[ANN] Ethereum: Welcome to the Beginning

[_ingsoc]

If you support Ethereum you are fired - both metaphysically and spiritually from humanity. You are no longer human in my eyes because you are directly slowing technological progression and costing millions of human lives in the long run.

Literally the most ridiculous thing I've read on Bitcointalk. Trying to force your own will onto others is exactly what you did with that statement. Are we not free to choose?

[CryptKeeper]

[jlspartz]

                                                                After 1 year        After 5 years
Currency units                                           1.9X                        3.5X
Fundraiser participants                                   52.6%                28.6%
Fiduciary members and early contributors           11.8%                6.42%
Additional pre-launch allocations                   2.63%                1.42%
Reserve                                                   11.8%                6.42%
Miners                                                   21.1%                57.1%

So... who's going to want to mine this?
How is fiduciary members at 11.8%? It says in the first post you will take X from the fundraiser and multiply by .5 for the fiduciary members premine, or does that include the reserve and "pre-launch allocations"?
The amounts seem quite... lavish <- doesn't quite fit, maybe gluttonously greedy.

[_ingsoc]

As much as I want Ethereum to succeed, a fool and his money are soon parted. There has to be much stronger interaction with the community. These people are upset for many reasons. I will continue being an optimist and hope they won't be ignored.

[LiveLife]

Hi All,

Bit of a newbie here and I'm not inclined to post much but I really wanted to chip in with my 2 cents worth. Unfortunately that will be all I will be chipping in.

I cannot overstate how disappointed I have been with this launch. I had heard great things about the team and the idea behind this project and after reading the white paper I've been really excited about the IPO and what Ethereum is planning to offer.

I had planned to invest on day 1.

I have read this entire thread from beginning to end and obviously, lots of questions, criticisms and concerns have been raised here. Some of them legitimate and some of them I'm sure not so. I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the devs and have been looking forward to hearing their rebuttal of the criticism.

I think it is absolutely unforgivable that not one member of the (large) team has been on here to offer any sort of answers to the many questions of potential investors who have legitimate concerns over the use of their hard earned. It is three days before the launch and I would have thought that they would be doing everything in their power to be putting people at their ease. I realise that they may have been busy over the weekend but there is simply no excuse for not getting on here and answering some questions. IMHO it smacks of arrogance.

Despite this I have not lost all interest in the project and will be following the launch closely. I for one however, will not be putting one mBTC on the line before getting some serious answers.

If anyone from the team actually reads this then please put us straight... Some serious PR needed now methinks...

[_ingsoc]

Hi All,

Bit of a newbie here and I'm not inclined to post much but I really wanted to chip in with my 2 cents worth. Unfortunately that will be all I will be chipping in.

I cannot overstate how disappointed I have been with this launch. I had heard great things about the team and the idea behind this project and after reading the white paper I've been really excited about the IPO and what Ethereum is planning to offer.

I had planned to invest on day 1.

I have read this entire thread from beginning to end and obviously, lots of questions, criticisms and concerns have been raised here. Some of them legitimate and some of them I'm sure not so. I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the devs and have been looking forward to hearing their rebuttal of the criticism.

I think it is absolutely unforgivable that not one member of the (large) team has been on here to offer any sort of answers to the many questions of potential investors who have legitimate concerns over the use of their hard earned. It is three days before the launch and I would have thought that they would be doing everything in their power to be putting people at their ease. I realise that they may have been busy over the weekend but there is simply no excuse for not getting on here and answering some questions. IMHO it smacks of arrogance.

Despite this I have not lost all interest in the project and will be following the launch closely. I for one however, will not be putting one mBTC on the line before getting some serious answers.

If anyone from the team actually reads this then please put us straight... Some serious PR needed now methinks...

This is a really good summary of what I think most Bitcointalk people feel as of late, which is also what is driving most of the negative stuff in this thread.

[LiveLife]

Hi All,

Bit of a newbie here and I'm not inclined to post much but I really wanted to chip in with my 2 cents worth. Unfortunately that will be all I will be chipping in.

I cannot overstate how disappointed I have been with this launch. I had heard great things about the team and the idea behind this project and after reading the white paper I've been really excited about the IPO and what Ethereum is planning to offer.

I had planned to invest on day 1.

I have read this entire thread from beginning to end and obviously, lots of questions, criticisms and concerns have been raised here. Some of them legitimate and some of them I'm sure not so. I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the devs and have been looking forward to hearing their rebuttal of the criticism.

