Question about ethereum

[ashapasa]

Can someone please explain why the supply of ether is unlimited and how much ether will be released to the market every year. I am thinking of buying a few but this unlimited supply seems to suggest the return will probably be minimal although ethereum itself might be a success.

[haendehochueberfall]

Different numbers for yearly inflation are floating around ranging from 30% all the way to 150% in the first year. We don't know anything for sure because ETH will make the rules as they go along and Vitalik is a proponent of high inflation and changing the rules mid-game.

On the bright side of things "high inflation is good for export".  

But all that won't really matter because it likely collapses faster than new coins can be mined when the pumpers are cashing out.

[ashapasa]

Ok that sounds promising

[Sark]

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.

[haendehochueberfall]

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.

Which is pure hype. The legit userbase of ETH is tiny and limited to a few geeks and devs. Normal people don't really have a usecase for it and 99% of the money in ETH and side-tokens like dao is speculative money. This can be shown by observing traffic on the chain aswell as seeing the participation in the dao-voting vs money invested.
The vast majority of money in eth will only be there shortterm.
Personally i expect buying ETH next year below presale-price. Would be the first presale-coin to not drop below ico-offer. They all do.
At one point it will reverse (nothing goes up forever) and then we'll see an epic flush and THEN we can talk.

I wouldn't know why ETH shouldn't follow the usual pattern.  

Also: POS, are you serious?