Tok plz.... I'm a 5 yr old... say what now?
Sorry - didn't mean to be cryptic. It's just that it's all quite an exciting show. I'll try to summarise my take on everything which all started with the great blockchain debate.
1. Blockchain DebatePeople seem to be really rattled by blockstream/core's intransigence over the blocksize debate. They're sticking to their guns because they really have committed to this "clearing layer" thing and if they increase the blockchain's native scaling capacity it will kind of blurr that metaphor.
Meanwhile the blocks fill up and you get people tweeting about these mega delays. Even THAT can't be agreed upon as to whether it's problem or not because:
A] core say "nothing to see here -just pay a higher fee and it'll go through in 20 minutes".
B] people say "bug off" it's our blockchain too and we want it to scale natively
Core is composed largely of academic, deep thinker type people. They like to move slowly but can be subject to tunnel vision that prevents them from detecting an oncoming steamroller at 50 yards range and now the markets are starting to speak.
Bitcoin didn't rally as was expected (at least looking at charts). Ethereum is going absolutely ballistic even though it really shouldn't (by design - more about that below). This is pouring more salt into the wounds of an already fissured developer and commercial community. People (like the guy below and even Max Keiser) are actually starting to talk about an alternative to bitcoin for the first time since the rise of Litecoin.
Some of the more extreme voices who's noses are out of joint beyond repair by core's policies even say that "bitcoin is done" and core destroyed it...such as this guy who's quite a well known blogger in the sphere:
(Warning: he did also say that he thought Vertcoin was going to be "the one" back in the day. I'm just using Seaman for symbolic purposes as he made a comment that bitcoin holders would be "sweeping the floors at Best Western" or similar - since deleted
).
2. The Catch that not many of the FOMO people seem to understand:
The creators of Ethereum did not envisage it as a store of value token and gave it a humungous great emission rate to make people not hold but use it to create blockchain businesses instead. The ANNUAL emission rate is something like a third of all the IPO coins issued which was around 60 million. Right now, market says "I don't care, I'm buying" but when the pump's done, holding it won't be too great an option because it needs to devalue 28% every year just to maintain its marketcap.
So what will happen (it's happening already) ? Investors will do one of 3 things:
1. Dump their profits into a so called "bearer token" currency (where the token IS the asset as opposed to just a contract for an asset). That means Bitcoin or Dash, which is already getting a load of this waterfall and is potentially even more attractive than Bitcoin due to (A) if its "reserve market" and (B) because it natively addresses all the issues that bitcoin isn't
2. Use it to build businesses
3. Watch their Ether values plummet against Bitcoin over the course of a year or two
3. Conclusion & Implications for DashThats why I see the whole Ethereum phenomenon as great for Dash. Dash is probably too small to have prised open the "bitcoin may not be the only one" fissures on its own, but Ethereum has now done it for us. Secondly, we see that Ethers have a totally different target market. Profits will be taken and a lot of them are going to be ploughed into Dash masternodes. It's just too competitive an investment opportunity which is why the nodecount and price are positively correlated right now instead of negatively as they would be long term.
Hopefully that explains my "crowbar" metaphor ! The one that finally prises free large amounts of capital out of bitcoin holder's aged hands - now free-floating and up for grabs, especially in the long term by any "bearer token" coin that happens to find itself in the top-5 currencies
For more background see
this interview with Simon Dixon.
Also, click the bottom graphic for link to source text.
