
Ethereum Genesis Sale - MichaelAO
https://www.ethereum.org/#
======
Cyther606
Ethereum launch in review:

\- Investment Prospectus:
[https://www.ethereum.org/pdfs/TermsAndConditionsOfTheEthereu...](https://www.ethereum.org/pdfs/TermsAndConditionsOfTheEthereumGenesisSale.pdf)

\- Premine Part I: Anyone can buy ETH in exchange for BTC for the next 42 days

\- Premine Part II: On top of Premine Part I, +10% of the total ETH allocated
during Premine Part I will be distributed to "early contributors"

\- Premine Part III: On top of Premine Part I and Premine Part II, +10% of the
total ETH allocated during Premine Part I will be distributed to the Ethereum
Foundation

\- The supply of ETH is uncapped and inflationary at a rate of +25% per year

\- The premine is being conducted by "EthSuisse", a Swiss entity which will be
prompty dissolved after the premining period ends. The Ethereum team makes no
guarantee that development of Ethereum will continue after the dissolution of
"EthSuisse"

\- Regardless of how many BTCs are raised during the premine period, ~4000 BTC
is explicitly reserved to pay for "Expenses incurred prior to and related to
Genesis Sale". Translation: they are pocketing the first 4000-5000 BTC

> The Ethereum Platform is being developed primarily by a volunteer
> contributor team - many of whom will be receiving gifts of ETH in
> acknowledgement of their dedication - and will continue to be developed on a
> volunteer basis by some developers as well as under a more formalized
> contracting or employment relationship for other developers. The group of
> developers and other personnel that is now, or will be, employed by, or
> contracted with, Ethereum Switzerland GmbH ("EthSuisse") is termed the
> "Ethereum Team." EthSuisse will be liquidated shortly after creation of
> genesis block, and EthSuisse anticipates (but does not guarantee) that after
> it is dissolved the Ethereum Platform will continue to be developed by
> persons and entities who support Ethereum, including both volunteers and
> developers who are paid by nonprofit entities interested in supporting the
> Ethereum Platform.

~~~
wmf
It's not 25% inflation (of the outstanding money supply) per year; it's a
fixed number of ETH per year. Essentially another open-loop deflationary
monetary policy.

~~~
imaginenore
That's not deflationary in any sense. The total amount of Ether issued always
increases, thus devaluing all the Ether issued earlier.

That's why it doesn't make any sense to buy it now, unless you need it now.

~~~
wmf
You're using a nonstandard definition of deflation. When the real economy
grows faster than the money supply, prices go down, which is deflation. If the
money supply is growing at 1% per year or less (which will happen in year N of
Ethereum), it's easy for real growth to outstrip it. Alternately, if demand
for ETH grows faster than the supply the price of other currencies will fall
relative to ETH.

------
panarky
I generally think that pre-mined cryptocurrencies are bad, just a lottery for
a small group of insiders.

And this ethereum sale is pre-pre-mined ... pay now for the chance to get pre-
mined currency later.

I'm intrigued by the concept, though. Decentralized storage, compute,
scripting and secure exchange is an ideal platform for autonomous
corporations.

~~~
rodream
> I generally think that pre-mined cryptocurrencies are bad, just a lottery
> for a small group of insiders.

It's less a lottery for the early adopters and more a money funnel for the
creators -- and a cash toilet for everyone else.

The technology here is interesting but not new, and the problems that will
make this fail are found in the social fabric, not code.

Realistically, though, I think there is a scalable new business model
emerging: make up something of no tangible value (bonus points for instead
selling a promise of providing something of intangible value), slap on a price
tag, add pretty design and some concept videos. Rinse and repeat until the
pop.

~~~
cheese1756
> Realistically, though, I think there is a scalable new business model
> emerging: make up something of no tangible value (bonus points for instead
> selling a promise of providing something of intangible value), slap on a
> price tag, add pretty design and some concept videos. Rinse and repeat until
> the pop.

But they already have proof of concept clients and scripting languages set up.
It's not as if they're doing a crowdfunding campaign with just an idea. Would
I be wary of the project if it had no code? Sure, anyone would be. But am I
wary of a project that's being actively developed? Certainly not as much. The
code can speak for itself.

------
lukifer
> Also, please note that before the release of the Genesis Block in the winter
> of 2014/2015, ether will not be usable in any way, in fact it won’t
> technically be created until that point in time.

This doesn't exactly instill confidence. Buyers are purchasing an IOU, which
is the opposite of a trustless, distributed system. (At least they're up-front
about it.)

~~~
drcode
People also should note that the Ethereum folks have blown past many
deadlines, so I would be skeptical of this being ready even in Winter
2014/2015\. (Disclosure: I plan to invest regardless)

------
faizdev
If you have time to read up on the technicals, the following introductory
paper (dubbed 'the yellow paper') is highly informative with regards to the
technology and related work Ethereum is based upon:
[http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf](http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf)

------
wyager
I don't see this panning out well. Between the wonky incentive scheme, the
lack of usefulness, and the mishaps with broken hash algorithms and stuff,
there is not a lot of promising stuff going on here.

