[ANN] Ethereum: Welcome to the Beginning

[KoinMaster]

Since I heard about Ethereum I've been reading about it and from beginning I was determined to invest 1 btc in the "IPO".
But because of very sound warnings from many people here I lowered my investment first to 0.5 btc and now to 0 btc at "IPO".

Although I would like to stress that 30000 BTC is NOT WHAT THEY ASK! but I still think that the premine and other factors that will go against investors are too much. It is not fair to unload ALL the risk to investors. I would like to run my business like that.

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Here is THE PLAN:

I would like to start a new, phenomenal flower business (that I've already have much experience in) and I would like to get your money to lift it up from the ground. I have great new Ideas, and plans and I can work on some very complex scheme (MLM, fiduciary guys etc) to smoke your eyes. But in fact I will have no risk, and your "shares" in my company will be greatly diluted (destroyed) because I will get new "partners" on the way (multi level selling of flowers, new partnerships etc.) and I will give them "shares" instead of money also. But I will give myself a half of my company that you funded as well. Later on I promise to turn my company into some digital autonomous company (that things don't even exist yet and who knows will they actually work).
Oh, and I will stop this "IPO" if I reach 50000 btc (I have to ask more than Ethereum guys because I really am already running flower business, have something to prove, adoption of flowers and the need for flowers is way more tangible then cryptos, and I'm on my mid thirties, and at age 19 I was winning at math competitions etc.....)

But I will settle with 700 BTC - that would be enough for me to start this....

Here is my bitcoin address and you can start pouring money: 15ZkyZnhn8Lfz66yHuiVU4cxT1wzb1kxa8
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How much money would I be able to collect this way in Real Life? That is why they cannot go to any VCs and present their idea. They would be escorted out with great laugh.

I will definitely practice my patience skills. :-)

Supposedly Vitalik said they actually need 500 btc. What happens if they get only 450 or less? Will they return the money?

It is really sad that no representative of Ethereum bothered to show up here in days, just few days before the so called IPO. Don't please tell me that guys who greedily plan on becoming VERY rich (before actually starting to work) don't have time to reply to any negative comments here or update their blog because they are in Miami on weekend? I run my business even when on vacation and I have significantly less staff than they've listed. Are they ALL in Miami, still, and someone took Internet away from them?

By each passing day this looks more and more like Visacoin.

The best part is they are trying to sell us ether - thin air and that in a very small quantities for a very high price + any value that this ETH will have it will be diluted. And all that if they can deliver at all.

I'm telling you if you would fund my business idea with the flowers with 50000 btc, it would be extremely difficult for me to stay hungry....

I know many people (my self included) are very sorry we missed the NXT boat when it was still being build (although it is still my best investment in cryptos to date). This is definitely not the one to rush into. I plan on keeping my eye on Ethereum because I believe it could have very promising technology but this "IPO" is too greedy, to punitive to investors and it doesn't follow up on any substantial evidence that those guys will deliver.

I don't even want to go into Goldman Sachs part....

You've nailed it man! +1000

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[KoinMaster]

_ingsoc is for Ethereum what TKeenan is for Mastercoin lol

I don't know who TKeenan is. When I first heard about Ethereum, I thought it was interesting. I think it's one of the most promising projects we've seen in a long time (in concept). Most people can agree with that. I'm concerned about some of the issues raised on here too. Given that I plan on putting some of my own money into it, I want to try and figure out what's going on and make a decision. I know we're not going to figure that out by all getting on a box and screaming as loud as we can. I'm trying to help you, dammit!

_ingsoc is right. We -as potential investors - have the right to ask legitimate question. The Ethereum team haven't even bother to look into this discussion for days now let alone answer our concerns... And all before the great 30k BTC IPO.... Something is not right here....

[_ingsoc]

_ingsoc is right. We -as potential investors - have the right to ask legitimate question. The Ethereum team haven't even bother to look into this discussion for days now let alone answer our concerns... And all before the great 30k BTC IPO.... Something is not right here....

We do have that right. Even if your question is absolutely nuts, you should still get an answer. I'm just trying to group as much of it together as possible so we can get responses. It becomes very difficult for them to read mountains of texts from individual users. If we get no response from a list like that, and you're unhappy with that treatment, then you know what to do. At least this gives the community a chance for everyone to get their concerns answered in a structured way.

I also have no affiliation with this project. I'm actually involved in a project called MC2. I'm just more interested in collaboration and building bridges to a better future than to burn them all day in petty competition. I try and help all interesting projects. So I'm trying to get information properly. At the end of the day, it's your money, and I don't want to lose mine either.

