I'm not prescribing any coin to take over. Personally I'm not at all in favour of a one-coin-to-rule-them-all. However there are projects out there that already scale close to or even beyond VISA/MASTERCARD levels of transactions/sec. Projects that come to mind are bitshares (and Steem),  apparently either one of them processes more transactions per day than both ethers combined at the moment and from what I understood have a lot of room to grow still.

And then we have the build up to the reveal of eos at concensus, that promises to blow just about everything out of the water performance wise. If the rumors are correct, then it might be an idea for bitcoin to simply move over to the new tech. Although I seriously doubt if the bitcoin community would be willing to make that move.

Not disputing that there is a chance bitcoin gets replaced, but I very much doubt it will be ethereum. Just about all the problems people see with bitcoin, like governance, scaleability etcetera, ethereum has as well but with more complexity. I don't understand why people don't seem to realize that Ethereum has not actually solved anything yet (and no, a centralized dictator enforcing his will is not a better solution). Ethereum does not scale better than bitcoin, I don't understand why people try to push that idea, (just look at the size of the blockchain for a full node). And their choice to make the chain muteable was a horrific move and clearly shows the centralization problem in ethereum, why even bother with the hassle of a distributed chain then? Listening to a number of developers and their frustration with getting anything remotely serious done with it, I'm more and more getting the impression that ethereum will never be able to live up to the hype and has some serious limitations in the way it was designed that will not be resolved by any fork or update.

Last but not least a number of those devs complaining about ethereum seem to be hyping up for a new blockchain project that apparently does not suffer the same problems as ethereum. If what they tell me is even partially correct, ethereum will be first in line to be replaced within the next few years.

Good to know, guess it's time to get myself one of them fancy smancy white longsleeved jackets then.

Is it just me, or does anybody else feel that ethereums price is largely the result of manipulation?

After the reality check of the risks of how dumb (as in complicated switch dumb) a smart contract is, the price should be way lower than during the skynet and worlds biggest supercomputer hype. The ethereum price during the comedy caper act of white hackers and such, looked completely unnatural. Even the current price doesn't seem to reflect the realization of the risks and limitations of ethereum.

Also the transition from code is law to a permissioned/censored system with a fork should have had some influence on the market, or is that just me being delusional in thinking a fundamental change in philosophy is a kinda big deal, maybe even an existential one?

I really wanted to like ethereum, but all the rumors and signs of behind the scenes powers and manipulators with direct contact to or even part of the group "founders" are giving me the heebie-jeebies. Also, even somebody like me who has next to no clue on trading, the ethereum and dao price after the dao-malfunction looks artificial to say the least.

Bitcoin has it's fair share of manipulators and power struggles, but I get the feeling that ethereum is a way more coordinated and well funded attempt at a coup.

Might just be that I've been put in the wrong frame of mind when Charles Hoskinson was talking about pulling all of crypto in their sphere of influence and drawing comparisons to monopolies like Microsoft and walled gardens like the Apple AppsStore. But that stated goal of wanting to create a new walled in monopoly gave me a big scare and I can't help to keep seeing ethereum in that light. Despite some people in the ethereum camp professing no bad intentions towards bitcoin, I can't shake the impression of an attempted power grab. The vocal group of people insisting that ethereum should wipe out bitcoin and rule the world aren't really helping either.

I'm not a fan of the bitcoin elitists camp. I don't like the idea of any monopoly or one chain to rule them all philosophy. But if the powers that be are behind ethereum in an attempt to control this new system and are so successful at marketcap manipulation combined with their pervasive marketing, I can't help seeing them more as a threat to cryptocurrencies in general than a boon. Also despite the argument that it's none of anyone’s business argument by the vocal majority in favor of manual intervention (including shockingly people like Andreas Antonopolous from the looks of it) and slamming everybody outside their group, the precedents they are trying to set do affect all the other cryptocurrencies. So why wouldn't those communities react?

Sorry for the long rant, apparently I needed to vent. In short if the price of ether had dropped more as a consequence of this wake up call in respect to "smart" contracts, it would have made me way waay less apprehensive about ethereum and more willing to help in their endeavor.  But with these blatant price manipulations and sliding arguments in favor of manual interventions (mostly driven by greed than anything else from what I've seen), has the complete opposite effect on me. I do fear for the future if "the market" really falls for tricks like these, despite all the discussion about the problems the bitcoin-revolution was supposed to solve. I really really hope this revolution doesn't end up creating a bigger pile of shit than we have are already.

