Ethereum is the biggest smart contract platform with the most people working on it. That alone would be reason enough for me to stay there.
There is a decent chance, that the reason why ethereum looks so full of holes is, that it's constantly in the spotlight and a lot of eyes are examining it closely. Take a coin like counterparty, give it a billion dollar market cap and as many people working on it as ethereum and see how many flaws you will find then.
Just because something doesn't look broken, doesn't mean that it isn't. Maybe you just didn't look closely enough.
Completely agreed, this is how you make things work but well there are a lot of speculators, fud and obviously "bad" news that influence the short term price. Long term we all know that Ethereum is something special and could even overtake Bitcoin or make it obsolete. Not Ethereum itself but all its tokens and ecosystem could render some technologies useless. We know Bitcoin is still king but it hasn't made much progress in terms of adoption and popularity, blocks are full, plenty of different camps. Even if it's rallying right now, we all know it's temporary.
The future is full of doubts, we can have Ethereum at $100 and Bitcoin at $2000 and beyond in 2017-18 or nothing at all since crypto projects still can't seem to come up with the killer app for the average user or company. Once that happens (if it happens) then I'm sure we'll all be very wealthy as early adopters of many of these projects.
could even overtake Bitcoin or make it obsolete
Obsolete? You obviously don't understand what bitcoin is about. Ethereum can never replace Bitcoin. It is not designed for store of value, it is definitely not immutable and a network so much dependent on single guy (King Vitalik) is not a healthy one.
Damn, he even DDOSed its own nework during the DAO flow just to slow it down.
And that is before we talked about PoS..
Bitcoin network, as we see it today is just layer0. When services will be built on top, most alt coins will be obsolete, not Bitcoin.
I understand what you are saying and it's definitely a possibility but don't be so close minded. Another possibility can also happen and even these two services/blockchains could rule together (it would be actually much safer than depend on a single one...). For Bitcoin to do what you said it needs to improve and change a lot of things, starting with their core team and vision.
Bitcoin is far from a panacea itself, who created it? Who is still holding 1m BTC? What about the centralized mining and many other power struggles? Ethereum aims to do something completely different and therefore yes, it's less decentralized (it still pretty much is, the hard fork was approved by a majority not by Vitaly himself).
I didn't mean to say that Ethereum will actually make Bitcoin obsolete, it's just a possibility if Bitcoin continues its stubbornness and idealism. Many just see the price and say it's all fine, but there are major problems still not being addressed and the whole thing can also collapse like a house of cards if not properly managed.
I am not close minded at all. How can I be, I am all around crypto
For people that write that this discussion is off-topic - well, it is not. The underlying blockchain on which ICN tokens are issued and dividends will be paid is not off-topic at all.
I hang a lot in ether and bitcoin channels, and somehow I have the feeling that the ether supporters have this urge to prove themselves superior or better and Bitcoin is old news.
Personally, I believe ethereum has a decent chance to have a future alongside bitcoin. I don't see how bitcoin and ethereum are rivals in any way now. It just needs to get into proportion. Ethereum is still way, way behind bitcoin when it comes down to maturity, network, usage and use-cases.
Hardforking has a lot of implications, the technical aspect is just one of them. See Etherem classic after the bailout fork.
For bitcoin I personally believe that only 2 things should be taboo - the 21M bitcoin to ever exist and the consensus mechanism - PoW.
Bitcoin "stubbornness and idealism" is what brought us here today and they are very much needed. Bitcoin blockchain has to remain "slow" and the scripting language "limited". These 2 "limitations", combined with PoS is what builds the immutable blockchain. You need TXs to be backed up by energy and not by the very token that the network itself had issued. That type of PoS cannot ever be the foundation for a stable gold-like monetary system. That is why ethereum will never be able to replace bitcoin, but you can't say the opposite.
IMO "let's rewrite history because an application using our protocol was hacked and founders and big investors lost tons of money" kind of forks is not something to be proud of.
