[SERIOUS] FINAL thread to settle them all: IS ETHEREUM A SCAM OR NOT?

[Sevvero]

In this thread we will settle if Ethereum is a scam or not.

Rules of thread:

• Present your arguments for or against Ethereum being a scam.
• Provide proof for your arguments (links, references).
• No Pajeets allowed.

[clardalan]

not a scam, but whale heavy and developer dependent, thus risky.

not a scam: it works. we see new icos / exchanges using the rules based trading / smart contracts every day. it is a blockchain that functions and serves some use cases.
whales/developer: vitalik...

[Almeida]

It is very emotional and silly to say it is a scam. That being said, I at least believe there are some worrying problems with it:

1 - too many tokens in the hands of few, this can easily translate in pump 'n dump to corner the market;

2 - the main differential, smart contracts, cannot be clearly defined by them, nor can they provide really ground breaking innovative working examples of it.

2.1 - Question 1: what is the difference between smart contracts and a bunch of "if...then...else..." routines? (don't tell me it has to be "turing complete" because it sounds like bull)

2.2 -Question 2: how does is the ethereum platform superior to any other platform over a blockchain where so-called smart contracts can be implemented? (this answer clearly depends on the "uniqueness" of what a smart contract is, that is, question1's answer)

3 - that auction of domain names valid for 1 year, that diminished my trust in it, simply because you are offering in a purely commercial way a sort of asset/privilege/domain, for a short period of time, of something that is not even clearly defined, let alone developed, that will convey business on such "ecosystem". In sum: capitalizing a puff of smoke, looks like.

Don't get me wrong, ethereum enthusiasts, but these questions are found wanted.

[slaman29]

It is very emotional and silly to say it is a scam. That being said, I at least believe there are some worrying problems with it:

1 - too many tokens in the hands of few, this can easily translate in pump 'n dump to corner the market;

2 - the main differential, smart contracts, cannot be clearly defined by them, nor can they provide really ground breaking innovative working examples of it.

2.1 - Question 1: what is the difference between smart contracts and a bunch of "if...then...else..." routines? (don't tell me it has to be "turing complete" because it sounds like bull)

2.2 -Question 2: how does the ethereum platform is superior to any other platform over a blockchain where so-called smartcontracts can be implemented? (this answer clearly depends on the "uniqueness" of what a smartcontract is, that is, question1's answer)

3 - that auction of domain names valid for 1 year, that diminished my trust in it, simply because you are offering in a purely commercial way a sort of asset/privilege/domain, for a short period of time, of something is not even clearly defined, let alone develop, that will convey business on such "ecosystem". In sum: capitalizing a puff of smoke, looks like.

Don't get me wrong, ethereum enthusiasts, but these questions are found wanted.

Agree. If it ever was a scam, it's now moved too far to ever look like one anymore. We have to ditch this emotional garbage and pay attention to what ETH is now.

1. Agree, and when PoS happens, the hodlers will become even richer, even faster.
2. Smart contracts were indeed overhyped, and any respectable crypto can implement.
3. Not sure what you're talking about, but ETH is always connected to some sort of enterprise, which is why I cannot see it the same way I see Bitcoin.

[Spoetnik]

WTF is a pajeet ?

OK i Google'd it LOL

A slang / racial slur for a smelly dirty curry drinking hairy Indian that poos in the loo.

..and yeah ETH is "scammy"

You have to decide whether you have any morals.
Because if you don't then none of these are a scam.

Look at the guy above me..
He basically said hey.. blah blah blah "NOW".
What happened "before" does not matter to him.

It's tiring re-explaining this over & over.
But there is a lot of red-flags with ETH since day one.. hell even BEFORE it launched.

The root of the issue is crypto ideology.
Most users though define a scam on whether they made money off it or not.

Is premining a coin 100% then paying your self a ton of coins then manipulating and controlling it considered bad ?
Because that is exactly what has happened with Ethereum.

[Pursuer]

it is a bit hard to categorize an altcoin as scam because all of them are doing a same thing and ethereum is no different. they just were wiser on using the money!
they had a good plan ahead, they got some money and started advertising the shit out of it. spamming everywhere and playing on people's emotions. paying people to spam for them, FUDing bitcoin, a lot of other things to raise the ICO. then unlike other ICO idiots who cash out the ICO and spend it on swag, they used that ICO to manipulate price, to advertise more widespread, paid a lot more people to spam. then the project was on the way to rise itself.
you can call this scam or a good business plan to make a shitload of money

as for the platform itself. it is terrible. only because there are a lot of others who are doing the same, and offer a way for smart contracts to work on their platform but their difference is that they blew their ICO money instead of using it wisely like how ETH guys did.
the cost of ethereum (gas) is rising badly. things like Rootstock will eliminate that cost and will be nearly zero while working on bitcoin blockchain and practically make Ethereum useless.

and one more thing that I find very dangerous and scary about ethereum which also led me to sell all my stash recently is the fact that a lot of ICOs were created on this platform, all using ETH tokens. as I said above, these devs will soon sell a large portion of the money they raised in form of ETH and that will create a big sell pressure on the market. which means a serious risk of price crash. and we all know with any even small price drops in this market a wave of panic sellers will come and from that point everyone else sees the drop and wants to do a stop loss hence creating even bigger drop.