The exchanges are already killing Bitcoin.  Look at MtGox. 

Now the current rumour is that a lot of exchanges are engaging in FRB.  If an exchange has 100K Bitcoin in reserves then they can issue out 1 million Bitcoin and it works as many people keep their wallets on exchange profiles.

"but this kid from the internet told me his 2.0 coin would make me rich!"

Goldman Sach executives sat down in a board meeting and said: "alright we need someone hip, young and cool.. a mascot", "like Bieber sir?" "no but someone like him".  "How about Vitalik Buterin?  He's from Canada just like Bieber" "Good idea Jones, you'll be getting that raise".

It isn't that much bigger than Maidsafe which gathered like $8 - $12 million or something..  What was maidsafe?  What was it?  Let me again repeat it:  What was it?  Maidsafe had almost no presence in social media / media, almost no presence on here and yet people threw millions at it.  Not bad for some random company in Scotland with only like 3-5 employees, they got a bigger payday than even Vitalik could dream about (who has to share his money with Goldman Sachs, the angel investors and other dead weight).

Yeah even if you choose to ignore all the uncomfortable truths about Ethereum - you can't ignore the capitalization aspect.  A coin that will launch with $15 million won't go anywhere anytime soon as anyone who wanted Ethereum would had bought during the IPO and historically it's difficult for cryptos to go past $50 million.

If 100 wallets control 50% of Ethereum (wallets =/= people so less than 100), means there isn't any userbase behind Ethereum (only deep pockets).  That's no different then how Mastercoin and especially Maidsafe launched with huge capitalizations and haven't gone anywhere.  Someone who invested into Mastercoin and Maidsafe would had made more off Doge coin, NXT, Dark, et cetera.

 
Uhh yes you are.  You registered for NODE and you sent money in.  You just forgot about it.  It's hypocritical to hate NEM yet you're somehow on the list for another fair distribution coin.

See the post I made.  Vitalik himself said the top 100 wallets (wallets are not the samething as unique persons) own half of Ethereum.

If BTC price is collapsing due to Ethereum then it's BTC whales from 2009 / 2010 who are selling off.  Much like the Maidsafe IPO ($8 million IIRC) received stolen MtGox Bitcoins and money from whales.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=582731.0


There's far better alternates to Ethereum, Maidsafe and Mastercoin but a lot of these wealthy people have to be spoon fed by copyrighting scam coins into believing what the next 2.0 coin is going to be.  The people who invested into Mastercoin and Maidsafe would had made tons more off Doge, NXT, Dark, et cetera.  

The people buying Ethereum are going to be disappointed when upcoming 2.0 coins produce far better ROIs and end up having bigger capitalizations than Ethereum.

The buy in mean what, exactly?  Before the IPO began...

Ethereum forum was dead and barely had any activity
Videos barely had any views
Barely mentioned on BTT
Periodically only mentioned on Crypto news websites..

Then now during the IPO it hasn't really changed a whole lot.  Who exactly are these people who are investing $100K+ amounts as if it was loose change?


But what does the top 100 mean if we don't have access to this information?  Maybe it's 10 people who own 40% of Ethereum.

 As well wallets =/= unique persons.  If you're going to invest millions then you're not going to do it with one wallet.  Reasons:  Want to avoid the attention that one guy is taking over the whole coin (captain obvious ponzi scheme alarm).  Second, you don't want to lose all your coins if you get hacked (having multiple wallets lessens the possibility of losing all your coins to a hacker).


Interesting that on their link it says top 100 Doge wallets own around 45% but I don't think anyone viewed Doge or BTC as a money making opportunity when they first came out.

As well as a distribution where 100 wallets (wallets are not people - I can have 10 wallets if I wanted to) owning half of a coin is terrible end of story.  It may very well be 12 people who own half of Ethereum and they could had been Ethereum insiders or supporters from 2013.

It's not the question of everyone.  It comes down to raw statistics.  If thousands end up reading this thread and 5% are persuaded, that's still hundreds of people..

I didn't even get that far.  Marketing 101 is having a name that people can actually pronounce, as nobody wants to feel intimidated.  On the initial thread of Qora there were people complaining about the name on the very first pages.

NXT name is recognizable and conveys an idea.  The only downside was pointed out by Tai Zen that "nxt" doesn't flow in an english conversation as the word next is used frequently in everyday conversation.

