
Bitcoin Industry VCs Shift Focus to Non-Financial Apps and Ethereum Startups - sethbannon
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/bitcoin-industry-venture-capitalists-shift-focus-to-non-financial-applications-and-ethereum-startups-cm593925
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brighton36
With all the success they've had in bitcoin (or lack thereof) you expect me to
believe that jumping to ethereum is going to bring profit? Isn't the whole
goal of ethereum to displace companies? I have yet to figure out just what
problem ethereum even solves

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chrispeel
Many fans of Bitcoin anticipated decentralized organizations, decentralized
identity, etc... in a way comparable to the way Bitcoin is a decentralized
currency. Unfortunately Bitcoin and other blockchain platforms do not provide
easy development tools to build those other decentralized organizations. Yes,
similar things can be built on Bitcoin as on Ethereum; it's just not as easy.

> I have yet to figure out just what problem ethereum even solves

Ethereum makes the blockchain easily programmable.

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imtringued
In exchange it makes computation incredibly expensive not only because the
Etherum VM is grossly inefficient but also because every node has to compute
the same computations to verify the results (with bitcoin proof is easy but
finding a block is hard).

This means the processing power of the etherum blockchain with one full node
is the same as with a million nodes. We are jumping back to the nineties from
a performance perspective despite potentially spending millions of dollars.

I wouldn't be surprised if etherum could be DOS'd simply by a government
spending a lot of cash on a smart contract that does absolutely nothing for a
whole week.

Etherum startups don't make a lot of sense unless you want to make some
betting platform that would usually be taken down by the government.

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ahmeni
It is inspiring to see the additional ways people have implemented blockchain-
based VC money plundering. While initial Bitcoin plundering efforts have
stagnated, future Ethereum initiatives will continue that refreshing Ponzi-
esque flavour we all crave.

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jamespitts
From the early comments placed here, it is clear that blockchain tech needs to
be put to more uses than solving money.

The core of what bitcoin has solved is of course hugely innovative, important,
and useful to many people. But it is also grossly mundane IMO.

Enabling new kinds of relationships creates far more interesting and enabling
outcomes than value storage or exchange. This is why bitcoin side chains and
the wide world of Ethereum will lead to the creation of far more economic
value than bitcoin itself.

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nickysielicki
I have doubts about whether any proof of stake cryptosystem can work in the
long-term.

The devs have stated that this coin is going to switch to PoS at a later date
and I think that transition is going to make a Bitcoin hardfork look tame in
comparison.