[Tompa]

_ingsoc is for Ethereum what TKeenan is for Mastercoin lol

I don't know who TKeenan is. When I first heard about Ethereum, I thought it was interesting. I think it's one of the most promising projects we've seen in a long time (in concept). Most people can agree with that. I'm concerned about some of the issues raised on here too. Given that I plan on putting some of my own money into it, I want to try and figure out what's going on and make a decision. I know we're not going to figure that out by all getting on a box and screaming as loud as we can. I'm trying to help you, dammit!

_ingsoc is right. We -as potential investors - have the right to ask legitimate question. The Ethereum team haven't even bother to look into this discussion for days now let alone answer our concerns... And all before the great 30k BTC IPO.... Something is not right here....

+1

I'm sure that if my team and I would try to launch something similar, we would be communicating 24/7 really (heaving turns/shifts) to satisfy the the curiosity and to draw even more people in who would be able to see that we are real and devoted.
Why don't they at least make some G+ hangout event or something similar where they would answer questions.

In this day and age, not communicating before such "IPO"s is unforgivable and excuses like: "They are in Miami over the weekend" when there are 20 of them is insulting....

Even if Vitalik is really looking forward to only 500BTC it is still half a million $. For that much we are still deserving some answers and engagement.

[_ingsoc]

I've added a question to the list:

(#) This question comes from giladio_0 on Reddit. Why was the choice made to crowdfund this whooping amount outside of the due registration and regulatory processes such as the SEC or Canadian equivalent? What is the purpose of this? It will only instigate trouble with the regulators and jeopardize all of the investor's money, and the stability of the project.

[Luckybit]

I wouldn't care where people worked before hand. It's the fact that Ethereum seems to be designed to screw investors. It almost seems like it's designed wrong on purpose.

I'm willing to say it's possible that it's just a philosophical disagreement. A lot of very smart people can disagree on these matters. I'm willing to watch how Ethereum does but I'm not going to be investing in an IPO where it's 1000 Ethers a Bitcoin. That is so over priced that it's almost ridiculous. 50% premine is even more ridiculous.

Say what you want about the IPO but as an investor it's just too much risk. On top of that the design is extremely ambitious but also presents security risks as well being that it is turing complete. Using virtual machines and sandboxes may help but it's also going to make it much more expensive and difficult to develop than people here realize.

I like the technology, so from that perspective I think its pretty cool. But from the perspective of an investor I think it's not worth the risk to me when you have Bitshares, Mastercoin and others which aren't going to inflate for eternity (for no apparent reason).

If you're going to dilute our shares don't ask for 50% premine. Don't design it in such a way so that it is as unattractive to early investors as possible. We aren't stupid.

Help me add words to the questions if I'm missing things. I'm trying to get through the noise and summarise community concerns. Ethereum has the potential to be a great project, but who would want to bring a project to this community if the response is totally out of control. If their responses suck and the community feels they can go to hell, then that's cool if we got organised and had proper discourse.

You also know I'm working with tacotime on MC2, so I'm trying to learn so I don't have to cry myself to sleep when there's more community engagement with that project.

Okay.

1.) Ask them to make the case for why we need Proof of Work and the inflationary model of crypto-equity distribution?

In my opinion if the inflation is unjustifiable then it's unjust because it robs future generations and early investors of value for no apparent value in return. For Bitcoin it was necessary because inflation is how Bitcoin is marketed. Miners are important in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Now that we have plenty of miners and plenty of more profitable coins to mine like Dogecoin and others we don't actually need Ethereum to be Proof of Work.

But let's say they decide to go with Proof of Work? Shouldn't they aim to have the lowest level of inflation possible when Ethers cost so damn much? 1000 Ethers per Bitcoin? That is maybe $1 an Ether we are talking about? Inflation should be extremely low and in fact it should as close to 0% as possible.


They give no reason for why we need the extreme levels of inflation. Ethercoin? No it's not a coin. It's a protocol and Vitalik knows this. As a protocol which we have to build stuff on top of it, it will never have much value as a coin because it's primary mode is not that of a currency.


In fact I would argue that Ether is supposed to be a unit of measurement in the mold of a perpetual coin. A perpetual coin should not inflate or deflate, it's supposed to be static. If they aren't going to use it as a perpetual coin but instead use it as a currency, then I would argue that the primary mode should be deflation.

