Bitcoin Forum

Coinbase have announced that they have started supporting Ethereum on their system, this is an excerpt from their Coinbase bloq 'We are pleased to announce that Coinbase is adding support for Ethereum. Consumers can now easily buy, sell, send, and store Ether in their Coinbase account. To get started, visit the “Trade” page on Coinbase.com or tap on “Buy” or “Sell” options in our iOS or Android apps".

I was just wondering whether this could be a threat to Bitcoin dominance. Your views

i think it's not going to be a threat for bitcoin,ethereum accepted in coinbase is just a small thing for bitcoin but big thing for their community,however just see after ethereum had been released,after few weeks, the price of bitcoin rising means demand increased,nothing to be worried about

I dont think its really going to be a threat to bitcoin dominance , I thought ethereum was as good as dead. The only people propping up the price now are big whales and idiots buying it without realising this. Why would anyone buyy into a cryptocurrency that goes against the whole idea of a decentralised currency? I certainly wont be going near it anymore, Bitcoin is a much much safer bet.

This is driven more by Coinbase's need to drive more volume through their exchange than anything else. Ethereum's future will depend on unique use cases and the issuance schedule under Casper, not on support by one exchange or the other.

that's right,ethereum are basically used for trading tools,nothing more,don't even see some stores accepting this as a currency but still accepting bitcoin
at the end it'll come to conclusion,ethereum can't compete bitcoin,the first cryptocurrency and the most popular

what do you think Coinbase is? did you think it is defining what bitcoin is?

not at all, coinbase is just a service like any other services, like Mt.Gox, Cryptsy, Blockchain.info, Poloniex, bitfinex, Localbitcoin,.... so they have added ethereum like other exchanges to take advantage of the huge volume this altcoin has so they can earn more profit from the pump and dumps as people trade it and pay fees to them.

Coinbase has been moving this direction for a while. They already moved into ETH with GDAX. I think the reality is that their business model is failing, and they have burned through millions in funding only to bring in pathetic returns for their investors. They flushed endless money down the toilet on a useless affiliate program that brought in no liquidity.

Their solutions were 1) push Bitcoin Classic, hoping that a hard fork in furtherance of the "cheap/free/instant bitcoin" would be a boon for their payment processing division, and perhaps to adoption. And when that failed, 2) push Ethereum to attain higher overall trading volumes and general interest in their platform.

All said, I think they are going down in flames, and their ringing endorsements of the Ethereum developers look all the more pathetic throughout this DAO/hard fork fiasco. Brian Armstrong makes me sick.

I'll say it once, and I'll say it again. Boycott this company. Fred and Brian have been FUDing bitcoin hard for the better part of a year. Talking incessant shit about Core devs, pushing Bitcoin Classic, spreading nonsense about Classic sybils being representative of the bitcoin community, and pumping Ethereum nonstop for months.

More than that, these guys will blacklist you, or worse, turn you in to law enforcement. So be very careful about what coins you send them, and where you send coins from their platform. That is if you are bold enough to use their service. Coinbase recently helped the US government arrest the alleged owner of KickassTorrents; he is being extradited from Poland to face criminal copyright infringement charges.

Does Coinbase support Litecoin?
Oh well, it is so easy yo buy Bitcoin in Coinbase, for lazy people, Coinbase is a good choice.

i believe it is not threat to bitcoin , it is an added service from coin base, bitcoin has its own value , worldwide people using majorly bitcoin for transaction , so there is always demand and growth for bitcoin :)

This will hurt bitcoin a bit, because now Ethereum will have much higher value comparing with the recent price(exchange rate), I'm surprised how ethereum is able to be listed in coinbase where only bitcoin and fiat is in this exchange, I'm afraid that now the bitcoin traders will move their funds(not all) to ethereum. Being listed in coinbase will give a good boost Ethereum.

With all this "DAO" and "Hard fork" shit going around with ethereum, I don't want anything to do with it. And in true Coinbase Style, just as I don't want it, they give it. Same happened with local trader.

Coinbase is waiting for a decent LTC move before they jump in on it most likely.  Usually LTC moves on a bitcoin bubble so we just waiting on that.

I dont think it will be a treat to bitcoin, bitcoin has more user than ethereum, ethereum still has a long way before can reach bitcoin position, if ethereum can survive because there are a lot of coin keep coming out
If ethereum can become bitcoin rival, i think it will be good for user, user has more choices where to invest their coin

In my opinions, never be a threat for bitcoin, until the ethe, it's can built their value without needed a bitcoin I feel it's impossible for eth become bitcoin threat. because eth is always need a bitcoin for their support.

in my view these feature will not threat to Bitcoin dominance because if coinbase support ETH doesn't mean we will see invasion for all coinbase users to decide using ETH and i believe bitcoiners will still using bitcoin and will not have any affected by this news

It is not going to threaten bitcoin in any more of a way than it does now if it is even a threat right now which I don't think it is.

