Old school thinking
I am old school. I grew up listening to old soul music. My dad was a saxophonist so we had ‘good’ music blaring in the house constantly. Some of the philosophical underpinnings of many of those songs are still imprinted on me to this day.
When I think about Cryptocurrency, one maxim comes to mind. It is from a Wilson Pickett song,
I don’t believe in nothing I can’t see
Can’t relate to things that hope to be
Dampener
Such thinking has tempered my enthusiasm for Ethereum. I deal with Rights, Contracts, Rules Engines and the ever increasing desire to automate just about everything in my day job. I understand the complexity. I also understand the gulf between the “Tech Guys” solution and what we as a business actually need. As it’s often my job to bridge the gap.
Snag
As you can imagine, given what I do, Ethereum and the notion of Smart Contracts on the blockchain peaked my interest pretty early on. There was on snag for me.
I like working products!
Anyone can sell me what they’re going to do however I don’t believe in nothing I can’t see. I know that even if I have a Supplier with a very good working product, that does not necessarily translate into something that will fit my need.
If someone making promises without an impressive product to demo to me... "Alright mate..." Is my initial response.
Jaundiced
However I try not to be short-sighted. I get that projects like Ethereum is a long term vision so I rolled with the hype and decided to download the wallet last year.
I kid you not, it took weeks to sync to the network!
What is this shit.
…Was the polite way to describe my initial response! The wallet was crippling my laptop. I’ve downloaded wallets, from one man bands that sync in seconds. It was clear to me that Ethereum wasn’t production ready, yet the buzz was fever pitch.
Again… I’m not shortsighted. I recognised my jaundiced view of ‘seeing-is-believing’. Smarter people than me were recommending Ethereum, so I rolled with it. I didn’t necessary have to understand it fully – yet. But I bought a small bag of Ether, using MyEtherWallet to manage my transactions.
Confirmation Bias
Then 'The DAO' came along. Again, grand plan, grand ICO. Effectively a decentralised funding organisation. Great. The first Company it was hoping to contract was Slockit. A company that creates smart locks that use the blockchain to manage access (if I recall correctly). Okay… Again, I was not sure how this would be used in practice. However Slockit was just one of many business this DAO could contract.
Not wanting to be shortsighted… I put some of my Ethereum into The DAO.
Then came the hack. I’m not sure how I managed it but I escaped that fiasco with a small profit. However the hack and the subsequent fallout for Ethereum only served to confirm my bias against believing in things that merely hope to be.
However I still held my small bag of Ether.
Flatter to deceive
Given my growing interest in the attention economy, I was naturally curious to explore the Ethereum based offering, Akasha. I downloaded Akasha. I would be the kind of person that would blog on such a platform.
The good news was it synced much faster than the Ethereum Wallet.
The bad news was that that gap between what the Tech Guys build and what the client wants was evident.
- Number 1 – I don’t want to pay gas in order to post. I could just stop there.
- Number 2 – it’s a desktop application. A social media platform has to have a mobile and online browser presence. With notifications and alerts to grab my attention.
- Number 3 - ....
I'm going to stop there. I don't want to bash Akasha. It's early days and it is a product that people can actually play with. However the fact that I only logged in once and never thought to log in again suggests that something about the product does not resonate in the way it should. That’s not to say that it can’t or won’t work. It just doesn’t work as currently constructed, not for me anyway.
Sign of things to come?
I mentioned Akasha because it’s reputation preceded it. It was suppose to be Ethereum's answer to Facebook. It’s success is predicated on user adoption. Yet I struggle to see how it is going to attract those users. Just like The DAO was suppose to revolutionise the way that Companies operate in the future yet is now defunct. I wonder if and The DAO are symptomatic of how a lot of Ethereum ‘Dapps’ are going to pan out.
However smarter people than me, are telling me this is the future… so I still hold on to a few Ether. And they seem to be right as the price of Ether keeps going to the moon! I'm not holding enough to be super rich however it's a very tidy profit. But I do have to confess I have no idea why it’s valued as much as it is!
Alas... I will roll with it…
ETH ICOs and Triple Jeopardy
So today I read that Bancor raised over $100m in 3 hours during their ICO. However I did not invest. I watched the 3 minute video, and I'll confess it's way to clever for me to understand! I'll wait until I see what kind of use cases emerge for it. It is at a point where there are so many ICOs launching these days it's very difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. There simply aren't enough hours in the day.
