is clearly biased in favor of Ethereum but manages to put ina fe line about the negatives so points for that.

The name is not Charles Hopkins, btw. It made me laugh ;D


Yes, they are incompetent and greedy. They wanted the glory of success but wanted to get their paycheck in early in case it failed.

Any more info on this Ethercoin and its relation with Ethereum project ?

They are very good at coding stuff, but when it comes to
project administration, it is a different thing altogether... which
translates to mishandling of finances.

Still, what little I've played with Ethereum left me rather
impressed. So I'm expecting great things from it. Or to be
precise, if Ethereum team messes up, I expect great things
from someone else who takes the lead along the track opened
by Ethereum.

I think the price will start off initially high, then rapidly crash as people dump for profit. If the devs have given themselves big shares and they are short of money then they might also dump along with the investors. After the Bitshares IPO it went to the number 2 coin in price, then crashed heavily and is number 8 today. Ethereum might follow a similar path.

So if Etherium becomes successful what does that mean for the internet, bitcoins, and altcoins?

And if I'm understanding this correctly, Ether will be the underlying currency of this technology?

Ethereum is open source right? So maybe a flood of Ether-alts (Ethershits?)... Etherdark... Etherlite.. bitEther..

Sounds like a premined mess. It will pump and dump just like every altcoin, ever, siphoning money from noobs. Count me out.

 Crowdsale / IPO.  They did have a massive legal research period (which is more than most) to make sure they were legal.  (Might make blatantly fucking people over more difficult ... or not).

Also they delivered PoC before they sold - now they are just creating the genesis block (after a year of further development and testing.)



Yeah - possible.  If the network effects choose a different coin the Eth team is ok with that.  They understood from the beginning & felt open source was still the only way to go.  IBM has already forked Ethereum - a few banks & warehouse type companies have also forked their own private chain for testing.  Counterparty forked and put Ethereum on the Blockchain.

I'm pretty sure the consensus will go with the original devs as long as they are producing code to make it more scalable, faster, more stable etc (but again - that's just all assumption on my part & I am biased.  Or maybe I've seen too many bitcoindark and lightcoincounterpartydarkcoindoge's to have much faith in copies.)

This project is legit. Consider the quantity and quality of work put in (github, blog posts, conferences/meetups, transparency efforts...), along with strong external validation/support (Szabo, IBM...). Therefore I'd expect Ether to behave similarly to Storjcoin (SJCX), another serious project, rather than your average alt scam.

Frankly, using "pump and dump" and Ethereum in the same sentence is somewhat insulting IMO.  

behave like storjcoin? you mean it will hardly get to top 50 :D :D, now seriously. When you checkout promotional videos for cryptos on youtube, they have like 150 views months after launch. Ethereum explanatory video has 36000...that says something. I think ETH will be in totally different league than top 10 altcoins. I think that it might be THE Bitcoin 2.0

Im looking forward to bitocin maximalists and their reaction :D

This is a very useful thread, I rediscovered Ether today after putting the pre sale to one side and simply forgetting about it, kind of wish I got in at that point although... once they release their genesis block and all the initial investors can use their coins I foresee a dump happening so could still get some cheapish coins 'maybe'

They sold ~ 60 million ether at the pre sale.

At ~$3 / ether as the current best guess (ethercoin price), that would be $180 mil market cap.

There is not going to be 180 million waiting to buy when they launch, and many many people will dump their coins when it does launch.

I'm sure the price will drop at launch, but for those that hang in there.. it could be the one that goes 1:1 with BTC. Or 1/3:1 as there are already 3 times more ether than the total BTC supply.

They are so different, that I don't see it as a threat to Bitcoin.

Vitalik wants to switch to POS, not POW, which is a good idea since POW is great for COINS, but POS is great for blockchains that provide a service.  (Once he's happy that POS can work)

MORE importantly.. It's going to be fresh / new / interesting to see just what this puppy can do (been a while since something NEW came along), and if anyone can actually understand it.. and how to use it..

Come on Ethereum devs..!  We beseech you.. don't disappoint us.. impress us.. inspire us.

..that's all that we ask of you. I know - it's a lot..

On pricing there is no way 180 million at $3 will be on the sell side either.  So it's tough to have any idea on how it will balance out

 I think there are many of us who are much more interested in supporting and being part of the of long term goals ... 100k tps, decentralized Uber etc than turning a quick buck over something that had a super high risk of dying during a 12 month maturation cycle.  

The price of ETC in no way reflects the price of ether. ETC is an altcoin with supply 1 million coins that has been pumped and will undoubtedly be dumped hard when ethereum launches. If you're expecting anything near $3 for your ether you will be sadly mistaken. In fact, I would not be surprised to see ether fall below crowdsale prices soon after launch.

In the years to come, if ethereum fulfills its lofty vision, maybe you'll see $3 per coin, but you won't see anything close to that on launch.

