I think you should be exposed to both currencies so that you have more money than you need if either of them win. A winning scenario I see at ~$4M/BTC or ~$1M/ETH. You do the math how many of each you would need before your utility function is getting capped. Then for the rest that you invest, which are more charity/short term speculation, I myself would lean towards ETH because I find it much cooler.

I like ethereum because even though very few people (me included) on r/ethtrader know what either a turing complete smart contract is or what exactly sharding means, everyone is super excited about it.

Fwiw, ethereum scaling is going to be magnitudes more difficult to solve than bitcoin scaling. If Vitalik can figure it out, he deserves to become the billionaire that he will be.

Scaling issues aside, isn't casper is going to look something like this (please correct me if I'm mistaken):

1) all stakers must hold >= X eth (X = 32 or something)
2) annual interest is ~8-10%

I just don't see how a model like that is sustainable.

I don't see how a fixed interest rate is a viable or a desirable thing. The rate will probably be flexible.

1. X=32
2. Vitalik has said 0% or close to zero inflation. Interest rate should be few percent more. If interest rate is much higher I assume the price will increase fast driving down interest rates. Will be cool experiment! =)

It would make sense that it works like loaning out coins on a site. Sometimes you can only get .001%/day, while other times you can get .2%/day. All supply/demand.

Essentially the rate would just go up until the amount they need is covered.

can someone explain to me what are tokens ? i searched about dapps being built on ethereum and they all have theirs tokens. Why is there tokens if there is already a currency called ether on this platform ?

As a potential invester i would like to know the diference and where is the value between ehter and tokens.

Also do you know any plataforms like ethereum ?

In a way they are like shares, but dapp developers are cautious that they aren't shares or securities because that brings about a whole set of rules and regulations to abide to.

but basically, if someone wants to create a platform on ethereum, they want to receive some money for it. to do so, they create a token.

the tokens for various platforms do different things, but they are mostly a type of usage fee. the main issue with it is once the platform is fully developed and open source, a lot of platforms will have no need for a specific token and ether itself should suffice. alternatively, if the usage fee equates to say 5% well then it creates a race to zero, because someone can port the system and charge a lower fee, and so on.

some dapp examples:

Augur - a decentralized prediction market. they released 11,000,000 tokens called REP. Augur allows anyone to create a market, ie. Who will win March Madness? and anyone can predict/bet on that. Of course, to be decentralized it needs an oracle to say what the actual outcome was. It's not like a sportsbook where the company decides who won. It is the rep holders, or a portion thereof, that decides who won. For their services, they get paid a % of the small fees collected by the prediction market.

Melonport - a decentralized asset management platform. This basically allows anyone to be a crypto fund manager of any size. right now to start a fund you need multi millions. With Melon you can create a fund and if people want to invest with you they can. To use the various modules (price trackers, charting systems, etc.) that people develop for Melonport, there will be a fee in Melon.

Golem - a worldwide computer - do you need processing power to do functions? pay someone in golem to use their processing power.

https://www.korbit.co.kr/eth_market

ETH at over 50 usd on korean exchanges. They sure did not waste any time lol.

Flippening intensifies!

After reading about them, I bought a bunch of ETH and LSK 2 days ago. They are up 40% and 31% in the last 24 hours.

I don't expect to ever run this good again.

Last week while buying 5 BTC in anticipation of the upcoming etf approval, I also bought 100 ETH @$18 in order to "diversify". I had no idea what it even was!

It seems pretty outrageous that ETH is almost at 25% market cap of BTC.

BTC is almost universally known at this point. It has stood the test of time, is used for a variety of functions and is easily understood. None of these things can be said of ETH.

I am curious about ETH and the more I read about it the more I believe in it, but when people like the poster above are buying it when they 'no idea what it even was' the more it looks like a massive bubble.

fyp

LSK doing well but I'm not sold on it. I should do some more research.

why do you say this? from the reading i have been doing it seems like ETH has a much wider variety of uses than BTC

I think his point is at present. Some merchants accept btc. Very few accept eth. There's no reason this can't change though. I don't know what btc can do that eth can't. Same can be said for litecoin, peercoin, etc. so really it's about who has the public perception, and right now the only one the general public has probably heard about is bitcoin.

I lost 3% of my ETH this morning trying to trade like a stupid ****. Where can I find a contract that locks my ethers for a year? Is loaning coins worth it otherwise? I think you can get 5% return risk free. Well, except for the exchange going rogue/getting hacked.

All it takes is for bitpay and coinbase to start processing eth payments, and it'll essentially be accepted anywhere bitcoin is. They are going to have to start because they aren't exactly going to keep paying the huge fees on the retail purchases they are processing.

No reason not to loan other than exchange hack risk....which is not a risk to take lightly.

Another big risk is if there a hardfork and 2 coins are made. Like right now BTC loan rates are way up. Usually if it gets over a certain amount people allow the loan to go for up to 60 days because your locked in at a high rate. Well if a coin hardforks in that time and 2 coins are made, you only get 1 coin back.

loans are up because ppl are geniuses.


last time eth - etc split, people who BORROWED eth at some determinate time before the split gained its associated ETC.

people are now (as in today bc poloniex borrow rates for btc are 10x lower than finex) borrowing BTC under the same premise, as polo/finex will undoubtedly follow the same procedures for giving people BTU.

This.

ETH is essentially 100% potential right now.

I can pretty much explain BTC to my parents or the average person on the street. Most people who own ETH don't fully understand it themselves let alone the general public.

****s getting serious

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-exch...tingency-plan/


My question is. If I have my BTC stored on a ledger nano. How do I get my 2nd coin? What exactly is the play on getting the free 2nd coin. For some reason I can't figure it out. What do I use as collateral to "borrow" BTC. Or do I short BTC? But if I short BTC, I don't exactly have possession of it, so I don't see myself getting the 2nd coin.

Do you just buy BTC on margin and hope it doesn't fall as much as the value the 2nd coin will be?

It's funny how these guys seem to be getting more serious about doing something after ****ing years because the competition ETH is forcing them to.

well, anyone with BTC on the original chain will own its associated BTU on BTU's chain. So if you own BTC today, or even 1 second before BU forks, you will technically own BTU on BTU's chain.

As long as you have the private keys to your BTC, you will be able to move your BTU coins. The trick is that on these hardware wallets, the private key is never exposed, so you'll have to either xfer the BTC off of it before the HF or wait for ledger nano to provide you with software to prevent replay attacks.

Replay attacks are extremely serious, because the moment the chain forks you do not want to be broadcasting either BTC OR BTU txs onto both chains at the same time, because you risk losing your coins to a counterparty-- even though that counterparty will have the private keys for both chains. That is from a USER's perspective. If you are a business owner it is even worse. You do not want to be sending people BTC and BTU.

My understanding is that if you are borrowing BTC, you may stand to gain its associated BTU. For example, on margin if you short BTC/USD, you are borrowing BTC. If you are long BTC/USD, you do not gain associated BTU because you're borrowing USD.