Also to me investing in Ethereum Dapps seems like triple jeopardy.
- Not only are you banking on Ethereum not falling over.
- You’re also banking on Bancor being a success.
- Not only that, you’re also banking on some other Ethereum based token not completely fucking up and having a DAO style situation that undermines the confidence in the platform.
These tokens seem a nice way for some to turn a quick profit. Beyond that it is a case of free-rolling to see what happens. However given the funds raised I'm not sure that Bancor will do the usual x2 or x3 when it hits the exchanges but you never know.
Missing a trick?
It could be me. But I fail to see the long term benefit in investing (right now) in tokens built on top of the Ethereum blockchain.
Would I not be better off simply buying more Ether?
Won’t a successful Ether Dapp (be it Bancor or another) necessarily mean an increase in the value of Ether?
Just to be clear, this post isn’t me trying to shit on Ethereum or any other Ether based app. On the contrary, I’m trying to set aside my confirmation bias and understand whether I’m potentially missing a trick (beyond flipping an ICO for a quick profit).
Should I be betting the house on these Ethereum ICOs?
Am I wrong to reserve judgment on Ethereum and it's offsprings until after Caspar releases and the platform of the future starts to make inroads into the lives of average users?
I wouldn’t want to miss the boat because I spent too much time waiting to the Midnight Hour, whilst Mustang Sally passes me by...
I don't see much point in all these icos as an investor. I did invest in the DAO and learned my lesson the hard way. I rather invest in something that already works unless the creators ask for a normal amount like the zappl team did. That is something I can support.
The last time I bought eth it was $14. As always buy and hold proved a good idea. I do really wonder if they can make the whole thing scale. I used to be all over the reddit reading about eth everyday. They do have a lot of businesses supporting them. I think that fact alone will make the Price go up. But it's all speculation at this point. Now steem has my full attention. It works and has a great community and I can see were it's heading. Works for me.
I agree. Simple questions like how much do the devs need and what will they spend it on seems to go out of the window with ICO.
It's crazy, isn't it, to see such huge sums of money being raised?
I saw a new music-related ICO today, attempting to raise some huge sum of money.. I won't name it.. but it was a three person team with basically no experience and a generic website, promising the world with absolutely no software and just a single image to show. Meanwhile, Bittunes has a fully functional version of their software, already running on Bitcoin, since 2013!!
And then LBRY is fully functional and quite impressive with just 500k of VC funding and no ICO at all...
Investors have to be very careful and picky right now. I think we'll be seeing a lot of ICO disasters in the coming months and years.
Exactly, it looks like a bank robbery to me.
You would be wise to put all of your money into this
:))) I want to be a bagholder of this money. I will let you know when I want a nice travel thru the galaxy!
By the way, impressive work @nanzo-scoop. I think you understand a lot more than we do, or at least then I do!
With a flip flip here and a flip, flip there.... here a flip, there a flip... everywhere a flip flip....
Supply gets taken off of the market for these ETH holding companies without products. That increases the price of ETH and the potential returns for the ICO's plus a 'premium'.
It's a house of cards, especially considering ETH cannot handle it during ICO periods.
All it takes is a few weeks of bad ICO's or exuberant spikes for someone to shit the bed and dump a bunch.
Still a good buy though :P
Personally I'm scared of ether and i have no freaking reason why! Maybe a gut feeling, maybe the proverbial be fearful when others are greedy. All i can truly tell is that something is not adding up with ethereum but then again i could be right.
I'd be wary getting in at these prices. Seems exuberant for where the tech is. However it's a very nice position for those who picked up ETH cheaply.
Right now feels like a good time for ETC... with ETH and ETC representing essentially opposite ideologies, and with ETH seeming to be set for a downward adjustment in the short term after this huge run up, ETC might be smart. I'm not sure if that logic is sound or not, just feels right to me.
Some of what you said is presently beyond my understanding as I'm not at all familiar with the inner workings of Ether, but what comes to mind is what my grandfather always used to say "it's what's under the hood that counts." If functionality is an ongoing issue, then there's always going to be problems. If I'm getting this right then then there are better alternative investments out there that actually work. There's only so many ticks, eventually the bomb will go off.