PS
I've been asking and looking around for a while now without finding any satisfactory answers to these questions.

How has ethereum "solved" the consensus and decision making process?
I've been bombarded with statements that Ethereum has solved the problems like the blocksize debate, but I can't find anything in relation to that. I really hope they aren't talking about the technicality of the blocksizes, instead of the challenge of governance. As I see it, wouldn't the increased complexity of their model make it an exponentially bigger mess than bitcoins simpler situation. Please don't tell me their solution is having a centralized party or foundation control everything.

How has ethereum solved scaling?
I'm not a computer scientist so it might be I missed it due to information overload and me lacking the means to separate wheat from the chaff. But from what I understand about how the network is supposed to work it sure sounds inefficient to me. No matter how I look at it, but for all the verifying nodes in the system having to individually recalculate all the onchain scripts/programs does sound more redundant than efficient to me. Isn't there a more efficient way to do it instead of having a massive amount of cpu-power redoing the exact same calculation on every separate redundant core/node? Is it really possible for that to be the best scalable and most effective solution? Sounds very counter intuitive to me.

The network seems to be locked up. Have to wait till an update from the devs.
Or till abit fixes it, maybe his laptop ran out of batterypower and took the network with him .

I don't understand what the above is supposed to mean.

You have to set --witness only on one machine, but you can only mine with the same key on the same computer in the same process? Then what's the point? Doesn't this mean that you have to use a different key + witness for every "miner" that is setup? So wouldn't that make setting up a miner without the --witness option completely useless?

If not, how is one supposed to configure multiple miners on a single witness-account?

I'm amazed at the speed at which you put this up, oh and thanks for the work. If you didn't mention it, I probably wouldn't have noticed the missing "compressor" (I don't even know what that does).  I also agree with you that this is interesting stuff and more along the line of what I'm hoping will be possible in the future with solutions around distributed consensus.

Looking at the transcript, it seems even the side conversations are part of the edited version  Maybe we should start to be more careful of what we say during those sessions. Then again, it is a mostly informal gathering of people with similar interests.

@SomethingElse I wish you were wrong about the best marketing overruling everything, but I'm afraid I have to agree with you. Thing is marketing takes big bucks and massive manpower and time, not something most start-ups can provide unless they have big VC-backing or something like that and that doesn't help with the decentralization and low barriers to entry principles.

Crowdfunding/ipo seems to come with it's own set of problems, like an angry mob of "experts" who seem to think that harassing a small team with extra pressure, threats and rumors is a sound strategy to insure the success of their "investment". I'm seeing more and more kickstarter-projects suffering the same backlash. If anything, it looks like crowdfunding requires that the marketing and pr teams should be bigger than the dev-team.

One thing that worries me about overhyping like with Ethereum is that it could very well backfire, but then again some people just want to believe in a dream, so it might just work even if they aren't able to make true on their claims. Now that you mention it, where is Ethereum getting  the money for their marketing and travels if they haven't done their IPO yet, are they backed by VCs or something? Anybody have any info on that?

Elaborating on my remark about NXT, DeathAndTaxes answered that part very eloquently, also I was paraphrasing what ComeFromBeyond actually said on the nxt-forums as being the reason for not releasing the transparent forging code. The other part of it was referring to the code not being released for quite a while after the fundraiser and even then it had those 3 deliberate bugs in them (apart from the non deliberate ones of course). Opensource is the primary requirement for me in this space for several reasons especially when dealing with trust in anonymous/pseudonymous people.

Also if Sunnys involvement in PeerShares is the clincher, you might want to reevaluate your position. In a recent chat discussion between Sunny King and Bytemaster on peercointalk it seems he was not as involved with peershares as you suggested.

Peercoin is not complete in my view and has some remaining issues, before it can be considered a viable pos-solution, most glaring one being their checkpointing requirement.

I really want to like NXT and even though it is not strictly a technical issue with their particular solution, but I do not like their cloak and dagger behavior with the source-code and only releasing it to peer review after they "feel" the world is ready.

Clout do you think adding cpos to the discussion and/or poll would be advisable or is that proposal still too theoretical?

