I'm sorry - but every major exchange with angel funding in the blockchain are investing in Ethereum.  It's difficult for me to imagine they are hoodwinked by a single entity pumping Ethereum.  Care to cite your proof?

Regardless - Bitcoin made early adopters very rich in return for the promise of on chain fungibility and an on chain payment network.  If I am correct about it's implosion - the cat is out of the bag.  Too many people are interested in crypto to go back so the torch goes to the alternative(s).

Ethereum is obviously the most hyped one.  And when you look at what they are doing with Augur there are some really cool applications (also some super dumbass ones).  The future scaling should allow a network where crypto can grow instead of insisting on 7 global transactions per second.

Outside of Ethereum I'm interested in Monero but it's doing poorly right now likely to the z.cash threat.  

Outside of Monero, Ethereum and z.cash I really don't know.

This represents a major decoupling from the idea "If bitcoin fails we all fail."  Which I have been rejecting since pre-ethereum launch.  Coinbase is showing very adequately how all of the inertia behind bitcoin can retool quickly if the protocol doesn't evolve (which it isn't).

I think it's totally possible bitcoin could implode and ethereum could shoot to a 4 billion market cap.  Or bitcoin could implode and ethereum could shrink to a 200 million market cap.  One thing I'm banking on though is that bitcoins size relative to all other alts will continue to shrink.

Which ironically while a hardfork would have been a much better way to impliment segwit AND increase the blocksize to 2mb - core wouldn't do it due to blockstream financial reasons.  Citing hardfork as too dangerous.

Ironically Luke-JR wanted to do a quick hardfork to deal with what Brian is outlining here but since they've built it up to a terrible thing (and would essentially be admitting they were blowing smoke with ulterior motives for chain scaling) they can't deal with the possible hashrate drop by changing it to recalc difficulty faster.

Bitcoin refusing to scale onchain bottom line is what's going to blow it up.  Also it's what is driving the value to Eth.

Armstrong is forward looking due to this.  The value of a chain is fungibility - offchain scaling ruins that.  A network that is refusing to increase capacity is worthless to investors.

I agree Eth is in a massive pump.  Partially because of what you said "If bitcoin doesn't increase in value before/at/soon after the halving - it will be considered a failure."

People are starting to wonder if that's going to happen and eth is exploding.  

Do you really think doing this before the bitcoin halving is a mistake?   Like I said - Armstrong is hedging his bets and preparing for the worst with bitcoin . . .

Brian Armstrong has been a strong advocate of on chain scaling.  In fact, Theymos banned his support people who were trying to help people with deposits on /r/bitcoin for something Brian said on Twitter about bigger blocksizes (not /r/bitcoin).  Based on that and the way Blockstream ignored exchanges it has been my belief for awhile that Brian has had his eyes open for what would satisfy onchain scaling and be adoptable by the masses.  (All my theory).

Ethereum volume has been hard to ignore - it looks like he's taking a big risk.  Even R0ACH says if bitcoin doesn't go up significantly pre-halving that it can be considered a failure ... it's looking to me like it's going to go down which in conjunction with the halving of rewards could pull miners off and overload the already overloaded blockchain.

Which could be bad.

Watch things closely over the next several weeks.

Any sources on this?  Sounds like great buttcoin fodder

Nothing fishy about getting an extra $2 for a crypto ... selling directly for paypal fiat (stolen ccards).  

Wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole.

Don't you think it's possible he's trying to retain plausible deniability while using his reputation to sell his project?

Posted by "The Litecoin Guy" ... oh the irony

Bitcoins roadmap is for scaling pretty much 100% off chain.

Ethereums roadmap is for scaling on chain.  With 100's and then 1000's of TPS + statetree pruning there is much more promise of on chain scaling in Ethereum than bitcoin.

Edit:  I traded Eth for BTC and my transaction was hung for over 12 hours @ ShapeShift.  No doubt this was their problem, there's nothing wrong with the new currency of the world's future only being able to handle 7TPS, it's my fault for using ShapeShift etc. . . BitCoin is a bigger pain in the ass to use than any of the other cryptos I deal with.

Eth is currently pumping because of the rumors they will be listed on OKCoin. 

IMO the only reason Eth is above $8 a coin (instead of hovering somewhere around litecoin) is because bitcoin is pretty much refusing to do on chain scaling. 

Can't wait to see if you're right - what do we have four more weeks?

This obviously is not happening.  This should be when BTC is at it's strongest point (from now until halving).  Altcoins are making some major headway (Ethereum, TheDuh, Maidsafe, Dash).  Bitcoin dominance is listed at 80%.

I wouldn't want to be in bitcoin after the halvening if it doesn't spike up from here.  If it looks weak when it should be the strongest ....

Ironically bitcoin alternatives (vs different projects that aren't trying to be a store of value).  LTC, Monero (weak because of zcash?) aren't doing as well as the pump and dump projects (or revolutionary if you're an optimist instead of a cynic).  They appear to have completely stolen bitcoins thunder at this point.

The story isn't these other coins.  The story is how weak bitcoin is and how much it needs to pump and dump crowd that really don't give a shit about long term - just making money off dumping on top of someone else's head.  Bitcoin really is no better than any other alt and I believe the coming halving is going to put that on display based on what I'm seeing in the markets right now.

That seems a bit risky even though I lost a bundle on the slide from $1.20 to $.85.

If a bug pops up in ethereum or the doa it's pretty obvious monero is used as a hedge and it's size is a mud puddle next to a lake with a dam ...

R0ach.  The reason is because the way the contract is setup before any proposals are voted on pre-investors can withdraw 100% of their originally invested Ethereum (assuming they purchased in the first 14 days).  After the first 14 days the price goes up by 5% a day until it's at 150% (the additional price bumps can't be withdrawn).

I suspect it's people gambling on supply and demand - "If someone is willing to pay 150% on day 31 then I'll be able to sell it on open market for 150%.  Also it will never be worth less than what I paid for it in Eth because I can just cash it out (until crowdfunding starts using the money to fund stuff).

I'm sure there are some hardcore believers.  But only a fraction of the people who purchased DAO.  

P.S.  They just extended the presale by one day.  If you wanted to short Ethereum now's the time to do it.

I have AMD Hitman Codes for $7 ea.

Like this - except digital (from newegg).
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hitman-2016-Game-Code-AMD-Rewards-Full-Version-Will-not-email-/201571151322?hash=item2eee93adda:g:8bsAAOSwAvJW-urk

Happy to use Escrow.

They decided not to shut down their forum.  It was a political thing - not a money thing (they never took miners up on offering to fund it)

I have a feeling Ethereum is going to dump so hard ...

Can we crowdfund a an add campaign on /r/bitcoin just to piss everyone off on GUI release?

Monero: Just finished solving all of bitcoins problems.