Two very different protocol layers, and both are honestly very early stage. At the moment I think the only protocols worth building robust business applications on are Bitcoin and Monero. Ethereum is too risky- I would not invest a half million EUR in a business solution/application that runs on ETH, because I have no idea what is going to happen to that thing next month and my maintenance costs could go through the roof depending on how it goes.

That said, there are limitless opportunities for building crypto applications. Starting simple is the key, people in crypto tend to forget very quickly what state the "real" world is in. I think a big opportunity right now for consumers/merchants is a "quickbooks" style business solution; an all-in-one payments/accounting system for entrepreneurs that want to accept crypto payments. Use a shape-shift style integration and accept all different crypto payment methods to future proof it.

More mobile wallets for consumers are needed, and if you can gamify them or make them otherwise interesting and/or really easy to use all the better.

You probably can buy things with ETH, you just need to find someone willing to sell you goods/services in exchange for ETH. Most people aren't attracted to ETH for use as a payment mechanism, because it's fundamentals make it no better at payments than Bitcoin (perhaps worse).

+1

ETH shitposters are coming out of the woodwork...there's a reason they attack "Bitcoin" social networks.

This is absolutely correct. Ethereum's "value proposition" is unique and notable: instead of the developer or owner of the server paying for computing power (paying for AWS for example), the user pays for it. It could be valuable for some solutions, but which, and when, is anybody's guess. Nobody right now is taking it seriously, because the system is not reasonably secure enough to invest real money into building production applications for it. And as it "scales" via centralization, CIO concerns about Ethereum's stability and security will continue to increase and chances of seeing production applications decrease.


Also 100% correct - "market cap" is a hype term used by speculators that play the greater fool theory and don't understand cryptofinance at all. They benefit from the general rising tide of crypto markets (same as the .com "traders" in 2000), but will not do as well long term as the people that understand the value drivers.

You're thinking of the *price*, not the *value*. Consider the technology of the wheel: while the price of wheels may vary drastically, depending on manufacturing location, roundness, shipping costs, tariffs, etc. the value of the wheel to humans doesn't really change.

Price is a highly imperfect mechanism that's used to *estimate* the value of a thing.

True, and right now Ethereum and Ripple are performing a mating dance with commercial banks in order to capture that (very inefficient) side of the equation. What I'm saying is that I think private persons and smaller companies can trust Bitcoin with their life savings, and then they can use other technologies that are lower trust for other use cases. They might have a "current account" where they use Monero for daily purchases, for example.

Ethereum/Ripple/Dogecoin/etc. are not places where I would imagine many sane people will park their most precious reserve capital.

Let's look at Bitcoin for what it is: a fundamental human efficiency improvement.

Here's why it's valuable (value != price):
- The software and rules can't be changed easily or quickly. It takes years and a lot of global perspectives. Maybe they can't be changed at all.
- Therefore, it works exactly as expected: 24/7/365
- It's accessible anywhere in the world: 24/7/365
- It's accessible by everyone in the world who has a computer and internet connection

Because of these reasons we can say that XBT is stable and predictable. We already see how on many exchanges, XBT is being used as a base "currency" that all other cryptocurrencies are denominated in.

And because it's stable and predictable, it acts as an *international settlement system*, and therefore can also act as a global reserve currency. Currently, the incumbent settlement system (National central banks acting as clearing systems between commercial banks) is the only way the global economy can function. For some perspective, consider that financial activity consumes about 1/3 of the world's economic productivity (~USD30 trillion).

What about technologies that are Turing complete, more technically advanced, etc.?
- When we consider Bitcoin's primary function to be a global reserve currency and settlement system, these features are at best irrelevant.