One little addendum regarding the whitepapers by Daniel Larimer, part of the "security model" in his theories is that of many competing chains and free market choice between them, instead of the other seemingly isolated central blockchain models. While I understand the philosophical ideal of wanting security solely through algorithms, I'm not convinced that this mathematical Elysium is achievable in practice, besides it all hinges on market evaluation by humans anyway. So while not being limited to tapos/dpos I do think the free choice between chains implied in those whitepapers (ByteMaster always mentioned the competing chains when I've heard him explain his concepts) is more versatile than other models.

PS
What's up with all the references to the scores on IQ-tests and drawing conclusions from them? To me those things were more about how long can you fight the boredom and keep focus. Most of the ones I had to fill in even used multiple choice, talk about ridiculous. Multiple choice makes it just about impossible to give the wrong answer.

@jibble: So you're saying you want to create an autonomous wallet for all tradeable cryptocurrencies and then code that into ethereum scripts which then copies your wallet across the globe. You'd better be damn sure not a single one of those copies figures out how to get your private keys then or your profitability will end up being very short lived.

Also think about trading speed, you're going through several layers each with their own problems, quirks, bugs and latencies. Honestly I very much doubt an interpreted language with the added lag of global distribution and the blockchain-security-model will be in any way competitive with compiled solutions like for example the one being built into NXT, let alone the optimized solutions with ripple like speeds such as bitsharesX (novel solution for an exchange that could possibly work on bitcoin as well, albeit more slowly) promises to deliver.

Even the fastest ones of those will have some serious trouble matching the speed and trust of the existing exchange and bank systems in the eye of the general public. Plus Ripple and OpenTransactions will work just fine for the current existing financial systems, still not as fast as centralized solutions, but faster than just about any blockchain solution out there. (just to be sure, I don't own and I'm not involved with Ripple or OT).

@Equate: Agreed.

It was also the way the OP started this "discussion" in a bit flamebate-ish manner.

The thing that ticks me off with some of the fanboyish remarks about Ethereum is that they paint a misleading picture for non-technical people. It also doesn't help that quite a few bitcoin-media-sites seem to be really happy to be a fanboy instead of taking a more objective approach, or even mentioning other possible solutions to the same problem(s).

I'm also uncomfortable with the way the E-team is selling their idea, centering around the buzzword "Turing-completeness" suggesting that they can do absolutely everything, while all other coins are somehow "incomplete" or incapable of doing what's theoretically possible in Ethereum. That does not make them a scam, but I do feel they are deceiving people when they do not make the limitations and risks very clear.

To give one ridiculous example I've heard a E-spokesperson say, is how they could "easily" replicate Wall Street with a few basic math-functions in an Ethereum script. The way it was said gives people the idea that you could run Wall Street and everything else on top of Ethereum, which is of course completely unrealistic if you consider bandwidth, speed, reliability, etcetera, especially if you want to use the E-network for other things as well. Another one I've heard is that you could run all other alt-coins on top of Ethereum, which also makes no sense at all.

YarkoLs' naming it another experiment for smart-contracts on top of a blockchain, is one of the most accurate ones I've heard and also makes the target niche-market very clear. Mastercoin and Ethereum could be considered competitors in the same market. Still I don't think this will make the limitations of Ethereum clear to everyone, nor that Ethereum cannot and will not do everything people are ascribing to it. Most of the pie-in-the-sky ideas I've heard as examples of things-you-could-do on Ethereum seem to be more efficiently written in a couple of Turing-complete languages on their own blockchain either via merged mining (not only in line with Satoshis ideas, but seems to be the consensus among the current bitcoin-devs as well), written from scratch, or with the help of something like the DAC-toolkits in development at Invictus/Bitshares.

EDIT
Somewhat related to this subject, I just took a look at bitshares.org and even though it appears to be wip, it does look like a nice effort to combine and discuss ideas to create practical decentralized solutions. From a quick scan of their website-in-construction and most forum posts by the devs, they appear to be fairly neutral and willing to look at all solutions, even ones not developed by them. One big plus in my book is how the projects-website lists "competitors" (Namecoin, Ripple, NXT, Ethereum and probably others) in the respective categories at the bottom, without belittling them or subjective connotations (that I could see at first glance anyway). Some of the projects being discussed on their forums also looked very interesting, especially their discussion about an alternative proof of stake that seems to be a mix of ripple, nxt and decentralized mining-pools.