I think it is absolutely unforgivable that not one member of the (large) team has been on here to offer any sort of answers to the many questions of potential investors who have legitimate concerns over the use of their hard earned. It is three days before the launch and I would have thought that they would be doing everything in their power to be putting people at their ease. I realise that they may have been busy over the weekend but there is simply no excuse for not getting on here and answering some questions. IMHO it smacks of arrogance.

Despite this I have not lost all interest in the project and will be following the launch closely. I for one however, will not be putting one mBTC on the line before getting some serious answers.

If anyone from the team actually reads this then please put us straight... Some serious PR needed now methinks...

This is a really good summary of what I think most Bitcointalk people feel as of late, which is also what is driving most of the negative stuff in this thread.

Cheers mate. This was my favourite quote from the white paper:

"the idea behind birthday-based proofs of work is simple: find values xn,i,j such that i < k, j < k and |H(data+xn+i) - H(data+xn+j)| < 2^256 / d^2."

Unfortunately this is about as simple as investing in Ethereum has become. 

[kdrop22]

I've added a question to the list:

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

+1

Ethereum might be a victim of its own success. If they end up raising 30 Million. Given that equity will be diluted at launch and there will be 0.4X (12 million supply coming in) + funds divested by investors + salaries payed to ethereum members etc...
We need a fresh infusion of 15 Million just to hold the price. An increase of 10x the price will require - 150 Million coming into the system.
I would say this is a great idea, however not such a good deal for investors.  

[Come-from-Beyond]

We need a fresh infusion of 15 Million just to hold the price.

Economy works another way.

[vtbean79]

I think dev team's plan is to wait until the last minute (probably a day before the launch) and start answering some easy questions so that it would appear as they're answering all the questions.  Hoping that would push some investors over last minute.  Otherwise, I cannot fathom why the dev team with their supposed large number of staff member (including PR) is leaving this thread abandoned... 

[Paplari]

Too many red flags for me, dont want to be fanboy to any coin and investing to this IPO seems to require that. Few days to IPO and only ones here clarifying things to potential investors are other potential investors which is ridiculous and even they seem skeptical minus few fanboys of course. I dont mean to insult anyone but i dont know what else to call people who think doing IPO like this is just great and see no problems in the way this has been handled.

[HinnomTX]

I don't know about everyone else here, but I'm sitting this one out. As I said before, mining is the easy way to play this. It's low risk, and if ETH ever takes off you'll get to enjoy a bit of the ride. Anyway, with BTC block #283810 approaching, my attention is focused on putting money to work (or rather, lighting it on fire) with Counterparty.

[Swimmer63]

Given the lack of member participation on this thread it's apparent that they do not believe they need the broader community to support this.  While the potential for the science is amazing - I don't have much trust in the leadership here.
Nor do I plan on mining, which is what I do.  Makes no financial sense at this point with an ever increasing inventory of coins.

[lemfuture]

Given the lack of member participation on this thread it's apparent that they do not believe they need the broader community to support this.  While the potential for the science is amazing - I don't have much trust in the leadership here.
Nor do I plan on mining, which is what I do.  Makes no financial sense at this point with an ever increasing inventory of coins.

at this rate, usd is looking better and better LoL

[BitcoinForumator]

Looks like a lot of people are going to invest their Ethereums into Dollars, because the inflation seems a bit better there.

[pwpwpw]

mining will start in 3days or thats just the funding date?

[majik]

I can think of 2 reasons for such a lack of response from them:

- they are walking back to their office in Toronto from Miami

- they are rewriting the fundraising and will announce it by tomorrow. Thursday is too late

[CoinHeavy]

I wonder if they will be releasing some sample contracts (scripts) with the initial code.  I think that the market will have a difficult time valuing Ethereum until the first few big ideas are implemented in code.  Even then, only once web apps are built on top of those contracts/scripts will there be a real value-add.

Does anyone know what will be possible (if anything) with the out-of-box experience, as it were?

[ddink7]

Looks like a lot of people are going to invest their Ethereums into Dollars, because the inflation seems a bit better there.

Maybe they'll invest their bitcoins in dollars too, because the U.S. inflation rate (1.5%) is much lower than the inflation of bitcoin (10.7%).

That said, I really do hope we hear from Vitalik or Charles soon.

[BittBurger]

How about this viewpiont on why they're not responding:

Some random thread on Bitcointalk doesn't amount to a hill of beans.

I could be dead wrong about this, but I seem to remember hearing that they'd *already* raised millions of dollars *before* they even created this thread.

I just spent 10 minutes trying to find the older article which stated this, and can't find it.

But do you really think this thread on this forum is their main source of bread?

-B-