You will need ETH for the EOS ICO ;)
If you read the legal jardin on most of these ICO miracle new 'tokens' that the world is crazy for....they are not a legal currency being invested in and there is no legal redress in case of virtually any outcome. If you can bear the risk go for it.
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The best time to buy ETH was 6 months ago. The second best time to buy is now.
I always thought i'd missed the boat but after getting on board only a week ago, after prices were already high and I was unsure if I was making a mistake, I'm glad I did. I suspect ETH still has a fair way to go, it may be worth holding for years
I personally think all these ICOs athough good in the short term will, end up creating issues long term. Ethereum has sooo many more use cases other than ICOs. Within the next few years we're going to see some things programmed in "Solidity" That we never would have dreamed as possible today.
Keep in mind that very few of those throwing money at ICOs are actual investors, they are here for a quick buck. What we are seeing is mostly whale feeding patterns AKA wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am .
there is so much hype in these ICO's that many people "invest" their money without even researching. this is actually becoming really sick
one meme sums it up very well..
I was thinking to make the exact same post for today (minus the Akasha part). Glad you did it man. I share the same feelings as you do.
Good post bro
The Ethereum tokens have the chance to achieve higher percentage growth in the coming months and years. It's that simple
I think it's funny how many scrubs are going to lose ETH or whatever it's called this month.
a very wonderful post .upvoted .follow back
yeah that's the good thing you're discussing here . :)
I like it .
Haha sums up exactly how I feel. I found some spare Ether on my metamask account and was starting to see the hype around ICO's so I invested in Monaco, which many have claimed is a scam and I really don't know or care enough) enough to investigate properly. I went with my gut.
I do agree that ICO's are a massive gamble, and I definitely had the same thought about BAT and Bancor's ability to provide decent returns when the crowdsale did so well.
However it can't hurt to get in at the ground floor of any tech, really. It will all balance itself out eventually but hopefully we can make some gains in the meantime.
Keep it Up! Fellow Ether holder.
Current Ether Mining Net Payout @Genesis: 0.00062330 Ether per MH/s
For how many days of mining?
your experience is pretty good...
ICO is basically asking for funds (working capital) giving you as "investors" a promise that you will be greatly rewarded if all works according to plan.
In the sense, you can be a filthy rich or broke.
And there are too many ICO's, they are like mushrooms keep popping out everyday. I don't have a $ to invest anymore :)
@Yehey
https://QUE.com
https://steemit.com/@xontor upvote me for an upvote guys :D
ETH in its FOMO stage at the moment, so I don't see how it could crash soon, but I also see a lot of showstoppers, tbh. I wish people realized how superior is Steem compared to some of the most popular coins out there...
A lot of huge tech companies and financial institutions are taking Ethereum seriously which is reason enough to have confidence in it, more so even than Bitcoin in my opinion.
While these corporations will start with private blockchains there is potential for these to ultimately link back into the public blockchain at some point which would likely make the price of ETH skyrocket. You can read more at http://fortune.com/2017/02/28/ethereum-jpmorgan-microsoft-alliance/
nice posts...the way etherium is going, might be the next big thing. My first day on steem, already following you and hope you do the needful
可惜我没有多少钱能用来做这样的一些虚拟币的投资，但我会努力的。Unfortunately, I don't have much money to invest in some of these virtual coins, but I'll try my best.
Your article makes great sense! Well written
Invest in ETH it is soon going to $450+ . currently around $380 . Already made $50 Profit in 6 Days.
up vote Back
You have a lot of great insight. I am very interested in SkinCoin that is built on Ethereum and coming out June 21st. I'm going to follow to see what you say about Ethereum over the next few months. It will be a wild ride I think.
I am wondering what EOS from Dan will do in the future... :)
ETH is getting worse with every ICO. And here's why.
@nanzo-scoop great post brother keep up the good work and keep on steeming on
http://begthequestion.info/
I have noticed that whenever there is an ICO launching, Ether would experience a sharp drop.
Tomorrow the Beta of the LBRY platform will be announced. What do you think of that project?
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@flauwy/lbry-cryptocurrency-the-revolution-of-decentralized-digital-content
Welcome to Steemit :)
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Hello my friend . Thanks for sharing
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