FYI, if this coin were to become valuable, real actual Ethereum miners could easily just front run all the rewards in order to "mine" it themselves. I don't recommend wasting your ETH paying for gas to run the mine contract.

Ethereum is attempting to create a distributed computing platform that is not like anything else we currently have in the world.

"Believe" is a dumb way to phrase the question, but I am guessing that was your intent to frame this into a religious debate.

There is a chance Ethereum can deliver, and if they can, it will be revolutionary and gain wide levels of adoption. There is also a chance they can fail since the platform is not worth very much if it cannot scale up while maintaining security. I see it as a high risk, high reward scenario.

The Parity client seems to be working much better than geth these days. The attacks are ongoing though - there have been numerous fixes, but the attacker then shifts strategies. Whatever you use, make sure to get the latest available client.

The network is still functioning, just a bit sluggish at times. Augur-REP tokens went live yesterday without a hitch so I doubt there will be any trouble with ICN.

https://github.com/ethcore/parity/releases

SpoetnikCoins are in my bag - I'm in balls deep on that one!

He is right though. I am an ETH bull, but I am not a fan of all these ICOs and presales. Its way too easy for people to get taken advantage of.

The Ethereum network rewards 5 Ether for each block - average 1 block every 14 seconds.

The plan is to switch to PoS sometime next year and at that time the current reward schedule will obviously not apply, but we do not have the details yet on how the new system will work. Based on developer comments, there will likely be an annual inflation amount of 2-5% after PoS goes into affect.

Bitcoin maximalists view this as "unlimited" supply because it does not have a stopping point. Technically that is true, but practically speaking, a 2% inflation rate is not going to have much of an impact on a growing network. Fundamentally speaking, this underlies the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin is built from the ground up to be a store of value where the coins continually gain in price. Ethereum is built to be a developer platform where the coins are used to buy execution time to run contracts. There are good and bad things about both systems.

Its funny, because I would like to build a bigger Bitcoin position, but there I don't feel like I want to give up my ETH to do it since I think there is more potential there

Its all good though - I think it is a very positive thing for crypto to have two viable high volume coins.

It seems like a lot of the volume is traders looking to hedge some Bitcoin positions. Volume is fairly low for Eth though - which is very different from their previous run ups where we saw big spikes in ETH/BTC volume. Mostly it is just that Eth holders are not selling at all while Bitcoin runs up, so they are both going up in terms of fiat.

Honestly, it is the macro economic situation that is the main driver. People are nervous about holding fiat (USD, EUR and CNY all have major issues). Gold, bitcoin and eth are all looking like good bets in comparison.

Convert 10-20% to ETH. Continue to monitor the market and re-balance either way as appropriate.

Yeah, at this point IMO the price is a complete crapshoot. How do you even go about trying to figure out a price for this kind of coin? Its not designed like Bitcoin to be a store of value - its meant to be used, but who knows what that means. I dunno. I am long, but I have no idea what to expect from the price.

I am excited about Ethereum as a development platform though. The kind of mindshare and momentum we are seeing is pretty incredible. Once we have a proper browser interface to interact with contracts, I think the light will go on for a lot of people.

● Metropolis: release of the Mist browser, expected summer/fall 2016
● Serenity (“Ethereum 1.5”): release of the proof of stake (Casper) version of the blockchain, also
including Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) 101 and 105. Expected early 2017.
● WebAssembly release (“Ethereum 1.75”): faster virtual machine. Expected 2017.
● Ethereum 2.0 (yet unnamed): initial scalability release. Expected late 2017.
● Ethereum 3.0 (yet unnamed): “unlimited” scalability release. Expected late 2018

http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55f73743e4b051cfcc0b02cf/t/57506f387da24ff6bdecb3c1/1464889147417/Ethereum_Paper.pdf

Sure, there are a lot of assets there, but they are just not seeing much use.

Ethereum has done 5.7m transactions on its network in a much shorter time frame.

I think what we are seeing now is that Ethereum is a hedge for people with large Bitcoin positions. People are nervous about fiat in general (particularly in China), and can now hold multiple crypto positions with more confidence than they have in the past. This is pretty amazing for crypto in general as fiat hedging was really the only viable option available in the past.

Obviously the recent Ethereum run is all because of Bitcoin and the macro economic situation that is making people worry about their fiat holdings. I'd say that we are far beyond what the fundamentals would dictate for Ethereum, but I still think the downside is fairly limited due to the macro-economics that seem to dictate a global economic slowdown is coming along with a lot of worry about the Chinese currency and possible Brexit scenarios.

Aside from any technical facts, XCP just does not seem to have any network effects working for it. The contracts cannot hold/pay Bitcoin, so it just does not piggy back on any Bitcoin network effects.

XCP blockchain does in the neighborhood of 400 daily transactions.
Ethereum blockchain does in the neighborhood of 40,000 daily transactions.

Barring a black swan type event on the Ethereum network that compromises security there, I don't think there is much reason to use XCP.

Rootstock is a more interesting blockchain IMO, but I have pretty serious doubts about whether it will be able to really compete with Ethereum either. Its not decentralized at all, and it seems like it will be very clunky to use (granted, all the solutions including Ethereum are clunky to some extent, but we are talking degrees here). It also may be years before a fully functioning sidechain is up and running, and meanwhile Ethereum is continuing to strengthen its networking effects as a development platform.

IMO speculation without knowing the details is still a bit pointless. The way it is executed will matter, a lot.

You can already run a private Ethereum network as is - its not very difficult and people are doing it now. If all you want to do is run smart contracts, then you have that functionality. Its just not going to be very secure, and that will still hold true after the PoS switch as well.

Welp, can't argue with that logic

Most of them were just forks of Bitcoin that didn't really offer enough to make them worthwhile over the big daddy.

The ICOs typically at least have some kind of plan to add more features or do something different, even if they often don't work out very well.

Looks like the DAO made the front page of the Sunday New York Times print paper.

Honestly, that is amazing.

Obviously it remains to be seen, but my feeling is that the DAO will vote down those types of proposals. Thats the entire social experiment anyway - how well will the "crowd" choose where to invest. I definitely understand your skepticism, but I also see some hope that they will be able to sort through the bad proposals.

Other high quality startups may look at the DAO as a way to get funding without having to give away a huge portion of their ownership of the company. Many other start ups simply have a hard time getting funding because they don't operate in Silicon Valley.

While it is technically possible for this to happen in the short term here, I would be very surprised. I'm a huge Ethereum bull, but it should *not* be the crypto leader at this point. Bitcoin has a very important roll to play - it is established, stable and secure. Its the honey badger and its not going anywhere.

Ethereum is planning on moving from PoW to PoS as well as trying to implement a variety of scaling improvements. Those are not "sure things" and if they fail to deliver on them, ETH will likely fall by the wayside. There is undeniable risk here that you should be taking into account. The fact that we are looking at "moon" situations here is premature. If you want to ride the wave, invest modestly and follow the development path to make sure we are on track before betting the farm. If we go through the next couple major development releases with no hiccups, then I think it will be fair to start the hype train up.