But the transaction fees are killing me!
- Many cryptocurrency users recognize the financial and human costs of ledger transparency and mutability in the existing financial system, but didn't realize that the cost of immutability in a cryptocurrency could be the same or higher. Consider that correspondent banking is complex and costly, but those costs are absorbed by everyone who participates in the financial system (mostly taxpayers). At the moment Bitcoin users subsidize the current financial system through their taxes while also incurring the costs of their Bitcoin transactions, so the pain is naturally doubled. Users in different countries will also experience different transaction cost pain points, and some people will leave in search of something else to buy their coffee with. Sorry, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and billionaires that have been paying thousands to keep their transactions private in the existing banking system have no problem outbidding you on your next transfer, and in fact will likely have more trust in Bitcoin as the cost of using it increases. User behavior will update accordingly, and people will really "become their own bank".

Ethereum/Ripple/Dogecoin is overtaking Bitcoin's marketshare!
- XRP, ETH, etc. are tantalizing to banks, governments, and speculators. But they will only ever "experiment" with these things in order to generate PR and appear clever to their stakeholders. They know that these systems are not stable enough for production, and that's why there are no examples of anyone going "live" with the thing they built on their forked Ethereum blockchain. Cryptocurrency "Marketshare" is a buzzword concept created by speculators and marketers, who have no idea what the things they are buying right now are worth.

There are so many good options for making small, fast and almost free transfers: PayPal, Venmo, wechat, etc. PayPal even lets you transfer for free. Why can't you use any of those?  

The reality is that the real value of XBT is becoming clear: XBT is not a great currency, but rather an excellent store of value.

Merchants will base their savings in XBT for its stability and predictability, and start using technology with more "cash like" features to complete business transactions, such as XMR.

I was in a similar same boat for some time. I found this guide to be helpful:

https://www.weusecoins.com/uasf-guide/

I find the newly created celebrity aspect (billionaire CEOs and secret meetings, developers with massive egos, troll armies shitposting on twitter, this forum, /r/bitcoin, etc.) of Bitcoin completely stupid and annoying. I only care about XBT becoming more useful and valuable in time.

I finally took the time to read through that guide and some other resources today, and then decided to set my nodes to signal.

Value of XBT is not ultimately based on transaction speed or cost, contrary to common repetition in these forums and on Reddit. The "payments" use case that the consumers and speculators in these forums have such a hard on for is really just not that valuable when looking at the big picture.

Just like the "FX volatility" issue, the "fee volatility" issue will also stabilise in time.


Pay the higher fee or just don't use it right now and wait for things to sort themselves out. The transition to a fee market is inevitable, and because this is all still in a very early stage there will be more pain to come.

There seem to be a lot of posters in the "bitcoin community" that have a single issue ("block size") they bring up in every thread, regardless of the original topic posted.

Maybe a child board could be created where these threads can live and the topic discussed ad naseum? It would be nice to again see more creative and varied content in here.

I would have expected this very vocal minority to attempt their fork by now. Maybe the recent price increase has people thinking twice about making huge gambles with their wealth in exchange for a relatively tiny feature request.

That can only happen on a tiny, localized scale. The people in Tokyo probably don't know nor care about what happend in London today, and the people in London don't know or care about what happened in Moscow today.

It will go up if the victim converts fiat to XBT to pay the ransom.

It will go down later if the ransomers convert their XBT to fiat.

I'm curious how this would be possible. How much collusion between mining entities would be required? Has someone done some peer reviewed research on this?

What these very vocal people on the internet don't realize is that the sooner the system reaches 'stability', the sooner fund managers will move in.

+1

Bitcoin is working as intended. Serious transfers only.

Yes, you'd be paying for the electricity your machine uses, hardware depreciation, etc. I am guessing you're talking about something like this:
http://twister.net.co/

I'm also disappointed that the "scaling" issue gathers the majority of developer focus.

In any case, I think the XBT freight train has left the station and hard forks will not be possible from this point on. MW will have to be an alt coin (side chain, or whatever it's called), swappable with XBT via LN.

I think the key question is: does MW via XBT hardfork make XBT more valuable than XBT + atomic cross chain swaps + LN + etc.? I doubt it. A large, stable and reliable network is always worth more than a small network with more/better features.