Coinbase will also be adding LTC at some point as they mentioned this a while ago, their affiliate program was crazy at the start they were giving away I think it was $100 per referral or something along those lines, these new coins being added is just to increase their business and why not.

Dunno. But I find the lack of due diligence pretty disturbing. I am impressed that ETH managed such a smooth fork. I am not impressed by the reasons why it happened.

I think it's safe to say Bitcoin and Litecoin are known and trusted quantities. How much do Coinbase know about ETH? It's clearly sub beta prone to the whims of vested entities.

I don't think its a threat, it's probably a good thing, actually.
It means that more people are using cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin won't always be the only currency, something else may replace it. That is not the most important thing.
The idea that we can make up and agree on a new form of currency ourselves is whats important.

It doesnt matter and it will surely make no threat to Bitcoin dominance.Its not a big deal and i dont see it will affect bitcoin in any way.
Coinbase are just adding some features with adding etherium as well and it has nothing to do with bitcoins.

no i dont think so. i think bitcoin is so much stable and it has such a strong position in present time. therefore i dont think any other currency will have any bad effect on bitcoin.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. The proportion of people who genuinely believe in Bitcoin versus people who are waiting to get rich is probably pretty low.

If another coin looked like being a dead cert then the chances are the speculators would flock to that even if it was no more than a short term pump that did massive damage to crypto overall. Bitcoin's a long way away from 'too big to fail' yet.

First off all Coinbase is supporting the shitcoin since a while.So nothing new here and not worth to talk about it.
And how should a highly premined, centralized governed, mutable blockchain be a threat to Bitcoin??
This thing is highly manipulated and can never reach or achieve Bitcoin's status.

Coinbase supporting Ethereum really makes no difference at all, to be honest. It's definitely why the value of Ethereum got a pump today, but just because an online wallet provider starts to accept the second-biggest cryptocurrency doesn't make it an immediate threat to Bitcoin, and I'm not sure why people think it does.

A business is supposed to make money, and they'll use different means to make that money. Accepting another cryptocurrency expands their demographics, opens a new exchange, and allows for them to charge more fees. It makes sense from a business perspective, but it really means nothing from an influence perspective.

I don't think Coinbase supporting Etherium is a threat to bitcoin dominance.  It was known that coinbase had been supporting etherium since some time ago,  so there is no different if they support etherium along the way as they do to bitcoin.  It is known  differencee between the two and the contrasting way how these two are acquired and imlemented.  As for Etherium is highly manipulated and bitcoin being more decentralized.

Exchanges should trade all alt coins, they getting exchange fees from the trading, so the incentive is there, and indeed Coinbase have plans to add more alt coins for the trading later. And I dont believe when previously Bitcoin only exchanges starts trading alt coins as well has any real impact on Bitcoin at all.

I personally see Ethereum as flawed altcoin and the DAO experiment showed pretty quickly why, any complicated smart contract under turning complete system has inevieable attack vectors possible, this make Ethereum good enought only for simple smart contracts, but the Bitcoin can handle such simple smart contracts as well, and much safer.

That could make bitcoin even more stable.
You need a second strong currency for trading.
As long as ether does not turn out to be a scam coin, I appreciate it.

Not it's not a threat to bitcoin. The central bank of coinbase will pump the price and gain more market share,  unfortunately.

Bitcoin initially,started as a investment.No one was really buying stuff online with bitcoins.Due to heavy investments or demands,the prices increased drastically.I'm afraid if same happens with ETH ,it might just take over bitcoin.But hey practically speaking,its never going to happen,bitcoin has already crossed Horizons,took ages to reach there.Besides that,ETH is technically much more inclined towards business applications based on blockchain,not a currency really.

Correct.Coinbase is an exchange,they'd probably sell my dickcoin if I pay them a few bucks.

Yeah its very impossible to happen that bitcoin will be still remain because we already use it and many stores are accepting bitcoin. but we dont know maybe they can stil luse ethereum as alternative of bitcoin..

Meh, Coinbase is crap, don't care what they do. Those nosy bastards closed my account for no reason.

Bitcoin's done all the hard work. There's not a great deal stopping something else usurping that if enough people want it. The problem is that it makes crypto look like a heap of valueless shit if the daddy is discarded in favour of something else. That means it could happen again and again.

Most people want to speculate. ETH is providing more market action.

ETH is already dead, they are just beating a dead horse because all those big names pumping it are simply bagholding. Bitcoin will take over with Counterparty and Rootstock type of solutions when it comes to smart contracts. Who wants to use a system where hard forks can happen at any time if the community decides that they want to reverse transactions because they don't like a certain outcome (like a thieft stealing coins).  And the fun part is, there was no actual thieft, just a clever guy taking advantage of a poorly written smart contract. It's fucking ridiculous.

Do you really think enough people want ETH ? I don't think so.People should actually start giving up on their shit coin ideas because the market is just not ready to accept change.I'm talking about general merchants here,they're still trying to promote the use of bitcoins and accept it's mass adaptability.