We could achieve the deflationary mode simply by requiring that the Ethers spent are destroyed.

2.) If Proof of Work is necessary for securing the blockchain, why aren't they going with a deflationary model which requires Ethers to be destroyed when spent to offset the justified inflation if it must be mined by Proof of Work?

No one has to lose but they are setting up investors to lose. Inflation might have to exist to secure the network but a case hasn't been made that Proof of Work is the only way they could secure the network or that inflation rates would have to be so ridiculously high to give incentive to miners. 2+2!=6.

Consider this to be constructive criticism. I offer some ideas which can actually help the product.

[_ingsoc]

+1

I'm sure that if my team and I would try to launch something similar, we would be communicating 24/7 really (heaving turns/shifts) to satisfy the the curiosity and to draw even more people in who would be able to see that we are real and devoted.
Why don't they at least make some G+ hangout event or something similar where they would answer questions.

In this day and age, not communicating before such "IPO"s is unforgivable and excuses like: "They are in Miami over the weekend" when there are 20 of them is insulting....

Even if Vitalik is really looking forward to only 500BTC it is still half a million $. For that much we are still deserving some answers and engagement.

There's no doubt that this thread turned into a bit of a disaster. I really want Ethereum to be the real deal, so I don't want to just give up on it because it lost some steam. I think they should have someone in here to engage the community. And maybe they screwed up by not having that (even if it was because of Miami), but let's focus on the ideas - they're good ones. So that's what drives me.

Having said that, people are pissed at the fundraiser terms, and we can't deny that. It could be because of misunderstanding, or people could legitimately find that early contributors are given too much risk to carry compared to the Ethereum folks. That's why I want to get questions answered so we can make informed decisions and decide whether or not we want to support it with contributions. A potentially game changing idea for the future of cryptocurrency is at risk if we are informed by the wrong information.

[_ingsoc]

1.) Ask them to make the case for why we need Proof of Work and the inflationary model of crypto-equity distribution?

2.) If Proof of Work is necessary for securing the blockchain, why aren't they going with a deflationary model which requires Ethers to be destroyed when spent to offset the justified inflation if it must be mined by Proof of Work?

Nice to see you in here too, Luckybit. This is the kind of discussion we need once we get the information people want to make a decision about the fundraiser terms. I got to run, but I'm going to add this when I sit down again. Thanks!

[gutshot5820]

I don't know how you can NOT understand "up to 30,000 bitcoin" and "50% pre-mine" its staring right at everyone's face.  We can all do the math and surmise the repercussions from this deal.  You can't sweep it under the rug or divert our attention from it with tech talk.  100 questions wont answer that one.  If you can't figure out what everyone's main concern/disgust is and you have to gather a list of questions to ferret it out....I don't know how to respond to that.

[fluidjax]

I must be missing something here about risk, amongst other things reward should be based on risk.
Can someone explain to me what risk the developers/founders are taking?
Or is their reward simply based on the cool idea they have had.

[Chang Hum]

The change in presale price is disgusting, reminds me of when dominos started cutting 13" texas bbq into 6 instead of 8 probably some ex gs wanker in head of operations thought that one up. also @gunshot shut up mate you're boring

[gutshot5820]

The change in presale price is disgusting, reminds me of when dominos started cutting 13" texas bbq into 6 instead of 8 probably some ex gs wanker in head of operations thought that one up. also @gunshot shut up mate you're boring

I hate to agree with you on both points, the change in price is disgusting and my constant repeating of the obvious is naturally boring. But I shrug off your comment because anyone who eats dominos pizza in any size  loses my respect. 

[PGPpfKkx]

all i have to say is that this is wrong in any financial theory possible, that is investing tons of money to something that is still an idea with people that say they will commit and without any contract.

to be honest i wouldn't even try to code a single line, if one white paper brings me $2-3m.

its insane. if u invest you admit that right now you think this idea costs $24m + 50% of what it will worth in the future.

venture capitalists in the states do rounds of investments and no company ever before took that much money to build something from an abstract idea.

this is not funding to fund developers needs (im also a developer). 1k BTC should be enough to fund all of these needs without the premine and pr costs for a year.
even the best google programmers don't get more than 200k/year, and i doubt this is the absolute dream team of programmers in the world.

get serious.