Could anyone conceive of a better moment to buy then in the low after mtGox and real China-ban, that actually coincides with the usual post ATH dip and spring-depression? There's a limit to how favorable you want the stars to align.

I'm pretty depressed after being Goxxed and buying in waaaay too high, but my depression is showing some major cracks and I'm having real trouble convincing myself not to touch what remains of my fiat-reserves (which were not meant for bitcoin) to buy in now.

Sell a bit of BTC on Huobi and smash through those fake orders and you'll get what you want.

Watch the Coin Summit with Bobby Lee where he describes the fakery on Chinese exchanges. My proposal is to just remove all Chinese exchanges from the trackers like bitcoinwisdom and such, untill China exchanges start providing proven real numbers. After watching that video, I now think that the promise of China banning those fraudulent exchanges is just about the most bullish news you could hope for.

Untill someone comes up with real, proven numbers, Chinas' btc-marketshare is overblown by multiple factors of ten.

I also have trouble understanding how bitcoins can be seen as property.

I understand people feeling possessive about the access key they've found and the influence those keys have on the network. I also can somewhat understand that people are willing to try to convince (with money) others to transfer some of that influence. But no single person "owns" Bitcoin(and as a result bitcoins) and if one single person did, that would mean Bitcoin has become worthless.

My guess is the IRS couldn't be bothered and picked one of the most used metaphors, probably the bitcoins are like gold one, and then thought: Ok gold, check, that was easy, next.

My guess is that the emphasis on using metaphors has come to bite the US-bitcoiners in the arse.

Watch the CoinSummit youtube video with Bobby Lee and especially the telltale signs he mentions to see how Huobi in particular is suspect (possibly worse than mtGox), zero-fees are actually needed for this kind of fraud, otherwise your own investors might get wind of it (because you aren't making the profits your website says you are if you sell to yourself).

@AnonyMint: Actually I have a very similar outlook on the Chinese markets going forwards, but I was pointing out the flaw of Westerners (and USD probably easily owns well over 80%) today looking at the Chinese exchanges and letting their most likely fictitious numbers influence them. You're talking mostly about future possibilities however, not the current state.

I've heard people like Tuur DeMeester claiming that it's arbitrage that is pulling the btc-price on all other exchanges towards the Chinese ones, but I'm having a hard time buying that. I think most of the btc-market is in USD and they let themselves be lead by the nose, mostly by looking at bitcoinwisdom. So my question remains, why are the Westeners so fixated on the btc-price and volume on Chinese exchanges, when they are practically guaranteed that those numbers are faked?

If the blame lies with bitcoinwisdom and others portraying the Chinese numbers as reliable, then those sites should probably be notified of and take action against helping the fraud. Even if it only effects the non-Chinese market.

Tainted might be to nice a word for what's going on, we're talking faked numbers that are off by multiple factors of 10. I'd like to know where the current 10% CNY BTC-marketshare numbers are coming from, because if you can divide that number through 10 then what remains of the total volume then?

I'm starting to believe that the Chinese stake in the bitcoinmarket has been severely overestimated and even more damaging than the whole m-t-Gox fiasco.  It might indeed be advisable to just scrap the Chinese exchanges from all charts until it can be proven that they are trustworthy enough to be listed. It's one thing if it's a local joke that a few Chinese are into, but I don't see why the rest of the world should play along with that little game then.

I was wondering if Bobby Lee is correct about how the average Chinese exchange operates, and his observations do seem to be valid explanations of odd marketreactions in China, how can you still make any kind of usable market prediction considering all that fraud. To name a few, he lists, exchanges padding volumes with zeros, selling to itself, repeating past sales to hide low activity and phantom liquidity (via fake buy and sell orders that cause flash crashes when someones marketorder falls right through them), add to that zero fees and you've got a rather explosive mix, that's more destructive than helpful to the market.

If you consider this, then I'm having a real hard time seeing what is supposed to be so bad about the news that China is banning exchanges. If what Bobby says is even a little true, then the ban can't come soon enough in my opinion, in the mean time it might be a good idea for the market to completely disregard any market prices from China, because it looks like they do not have even remotely the marketshare or volume that everyone seems to believe they have and therefore should not have the same impact on marketprice either.

Is there a way to turn the ledger on? Payout's on Hashcows do not coincide with the days in my timezone, which makes it impossible to track payouts for me. I can't sit around all day refreshing the balance page, to see when and what has been awarded that day.