I never understood the idea of paying for Ethereum so it can be used to power your apps or smart contracts. Will the world be able to support this mega chain if IoT begin to use Ethereum to power their stuff? I see it as a form of investment, that is all.

hahaha, 100 points for delusions.

Good for their profit !
I dont think Etherium threat bitcoin dominance since im holding both bags but maybe a 3k per btc and 1k for ether will suit me ! prolly in 10-20 years, but then again nobody really knows.
Ether has a lot to do.. LTC was in that price range, once.. but he lack of community, lets see how ether gonna make it
Bitcoin from the other hand naaahh he is king of the castle..

i think it's not going to be a threat for bitcoin dominance, ethereum accepted in coinbase is just innovation of coinbase, and it is same with another markets place who accept ethereum for buy or sell on their markets. It is normal for market place is like coinbase.

I don't know, why I've seen the people just having a negative thinking about this cases, not just coinbase but is also in another place. They just adding a new feature for their users to make a more comfortable. they just adding,selling and holding that. why there are some people are think that is will become a threat and bla bla bla...

Thats good for ethereum but for me ethereum will not dominate bitcoin is impossible to happen and I do not see any altcoin for now that can surpassed  the achievement of bitcoin.

coinbase is just like other exchanger, bittrex, poloniex etc nothing to worry about it. Adding etherum on their list because etherum is one of the popullar alttcoin like other exchanger did, I dont think that it will threat bitcoin at this moment, it might be, once the etherum's price same or higher than bitcoin's price.

I don't see it as being a threat at all. It's just another option in the Coinbase system. Kinda like complaining because some multiwallets support a lot of cryptocurrencies and maybe some they shouldn't. It doesn't mean a thing if people just don't use it.

Coinbase is different than those exchanges -- it has far larger overheads and has burned through many millions more in VC money. Their recent moves smell of desperation; I believe they are losing considerable money on their operation and are desperately looking for a solution.

I'm not sold on that viewpoint.  Coinbase is the first port of call for many people getting into cryptocurrencies and their fiat links make it more important and 'legit' in the eyes of customers.

They also have serious marketing muscle compared to alt only operations as their remit is to pull fresh meat in. Ethereum being pushed by them is a big deal however you want to look at it but I think it's a pretty reckless move on their part. I sure as shit wouldn't be adding a freshly forked coin that may or may not become pos sometime soon.


Deep down I don't think most people care what they buy if it makes them Rich. Right now it's the alts where the action is.  Greed will cream anything else every single time even if it kills the entire scene off.

people should really learn to stop associating a service with bitcoin and its future. coinbase and all those exchanges or services and many other things that i sometimes see like HYIPs, scams, cloudmining scams, Ponzis,... these are all just people trying to make some money from bitcoin. and what they do whether it is good or bad can only have a small effect on bitcoin.

and it is highly possible that coinbase would remove ethereum just as fast as they added it.

True. Returns on Alts are more than Bitcoin at the moment which means Alts have the attention of traders. Bitcoin is the most established digital currency by far and is proven. It's here for the long haul.

You are right. I' support and I will add that ethereum will complement bitcoins. They are not competing and they are both cryptocurrencies that can be used online. But there is no need to fear because even though many cryptocurrency are existing it will increase bitcoin users. At the end of the day they will exchange their other coins to bitcoins.

I don't see ethereum  being a threat to bitcoin actually even as a competitor. Bitcoin had already established his fortress and ethereum have long way to go before he even has his foundation set.  Coinbase have nothing to do with this threat things.  They are just there adding ethereum to reap some profit from high trading volume of it.

these type of news will always create hype and panic of missing out in the market so the only effect this can ever have on prices would be ethereum price and the fact that it will contribute to its pump. and it will not have any effect on the bitcoin and its price whatsoever.

actually I find it interesting that Coinbase added etherum at this point, right before the pump and eth supporters surely milked the news to their advantage as much as they could to push the price as high as possible.

This is a very good explanation and it clears out the definition between the fact and fiction between the ethereum matter. Ethereum is not a threat to bitcoin but rather it will help bitcoins to increase additional members and users of bitcoin. This in fact a good news to bitcoin and is never a threat.

There really isn't any need for Bitcoin to "dominate" anything, that Bitcoin is growing and doing well should be good enough for us. Progress/innovation can only be maximized by allowing anyone to take a shot at being the best. Bitcoin is not without flaws, if another coin manage to improve on it, it would be obtuse of us to renounce objectivity in favor of emotions (I'm not saying Ethereum is necessarily that coin).

I don't see Ethereum as a thread to Bitcoin dominance. More like a very small competitor. Bitcoin has been used for many years and more and more businesses and people adopt it while ETH has a very long road ahead until they can even catch bitcoin. ::)

I just noticed today that coinbase is supporting Ethereum, unfortunately I get this error: "Sorry! Buys not available in Ukraine" but one thing I don't understand, why coinbase hasn't made the feature to trade ETH/BTC or BTC/ETH directly without the fiat and without these specific countries limits?

bitcoin will always stay the dominant coin and will always stay on top because there is nothing else in the world (i mean in the crypto-currencies-world) that can do what bitcoin does for us.
all these new altcoins will remain alive and hot for a little while before people start to lose interest and move to the new hot coin for pump and dumping.