[KoinMaster]

I don't know how you can NOT understand "up to 30,000 bitcoin" and "50% pre-mine" its staring right at everyone's face.  We can all do the math and surmise the repercussions from this deal.  You can't sweep it under the rug or divert our attention from it with tech talk.  100 questions wont answer that one.  If you can't figure out what everyone's main concern/disgust is and you have to gather a list of questions to ferret it out....I don't know how to respond to that.

We should ask and let them answer. We should give them a chance to corrects these mistakes by changing(even cancelling) the IPO terms and the 50% premine (to 1%). Also we demand PoW before investing.

[domob]

its insane. if u invest you admit that right now you think this idea costs $24m + 50% of what it will worth in the future.

venture capitalists in the states do rounds of investments and no company ever before took that much money to build something from an abstract idea.

this is not funding to fund developers needs (im also a developer). 1k BTC should be enough to fund all of these needs without the premine and pr costs for a year.
even the best google programmers don't get more than 200k/year, and i doubt this is the absolute dream team of programmers in the world.

get serious.

While I understand your points and share some criticism and concerns (I myself decided to probably invest less than initially planned on the IPO), I don't get why everyone seems to be so fixed on the 30k BTC.  Vitalik mentioned that they would be happy and able to finish development with 500 BTC (less than your 1k estimate), and the 30k is just an upper bound on the fundraiser.  Thus, they limit the maximal amount taken in!  (Which is exactly what many here seem to miss.)  Although, I have to admit that if they get so much funding, then they are really obliged to deliver a very good product in the end.

Also, what I don't quite get is why here's so much criticism, while I don't recall the same for Mastercoin (they got 5k BTC, remember?).  They as well as Invictus also still have to live up to their promises of a distributed exchange / DACs, as far as I know, and no one complains about the money they made.  So what's the thing here?  After all, it is each one's own decision to invest or not invest, and I have to admit that I find the idea behind Ethereum much more promising than those others.

[freedomfighter]

It all about the initial valuation. a $24M valuation after the money at this stage is way way high.

if 500BTC is a good start for a concept than should try to raise even 3000 BTC during the founding round and reduce the initial rate to 1BTC=10000 ETH instead of 1000 and with no bonus and have a great start with a 2.4M pre-seed fund. The $24M approach makes no sense.   

[canth]

I don't know how you can NOT understand "up to 30,000 bitcoin" and "50% pre-mine" its staring right at everyone's face.  We can all do the math and surmise the repercussions from this deal.  You can't sweep it under the rug or divert our attention from it with tech talk.  100 questions wont answer that one.  If you can't figure out what everyone's main concern/disgust is and you have to gather a list of questions to ferret it out....I don't know how to respond to that.

50% of what? The amount of Ether issued after the IPO? The first year including mining? Year 5? You're flat our wrong in all cases. Stop making up numbers when you clearly don't know what you're talking about and try to reference some facts.

[turtoro]

I don't know how you can NOT understand "up to 30,000 bitcoin" and "50% pre-mine" its staring right at everyone's face.  We can all do the math and surmise the repercussions from this deal.  You can't sweep it under the rug or divert our attention from it with tech talk.  100 questions wont answer that one.  If you can't figure out what everyone's main concern/disgust is and you have to gather a list of questions to ferret it out....I don't know how to respond to that.

50% of what? The amount of Ether issued after the IPO? The first year including mining? Year 5? You're flat our wrong in all cases. Stop making up numbers when you clearly don't know what you're talking about and try to reference some facts.

+1 for some sanity

[Come-from-Beyond]

A lot of questions r still unanswered. Looks like the devs need 6-12 months more.

[gutshot5820]

I don't know how you can NOT understand "up to 30,000 bitcoin" and "50% pre-mine" its staring right at everyone's face.  We can all do the math and surmise the repercussions from this deal.  You can't sweep it under the rug or divert our attention from it with tech talk.  100 questions wont answer that one.  If you can't figure out what everyone's main concern/disgust is and you have to gather a list of questions to ferret it out....I don't know how to respond to that.

50% of what? The amount of Ether issued after the IPO? The first year including mining? Year 5? You're flat our wrong in all cases. Stop making up numbers when you clearly don't know what you're talking about and try to reference some facts.

Why dont you try to explain it yourself?  50% of what smartass.  This whole thread is all about attacking anyone who has legitimate questions, trying to intimidate others.  Instead of acting like a natural born idiot why dont you explain yourself and present a good reason why its a good investment. All you same 4-5 shills do all day long on this thread is attack people who have questions with insults.  Why dont you explain and convince everybody about the percentages and why they deserve the money they are asking for and the amount of pre-mine they are planning.