So how was the name Burglin attained?  Tineye / Google Image?  Search the email on Facebook / Twitter.  Did you send him a phishing
link and his computer's name was Burglin?


IIRC - the only reason people were able to get Bluemeanie's residence address was because he posted that information himself on some other website and tineye found his image there, IIRC.  That being said, the "internet commandos" / "keyboard tough guys" still haven't gone to Arizona to beat him up like they implied they would.   

I don't know why NXT people are saying this is good publicity.  The story has already been dropped off the top page of Coindesk and Cointelegraph (you have to scroll down to find it), unlike MtGox which was there for months and was on international television, magazines and newspapers around the world.  At best the only people who know this story are hardcore crypto enthusiasts and they made up their minds about NXT months ago.



By the way NXT won't fail anytime soon as they have a dedicated following, some of whom only became millionaires due to NXT, so they have no problem in performing bail outs of their own coin when the price goes too low.  Only way for NXT to fail would be for its' whales to abandon ship.


The same could be said about other coins where there's a self-regulated environment where whales play the equivalent of the US Federal Reserve and launch bail outs if the price falls too low for their liking.

When will the Keynesian bubble pop in the alternates?

Dot.com was actually around $7 trillion in the late 1990s.  $2 trillion in investment gold.  The more recent housing bubble was $10 trillion.  There's $37 trillion in worldwide investments.  $400 trillion in derivatives. 

Crypto Currencies are like $7 billion?  Digital currencies are getting more attention from the government and media than Dropbox (which has a capitalization around $10 billion).

There's still a lot of room for crypto currencies to grow.  Bitcoin at $6 billion has far from taken over the idea - it's like in 2003-2005 when everyone thought Myspace would be the dominant social media website forever.

What happened to the Prime Directive?  The Federation had a policy that you couldn't interfere with the development of a pre-Warp civilization.  Perhaps the USA should had made the same policy about interfering with stone age civilizations?

 

My local ATM does not scan my hand or ask for any government ID.  I strongly suspect, however, that they do take photos.


There was a riot in my area some years ago and the police used sophisticated software to match people in the riot photographs with accounts on Facebook, in order to identify and arrest people.  If the ATM is storing images of its' users then the Police or the Government can cross compare that information with Facebook to find out who is a crypto currency user and/or has not paid their capital gains' tax.

Nope.  Switzerland has been forwarding people's information to the IRS in the past two years and I suspect any gold in Switzerland is not entirely safe.

There's the mentality among bankers that non-bankers are second class humans and are not entitled to their own money.

I don't see the point in a beta release.  A stripped down beta client traded on exchanges like Poloniex doesn't bring utility to anyone, except short term speculators who intend on dumping some weeks after launch.  Maybe this would had flied back in October 2013 but I feel standards may be higher now in the crypto community.


We already have a stripped down beta client - it's called Alpha.  We already have trading - it's called the token exchange.  If someone does not like it then they have the exit strategy of selling their tokens.   It just means a weak hand will let go and a stronger hand will take their place.     Long term stability is dependent that the community consists of holders and not dumpers looking to make a quick buck.

 There's an advantage in NXT-styled distribution when creating an inflated capitalization as it gets your coin noticed and brings in people.  The downside is once you run out of hardcore crypto enthusiasts, you're left with trying to convince mainstreet Joe to invest his life savings' into a coin which has been robbed several times and is dominated by a dozen people who could dump and kill off the coin at any moment.

When you consider there are coins with capitalizations less than $2 million with more volume than NXT, NXT is extremely overvalued and has been a bubble for a long time.

Decentralized exchanges with no fees, such as MGW, will be the future.

Centralized exchanges are less of a problem now but what happens when crypto currencies are worth $1 trillion and hacker / inside job steals $20 billion in the time span of 20 minutes?

Very sensationalist.  5% of a coin and to be a trillionaire would require NXT to be worth $20 trillion.   A more realistic estimation is that crypto currencies will be worth maybe $1 trillion in 10 years and split between several coins.

So yes some hacker could be Bill Gates' wealthy but who's assuming they will be a "hodl"?  More probable that they'll sell at some point and then the coins would redistribute themselves through the userbase.

The economics section would be a better place to post that question, not the alternate section

Why would this succeed?  It comes down to freedom and security.  Each person makes a democratic individual choice whether to use crypto currencies.  When the decentralized exchanges come in, crypto thefts will largely cease and holding our money in cryptos would be safer than holding it in banks (where the government can freeze or seize it).