But some people is over to giving a respond about that, I sure about your statement coin base is like another exchange site, they just adding a new feature to giving a lot of choice for their members and there are something can make you worried about it. the worst chance is there become a small competitor for bitcoin.

I think ETH holders at the time of the fork on GDAX/Coinbase should demand their Ethereum Classic. It has value, there is clearly demand for it, and it is rightfully the holders' and not Coinbase's property. I saw a lawyer on Twitter opine that if it isn't otherwise specified in the T&Cs, the exchange has an obligation to return it.

if coinbase had added eth a few months ago they'd look like champs. adding it round about now, when no one knows what the hell is gonna happen to eth of whatever strain, makes them look like dumb opportunists.

would the nyse list a stock when a duplicate had just popped up and there was a civil war on the horizon? no way. alot of their customers don't know much about crypto and they won't be happy if eth goes schizo.

I think this represents one of the main problems of Bitcoin... that Coinbase could even have the option to do something like this.

If we all protest Coinbase, I'm sure another "Coinbase" will pop up again to fill their shoes... Coinbase fills a niche that enables people who don't know much about Bitcoin to buy and store their coins in their wallet, kind of like Xapo and other web wallets.  It's just the fact that the government will continue to pressure the exchanges to track peoples every move; just like the government wants to force Apple to allow the government to spy on their users...

It just seems Bitcoin, and any other cryptocurrency for that matter, should be a little more resistant to these types of motivations.

Any increase in the number of fiat <-> cryptocurrency gateway is good for cryptocurrencies in general

that is not what I wanted to say and that is definitely not what ethereum can do.
it doesn't matter how big eth pump gets or which site adds it to their list of coins, eth is not gonna bring more people to bitcoin because nobody outside of crypto currency world hears about eth except anybody who already knows about bitcoin and is trading altcoins to make more bitcoin.

I don't think that bitcoin dominance is in danger because people are buying ETH of its high price and they believe that its price will go even higher than its current price.

It is a good news, I using Coinbase, after Coinbase create etherium wallet, I hope can exchange or convert from BTC-ETH.

Bitcoin community is larger than Ethereum. It would only become a threat IF and only if bitcoin users are actually switching to eth. But in fact, I think this might help the bitcoin dominance since some eth users are switching to btc.

Do you really believe anyone has discovered eth first and will then switch to btc?  Everybody involved in crypto has or is involved with btc. Its the main coin,  now ans for the foreseeable future.

No not all i guess it may be a good sign for etherium users but a treat to bitcoin is i guess far from reality bitcoin has established its name for long time

Not really. Although Coinbase does a ton of transactions via its platform everyday, unless the merchant is actually accepting ETH, which I haven't seen that much of, bitcoin will still be the dominant coin. As slim as bitcoin adoption is, ETH adoption is arguably worse.  Coinbase may increase the trading volume on ETH a bit, but that's all.

Etherum have quite good capital behind it - around 18 millions USD, so it can really make competition to Bitcoin.  ;)

it is never a good idea to keep your coins in the hands of others. and it is important to remember that as long as you don't have the private keys you don't own the coins.
so do your exchange at coinbase and withdraw to your wallet desktop or offline.
but i guess if you have small amount of BTC like 0.01 then it is ok to keep them there.

Since the begining of Etherium peopls speculating it to be the next bitcoin, it may happen, atleast eth has a huge volume daily, bigger then bitcoin these days, for me coinbase were wondering why just bitcoin when eth has soo big value and top altcoin being traded above bitcoin transactions. They need to be fair bitcoin is growing, but eth is borning at the moment.

Exactly.
Unless someone actually starts taking payments in ETH, it will just be another pump and dump scheme.
If any website does start taking payments, someone stands to make a lot of money.
For now the only ones getting rich are the owners of the exchanges.

Eth may have bigger volume than bitcoins everyday, but that's it.
They are profitable at the moment but I do not seem to see a good future in eth since the adoption is really bad and eth has a lot of issues like fake volumes.

It's a couple of clicks away for Coinbase to set themselves up as a payment processor for ETH. All the infrastructure's there and as they get more and more dug in to their position they probably will. A gift card site I use has been doing cards for ETH for quite some time.

If I had vast ETH gains I'd love to splurge some of it shopping. But I would've done that with BTC already.

I don't understand why the ETH people would even want it to be used as money--it's supposed to be 'fuel' for their apps. If the price goes up a lot then it becomes very expensive to run apps in their platform.

Well man ETH people want it to be used as money because of one reason and I guess you already know this. They want it to be used as money because they will profit if it becomes very expensive. Well I don't think that Ethereum is not a threat to bitcoin dominance since it is just another altcoin but there's a slim chance of it being on par with bitcoin in the future if ETH will continue to show good improvements.