The more I think about it, the more I think this is what is going to happen. If Ethereum is at all successful from a price standpoint there will be Ethereum copies, and I think we will see them fairly quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if there are people working on some right now. Since it's a more complex system, maybe this will provide some barrier to typical clones. Once Ethereum is out in the wild though, and various unexpected behavior is seen, copies may be able to alter things that can't be changed in the original, in the same way bitcoin copies tried to improve on bitcoin. I doubt they will overtake Ethereum, unless some sort of serious flaw is discovered in the original, but they can probably steal away some marketshare. Also, Dapps developed for Ethereum could presumably run on a copied version.

Guys, if you're looking for an indication of what Ether is worth in the market, the highest bid at Gatecoin is currently 0.0076 BTC.

I'm not saying that means anything for the future.

https://gatecoin.com/marketDepth

It's irritating to me that I can't see the market without having a verified (passport pictures) account.  I'm more interested in how deep the order book is between the $1 & $2 mark than the top bid.

A better indicator than ethercoin ... still tough to know much till buyers and sellers start getting matched.

Made this screenshot yesterday

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/mVYUDxXECKo7TKP1yXAwE_2i75O8PIT6FrRjT44yYGo=w1575-h780-no

ah awesome thanks!

IndiaMikeZulu in da house. Just readin' up here now.

Mark

I would predict $1 - $2 range when they start selling, there is always the chance of the super inflated price at the start due to people not being able to get their Ethereum out yet. (Low supply)

I guess we will see a shakeout to 15cents or lower first. No moon without down  :)

Will there be some normal exchange of ETH on launch? Normal means no need to send scans of my ID.
I heard rumors about polo, but is it confirmed?

Yes - it's going to be "when ether unfreezes" in a few days per mod.

The mod in the trollbox said pol will have it after "thawing faze".
Bittrex is confirmed to have it after launch as well as other.

but the big question is how to send Ether to another adres.
Not only is mining in windows impossible access to your ether is also impossible if your name is not Vitalik.

ICOs are always SCAMS if they don't show 100% transparency of everything including funds.

Ethereum has 0% transparency -> Ethereum is a scam


It's that simple.






What I'm now looking for are Ethereum clones with:

- Mining pools at launch
- GPU miner for windows, linux and mac
- Fair launch
- 0% premined.
- no instamine
- good community

I don't think it will be too long before the first Alt-Ethereum is launched. I will make a prediction that we see the first one 6 weeks from today, so September 13, 2015.  :)

Sounds like this project is already in its deaththrows.  Leaked Skype chat has dev saying they're hears away from finished but will run out of money in 7 months.

this is gonna dump harder than a fat mexican man's dinner after cinqo-de-mayo!
LOL won't be hard to figure out.  then if you wanna risk buying, you catch it someplace in the dump...then prob have to wait awhile before seeing that "release price" again.

These forums are garbage on top of trash. If anyone is actually interested in Ethereum, check reddit or Ethereum's website/forums, the yahoo's in here are useless. Do your own research, make your own decisions.

It'll clear the thawing and be ready for trade within a few days, anytime now.

I read thru the chat (it's been out for quite a while now) and my take away from it was a bit different.  

If ethteam gets to Serenity before running out of bitcoin (not going to speculate on likelyhood of that here) - the foundation will be generating apx 1.4 mil ethers a year if they stake them.  At Serenity with the live network up and running, the security audits behind them, the logic code mostly done, the PoW & PoS developed the $ load goes from

initial startup costs
marketing
development
building three separate clients from scratch that support touring
security auditing
two new consensus algo's

to

scaling & speed improvements
support / bugfixing

(bitcoin has how many full time devs?)  if you're able to cut current costs down to whatever is supported from staking then you are fine.  

The project will just scale down to 5 devs & a PR person (if ether is worth .30 - more if it's more.  Less if it's less)


What did NXT start with - 40 pre-investors?  Ethereum has thousands ...

How many applications were developed in NXT pre-launch?  Ethereum has dozens.

There is a lot of space between "We are gonna wipe out litecoin on day one u guyz!!!" to "Dead on Arrival"  It is neither & has produced code & attracted enough attention OUTSIDE of this altcoin speculation forum (something that no other altcoin has done to the same degree) that most are oblivious to that it will have it's shot over the next 12 to 18 months.

It has raised eyebrows of IBM, banks who are interested in moving to a ledger system and more.  Funding Ethereum (or figuring out a way to keep them / project alive & intact with consensus) will be their cheapest route to continue ongoing development they may want to tap into in the future.

Ethereum is a good idea, however, current state of technology makes the platform suffer. I mean, a decentralized virtual machine with today's people network is going to have a very tough time to compete against cheap cloud computing services like Amazon's. 

Not necessarily true. If I was a BTC whale I'd put 50% of my BTC in ETH. There is so much going be coming in: http://dapps.ethercasts.com/
I expect many of these DApps will be funded in ETH (where ETH gets locked in a contract, thus generating more demand). Starting with Augur, which itself could easily be worth a $50M business (based on Intrade valuation)

most people go completely whack on money they never seen before

Ethereum clones are going to be on fire.

I wonder how many weeks it will be before an older altcoin switches its code base to Ethereum.

WARNING

DO NOT USE:
https://forum.ethereum.org

The forum is moderated. My account has been banned and my 2 threads deleted.


Keep all discussions about Ethereum off of that forum.