Is there something I'm missing? Does Ethereum actually let us do anything new,
or better than we can do it now?

~~~
vessenes
Ethereum is truly innovative; the first genuine stab at a post-Bitcoin
blockchain.

It's also going to take many, many years to work the kinks out. The scripting
language is so much more sophisticated that it'll be quite some time before
the ins and outs of attack vectors will be reasonably understood.

I'll save comments on the mining for another time; I'm not totally up to date
with their current plans. One thing any mining strategy needs to have a
solution for is the popularity / security dichotomy: Bitcoin has provably much
more compute than you securing the network. This makes you want to tag on to
Bitcoin, with, say the side-chain proposal.

On the other hand, if you do that, pre-mining becomes harder, and you will be
dealing with ASIC cartel economics. If you go the other way and build a 'non-
ASIC-able' proof of work, you probably don't want to accidentally get on the
ASIC bandwagon when you've promised your customers that they won't be on it.

~~~
wyager
You didn't actually answer any of my questions. Why is ethereum useful? It's
also not that innovative. Increase the scope of the scripting language and
charge for ops, and you've just turned Bitcoin into it.

~~~
drcode
You'd also need a key-value store linked to contracts, as well as the ability
for contracts to call each other. Those are more difficult (though your main
point stands)

------
radicalbyte
Is this the western/hipster equivalent of a 419 scam?

~~~
olalonde
I find it sad to see this type of negative comment on a site dedicated to
technological innovation and entrepreneurship. And I'm saying this as someone
who doesn't plan to invest in Ethereum.

~~~
pdpi
There's plenty of quacks calling themselves innovators and entrepreneurs. We
should pride ourselves in taking a critical eye to things, and the OP isn't
the only person to smell the unmistakable funk of a scam in this.

~~~
olalonde
Ethereum is undeniably innovative (the first crypto currency that incorporates
a Turing complete language). It certainly is a very risky investment but a
scam?

------
programmarchy
Introducing Freethereum: a future fork of Ethereum with its own Genesis Block.
Please note that before the release of the Freethereum Genesis Block, freether
will not be usable in any way, in fact it won’t technically be created until
that point in time.

Buy Now: 1 BTC = 9999 FREE

Exodus to 1MAHTNYgv6di77RVcCU7vXtA7FgYEosb8H!

~~~
natrius
Code doesn't make a fledgling currency. The brand does via the demand that
brand creates.

~~~
programmarchy
Ethereum is more ambitious than being merely a fledgling currency. It's a
fledgling civil infrastructure. That's a pretty big responsibility. Forks and
threats of forks are a way to keep "brands" honest.

And speaking of brands, everyone likes "free"!

------
viach
Sometimes reading new crypto news I think that all my attempts to build some
real software for people are just worthless. All I need is stay at home for 6
months and roll out another $coin$ to participate in this gold rush. Oh ok.

~~~
woah
They have clients in 3 different languages, something like 3 different
scripting languages that compile to the assembler, a working testnet, an
ecosystem of working contracts, and a bunch of 3rd party apps already. It's
good to be skeptical, but this comment strikes me as ignorant.

~~~
viach
This comment strikes me as emotional :)

I didn't say I can rewrite all _their_ codebase in 6 months.

But if we are talking just about something working enough to get attention -
why not?

------
dinkumthinkum
OK, I have followed some of the musings of the cryptocurrency crowd, though
not in tremendous depth. I watched the video, I'm not looking for a tl;dr; per
se, just what is it that I just watched?

I feel like I just watched yet another solution to all the world's problems or
something.

Now, when he says "users can be rewarded with tokens of value into the
startups that they invest in" .... Now, in my world, this is not a novel
concept. This is called "money," wall street does this every day. Just saying
...

~~~
semiel
The key technology of cryptocurrency is the blockchain, which essentially
allows for many sorts of centralized verification to be replaced with math.
Most of the application ideas floating around the cryptocurrency world aren't
fundamentally new, but are rather taking centralized ideas and doing them in a
decentralized way.

So, Bitcoin is just online money transfers, but without banks or credit card
companies or Paypal being involved. Ethereum is just the stock market (and
lots of other things), but without Wall Street or any of the other centralized
authorities.

It's not yet clear what the best use-cases are, or which specific
implementations (if any) will survive. But I'm pretty optimistic about someone
finding something useful to do with this technology.

------
muyuu
Hah classic Mircea Popescu :)

[http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=22-07-2014#764497](http://log.bitcoin-
assets.com/?date=22-07-2014#764497)

22:54:55mircea_popescu:;;sell 5000 "ethereum coins deliverable March 15th,
2015" 1 BTC "Up to 1k BTC's worth accepted. Get in touch."

------
javert
I was pretty excited about Ethereum when I first heard about it, but now, it
looks like there is no fixed cap on the total amount of ether, which I
consider to be a major fault.

What's stopping people from forking and making a "version" with a fixed cap,
like bitcoin?

~~~
drdeca
I believe that they have stated that they are aware of the possibility of
forks due to people having differing preferences, and that their stated view
of that is that if thats what people want to do then that is what people will
do.

So, I don't think theres anything preventing such a new version from being
created.

(It could be difficult to get a large enough mass of people on it though.)

------
StephenGL
Ethereum has all the trappings of a cult (have you seen some of the nuball
videos they have posted) and cults aren't known for having it all together.

~~~
Eliezer
Apparently literally everything is a cult.

------
msane
My opinion of the Thiel Fellowship has been dropping lately.

------
ps4fanboy
Does anyone have a TLDR on this?

~~~
oldstrangers
The devs are going to make a shit ton of money.