Open up coindesk or cointelegraph these days and you will find mostly ethereum articles and brainwashing information about it, speculation of
next train and so on.. Now coinbase too,. as soon as you login, BOOM do you want to buy ETH ?! We support ETH now.. Buy ETH now ?!
I really hope people see past these facts and obviously paid articles and avoid it in a wide circle. ETH will never be a threat to bitcoin.

"ETH - why is this still a thing ?!"

well to be honest eth is good currency, why they shouldnt use it? i think you can use it the same just like bitcoins if you do some shopping so thats not a trouble

How can it be a 'good' currency if the supply is essentially unlimited? Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I thought ETH does not have a hard limit set for the total # of ETH like bitcoin does?

BJ

I just saw that they have included a eth wallet now and you can even buy it from them.
I think that means it is was not just a phase for it to make it's appearance known but it is now here to stay. ;D

Eth has assumed ltc place and is currently the silver crypto, it has potencial to grow and several whales on it, making some thousands of dollars every day. Replace bitcoin can not be soo strong for do that, but its volume even if fake its very huge 20000 bitcoins these days are out of imagination.

Heavily pre-mined (80%-ish currently), endlessly inflationary, 'cryptocurrency' which doesn't even provide ledger immutability...

Its ok for some other coin except bitcoin to show some progress, I think this just shows that some alt coins can have future, maybe not so big like btc, but they will be present on market.
For me this good thing, we can discuss about it how big role can have other currencies in the future, but progress of any currency will affect positive on other alts. This is how I see the future, with many alt coins and bitcoin on the top.

I don't think that Ethereum will ever be a bitcoin killer. There is lot's of space for the two and many more coins to coexist. However, it is possible that bitcoin will continue to be the dominant coin for a lot of time

but they just made a new or adding a new features in their place, they know the ETH is having a good prospect in the future, after bitcoin they just wanna to earn profit for ETH, i never think this is will become a threat for bitcoin

Nope, Bitcoin is much bigger than Ethereum, even though ETH is now rising, Bitcoin is still the Number one. Coinbase just want to make a wallet for Ethereum because that's the top 2 cryptocurrency. You don't need to panic. If you will see the price of Bitcoin into Ethereum, Bitcoin is much expensive than Ethereum. So in that case, they are only supporting Ethereum because that's number 2 on the Top List and not to remove Bitcoin in our society.

Not a threat but a good rival  ;D
It is inching closing everyday alittle bit higher. It is surpassing some very old alts right now.

This be good features for coinbase. i just looking there like for wallet, nothing special i guess. And for ETH-coin it's still high risk cause i see ETH-coin price unstable.

The fanbase of ETH is constantly growing. So what coinbase has done is for their own business. It will help them to tap the ETH business as well. But I don't see any threat to the bitcoin for that. ETH is doing good among other crypto currencies but bitcoin still has the highest market cap.

people may like ETH, but when it comes to investment, the majority is going to bitcoin only. As of now, I see no threat to bitcoin.

It is an extra service from Coinbase , I guess it was not a threat to bitcoin for bitcoin has a value of its own , people
who knew bitcoin worldwide use bitcoin majorly to the transaction . Perumbuhan and then there is always a demand for bitcoin . Maybe. ::)

Based upon the addition of an altcoin, we can't just say that Coinbase is supporting eth. Bitcoin as a investment and earning source have got more and more popularity compared to other digital currencies. So service addition of websites never act as a threat to bitcoin

I don’t think this will be a threat to bitcoin dominance for now. Ethereum is just starting to make a name in the crypto world so for now, it’s not a threat. Its price is still unstable just like bitcoin when it started. Bitcoin is the one accepted for online payments and widely used. May be when the price of ethereum will go up and then some mainstream news will make a review with it then maybe it can attract some investors making its demand more high then the price of it will go up. People are careful in investing due to the fact that digital currency is new and they don’t want to risk their hard-earned money in something that they can’t clearly view the future yet. The ones that will invest on it are the risk takers.

I wouldn`t say that this is a threat for bitcoin.

Coinbase ,like every company, wants to grow and gain more customers.

I think that it`s normal for them to expand further in the altcoin currency markets.

dominant is bitcoin no doubt it i guess it would always be bitcoin because most of us as we all know started with bitcoin and still uses this in all or if not most of it in our transaction

The addition of Ethereum support by Coinbase doesn't matter much because Ethereum will remain just an alt coin in the shadow of Bitcoin. If there are more online retailers accepting Ethereum I might change my opinion but as of right now I don't care about it as I am not a basement GPU miner.
Other than being fairly easy to mine, Ethereum doesn't hold any advantages over Bitcoin. And Vitalik Buterin already did his pump and dump scheme. At least Satoshi hasn't cashed out his stash yet  ;D

Well said. But ETH has huge legal support, it is backed by well known group of developers with Vitalik on top.
ETH developers act like gods and in case of problems they shield community from problems that plague their ecosystem (recent hard fork created to mitigate The DAO hack).
This situation might be appealing for some people who want to be guided and believe in strong leadership despite obvious ETH flaws.

