Thank you so much for this post. Perhaps you can help me understand something. I am becoming more and more savvy about the underlying blockchain tech, but I am finding a disparity between the functionality of the tech and the value of the coins of the company. In this case, ETH. How is ETH valuable? It won't really serve any purpose, and there are better, more evolved, more elegant cryptos coming, like Tezos and BosCoin. Ideas? Suggestions?
Ethereum was never built for the purpose of ETH being a cryptocurrency - rather, it was built as platform upon which to build decentralized apps. Ether is essential to run processes on the blockchain - whether a transaction, dApp, or smart contract. thus, it's valuable because it's an essential resource for use of the blockchain, which the market has determined as valuable because of its functionality...