Are there any that accept it for purchases made thru them?

I find the use of the word 'currently' rather telling. Silver will always be silver. Who knows what the next jumble of code will be that gives pumpers a boner?

Probably the next 6 months.

Besides the silver to bitcoin is litecoin.

i agree, the second place is always going to be litecoin and it doesn't matter what coin "temporarity" creates some hype because of the pump and dump and goes above it, litecoin is still huge because it could survive this long and still being developed

Why is it Bitcoin's silver? I'm not dissing it. I wish Bitcoin functioned more like it. But I find it more likely that the long term runner up would be a radically different proposition, not a clone with some nifty tweaks.

Well, it is basically due to sudden rise to power. People are evaluating potential of altcoin by nothing but their current market cap.
And Ethereum is and probably will be number 2 right after BTC. Ethereum reached already 1/10 of bitcoin's market cap.
We might be worried that heavy centralized and controlled coins might perform better than fully transparent and decentralized, but 'drifting' coins like LTC.

i said this because litecoin has been around for a long time and despite being similar to bitcoin it has some differences too which sets it apart. and i agree that a runner up can be a complete different thing, but something like ethereum can never be the number 2 or even in the 10 top in long term in my opinion because it lacks certain attributes like decentralization or even a good developer.

There's no doubt it's an 'honest' coin compared to ETH, and it's not a disaster either. Ultimately though it does the exact same thing as Bitcoin, albeit probably better, and I can't see that being enough to maintain that position. Time will tell.

Such huge premine funded the development costs, but it didnt took long for DAO to execute contract with unforseen outcome. This points to the question whether ethereum smart contract can even be usefull in future, in current form ethereum is usefull for price speculation only in my opinion so Im surprised people still value it so much.

ETC still provides ledger immutability because smart people behind it realizes there cannot be hardfork everytime to reverse the transactions when smart contract is executed with unforseen outcome.

So you are essentially saying that ETC is safe compared the former?

I will also share the views of others who have commented earlier on. Just like some have said I also didn't see any threat whatsoever to Bitcoin because of its acceptance is still at the minimal level for now. Even in the long run rather that deflating the dominance of bitcoin it will rather give it more relevance by being a worthy competitor... My 2 cents...

I dont think ethereum is much useable for smart contracts, as most people have no way to check whether particular contract can be executed in unforseen way, so it can behave differently than they expected - the possibilites for scams are huge with complicated ethereum smart contracts.

From this perspective both ETH and ETC are unsafe the same way. Would it not be developer funds, Vitalik would not forked and reversed the transactions. I dont know whether ETH or ETC going to be more popular next year (or whether one chain dies), I just say we will see whether ethereum smart contracts going to be useful in future at all - namely whether there can be developed tools to eliminate risks with complicated ethereum smart contracts for normal people so they can not be scammed easily. Because in current form ethereum is basically useless and can not be any threat to Bitcoin.

I think what this does is give ehterium more relevancy. For all these years, coinbase only supported bitcoin and there were rumors that that were going to add litecoin. Now they support etherium instead of litecoin.

it is just pure business so whatever the move they take it won't affect the bitcoin industry since bitcoin already have more supports from many establishment around the web.

coinbase, like other exchanges has seen the huge volume ethereum had in the past because it is the biggest pump and dump coin so far in the history so they want to take part in it and make some profit from the fees and maybe contribute to the pump with their bots and make even some more money.

p.s this topic is turning into eth/etc pros and cons :D

This is just an advertisement, the volume of etherium is microscopic compared to bitcoin volume, in no way it affects bitcoin price.

Ethereum just looks like a gigantic Ponzi right now, especially with two chains that are backwards compatible up to the fork (replay attack). so, no I do not see how it is a threat to Bitcoin's dominance.

I'm sure you guys must have heard by now, there is talk that the DAO hack could have been an inside job. That's actually the first thing that came to my mind after I read about the hack, it felt like those loopholes were purposefully allowed to exist, it could even be that the whole code was built around them. As if the hacker had just been biding his time all along, testing the other coders to see if they would notice the flaw. And then when he was happy nobody had noticed he acted. If it was indeed an inside job and the hacker is not found, trust within the community will definitely take a serious hit.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/source-ethereum-insiders-believe-dao-hack-inside-job/

Ethereum is not a threat to bitcoin and it never was but a complementary coin to bitcoin. It is also not a ponzi scheme and it is trustworthy second to bitcoin.

But if I am wrong and you have solid evidence to back-up your claim then I suppose you could lay it down the table so we can also be equipped with data and warn other users about ethereum.

ETH is for faggots and Coinbase sucks dick... it's a good match.

Fuck Coinbase and their employees.

it's not about business,every coinbase step will could affect bitcoin even just a little because coinbase is a well known company for cryptocurrency,and also they're holding so many funds today and so many people also use their services

Indeed, I am amazed he has not been caught because it's obviously someone within the team.

Those days are clearly gone. Ethereum has been around long enough as number 2 to have officially displaced Litecoin (which is great, but is basically just for holders).

i can not rxcatly say that this is the first altcoin which got a wallet after bitcoin but as we know coinbase is a rather big company which is accepting bitcoin from maybe 2010 if it have surely seen something rising in people which cause him to make this happen. why don't doge or ltc had got accepted in coinbase why only etherium was the first?after bitcoin.

Ethereum is in some trouble at the moment. If it survives the crisis, it will be much stronger. Many people will use it.

I suspect a few years ago it may have been LTC, but these days if you were expanding what would you pick? You'd pick Ether based on pure market forces. They also seem to get on well with the team whereas LTC is sort of dead (which is ironic because Lee works there).

It's fine, just some drama that tends to fill crypto land  :D

A few years ago it was definitely Litecoin that was the "runner-up" to Bitcoin and posed the most threat to Bitcoin, but even that was minimal and I don't think anyone cared about that at all. Litecoin kind of died when ASICs were developed for it, and I believe Litecoin was marketed as "ASIC Proof", and having the first ASICs be made for it that worked killed it.

Ethereum is actually a project that isn't a bunch of epeen measuring, but it seems like they're making it too complex for the wayman.

A few things halted Litecoin:
(1) It's not really developed and the one core innovation of speed never grabbed people as much as was expected.
(2) Because it stalled it meant the second a truly innovative coin came along it would suffer.
(3) There is not a lot you can do with it that you can't with Bitcoin.

thats true though i think eth will not survive, etc is going to start going up and make more people buy

And just look at the fake volumes of eth around. I am really not trusting on eth so much because it's value can easily dramatically fluctuate. Some people are arguing eth has some strong fundamentals, but I'm not ready to believe those things to till they are get confirmed over time.

Most of the cryptocurrencies are unstable if we check their price history on charts, also I think that it is much better for ethereuk rather than for coinbase, from this we can conclude that coinbase is going to a multicoin exchange.

honestly i find this a stupid or shady act from coinbase to add ethereum to their exchange that had only bitcoin to this date. when there are other altcoins that have been around for years and have reached some kind of stability, as a business you would first go to them not an unstable shady altcoin that has been only pump and dumped, has a big flaw that led to hack and also has two chains.

I think they do it because they get a guarantee from the ehtereum so that coinbase can do it. I think the ethereum has no substantial risk of something from the other altcoin and is almost the same as the bitcoin. We see only a static ethereum travel

There's I like to ask you, you mention ethereum classic and ethereum. Is ethereum the new one is the one coinbase is using. And the classic is the old ethereum.

Pls correct me if I get it wrong.

What is really the difference between the two. I just don't get it why there are two ethereum. And my last question is which one is better.

Classic is the original chain, that's correct. they split into two chains because eth rolled back their blockchain to deny an attacker who misappropriated millions of dollars worth of eth from a third party contract, the dao. turns out quite a few eth developers had money tied up in it too.

others disagreed with bailing out eth because they felt it compromised the principles of the project. they have in huge letters on their website lines about their contracts being unbreakable and impossible to tamper with, but that's exactly what they did.

classic believes it broke one of the number one principles of a project like that so have continued with the original chain. that also means in theory the attacker can get his spoils from that version of ethereum.

which is better? who knows? classic has a lower hashrate so it's weaker in theory. eth has the top line developers too. it's gonna be very interesting to see what happens. I don't think classic is the joke a lot of people started off thinking it was.

generally, ethereum has no effect on bitcoin and it never had any effect at all. the only effect is on the bitcoin holders who can earn more bitcoin from trading ethereum.

so coinbase adding it can only have some hype effect on ethereum and help it get pumped more. and that is only if it doesn't die beceuse of the mistakes of its developer.

As long as BTC remains as ref currency for other cryptos, BTC should remain stable

The Ethereum transaction confirmation is much faster than the bitcoin. If the bitcoin does not improve, it might be replaced by Ethereum.

So confirmation time is more important than the stability of a project? I'm not willing to trade a slightly longer wait for something faster, sexier and prone to go up in smoke at any second.

There are a lot of altcoins with under 1 minute transactions, but how safe it is to hold their coins longer? And for the same security, how many more confirmations you need to be equivalent of Bitcoin 1-2 confirmations, security-wise. Its nice to have fast confirmations, but its worth very little if you need to hold altcoin in the process. I heard people use altcoins for fast transfer between exchanges - but why not use some instant service between the exchanges - it might be faster and cheaper.

They just have troubles with ETH & ETC, but hey... someone is hungry of money.

i think of ethereum as like free advertising for cryptocurrencies. If it brings people to try out cryptocurrencies like eth and etc,maybe they will also give bitcoin a shot. I dont see it as a threat.

Hahaha.... good point, there are someone is hungry with money and caused by that, wanna accepted another market of altcoin because they seeing in another market or trading exchange if the other altcoins have a good calculation.

Why should it be a threat to Bitcoin?

They still accept Bitcoin as usual and still is easier to trade Bitcoin than Ethereum

Well, it's pretty clear that Coinbase has been getting desperate for a while. They view their company's failure to grow as a reason to publicly attack the Core devs and push Bitcoin Classic.

And when that failed, they decided to sell Ethereum as the future. Now ETH looks like a total joke!

Its funny I read long ago (month or more) Gavin Andresen writing about ethereum smart contracts as being problematic to be evaluted by normal people as being safe. It didnt took long for DAO to prove Gavin knew what he was talking about. Not just normal people, but even experts did not knew how can be DAO exploited (or they keept the secret to profit from it later). So ethereum is not joke because of the hard fork, but the reason why DAO exploit happened - ethereum itselves.

But for someone interesting in speculation only it doesnt matter ethereum is useless, or can be hardly to be used for anything usefull, as long as he trade it at the exchange for a possibility of a profit. Coinbase can get fees from trades as well, but adding ethereum as first and highly unproved altcoin turned out to be big mistake (or Brian is ethereum 'investor' as well, lol)

True, and good riddance... They have been dictators in the fiat to crypto world for a while and I'm glad that they are tanking it and dissapointed. Bitcoin was meant to be P2P, not centralized. That's why I prefer localbitcoins, and in the future when the ball is rolling, bitsquare.

I really don't see this being a thread to bitcoin in any way.
They started off just as bitcoin was 7 years ago but has much more backing from the big business than bitcoin ever did. That is why it has much more value than bitcoin had in the same time that it took to get to this level.

The bitcoin will be bigger than the Ethereum in the next few years. But if it does not develop like the Ethereum, it will be replaced.

people are not adopting bitcoin. I can't guess another coin (mostly a clone of) become more famous than btc.

This is only another option to help people through cryptos and related environment (see coinbase)
The first place as top coin is really to take.

I think that coinbase will remove this exchange option as soon the price of ETH drops to what it was before.
Coinbase also fear if ETH become more popular than bitcoin in the near future.

More or less pretty much a HYPE, They are just offering a new advantage for their users and I seriously doubt it would affect bitcoin in anyway, Etherium is surely more interesting than litecoin/dogecoin but it has a long way to go to beat BTC.

Bitcoin has its own value and image in the world of crypto currency, I think it is only a support to ethereum and with that ethereum will get some good image but it will not be a thread to bitcoin, bitcoin will be the global currency of crypto world and all other will be local.

coinbase is a big company so they have first managed to accept bitcoin and because they are much stable currency so they didnt faced many problem but now they are acceoting an altcoin so things are diffrent this time

it shouldnt and it is not a threat to bitcoin, in my opinion bitcoin is going to be always better than ethereum and all other cryptos

It is not the threat to Bitcoin. I don't think that Etherum could be more dominante then Bitcoin but it is good to have healthy competition. Why wouldn't we have another strong cryptocurrency or at least one with the good potential? Litecoin was so prosperous at the time but unfortunately isn't anymore.

This will be a war between this two cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin drops big while etherium is rising. This is threatening. This could affect the bitcoin. But it takes a long time to match bitcoin. Ethereum is new but bitcoin is older and stronger. Bitcoin exist for many years now. I think dont think it will do the same.

Yeah this is a recent problem for those of us who've long been using bitcoin. However I am unsure if the ethereum doesn't provide anything new and did not exist in the bitcoin (Ministry) then I'm sure bitcoin loses ethereum in quick time. Because everyone needs something perfect. I think it's too soon to talk about, because the ethereum has yet to deliver anything better than bitcoin

Looking at the Eth value everyday, I do not see any significant raise or anything about it, only bitcoin slipping down. It is a little too early to be concluding statements like bitcoin being taken over by eth because that's just simply not going to happen, given the fake pumpndump happening in eth.

I love how this is "celebrated" when it shouldn't be.  I put celebrated in quotations because it seems like the people who are the most excited about ethereum's support from big businesses, or whatever, have never once talked about making an actual 'smart contract' or 'app' with it.  Even though ETH brought about some interesting new ideas to the blockchain, it seems more driven by profit hungry traders just like with the other majority of altcoins.

The Ethereum trading volume is quite high in the last few weeks. It is actually higher than the bitcoin in the last few weeks. That is the reason the bitcoin price is low.

if one of them fu** up badly then and only then most will hop on to the winner. but i don't see it as a contest and think that both can coexist. eth is new so it might have a bigger volume since people are playing with it, but i don't see any reason to be alarmed.

It is a good news, and i dont think it will become a threat, its going to be a healthy competition between crypto currency, and eth still need a long time to be able to become equal with bitcoin, so i dont think any threat will come from eth for now

That's a bad way to look at it, a "threat" but merely a good new addition, We are just with bitcoin because it has a great system, great developers and has the potential to continue, I don't see etherium becoming more popular a bad thing.