
A Tour of the Ethereum Token Bubble - Moshe_Silnorin
https://medium.com/@LyleCantor/a-tour-of-the-ethereum-token-bubble-493c489bd0ea
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rampage101
Ethereum definitely looks like it is in bubble territory to me. There's been a
3000% runup in the past few months. Most of the applications as you mentioned
are based off the promise of something amazing rather than delivering
something useful today.

I think the biggest hurdle is size of the blockchain. I tried downloading the
entire blockchain and it got stuck... like downloading one block every 10
seconds, when the blockchain is roughly growing by this size. Found out I had
to run geth --fast which donwloads only the headers for the blocks.

I'm just wondering how the average user or investor who is not a programmer is
going to get the blockchain and backup their coins properly. Likely most
people will keep their ethers on an exchange which is not secure.

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52-6F-62
There are projects that make use of the public Ethereum blockchain that show
promise. I'm pretty sure much of the same things you've said about this tech
was said about the web in its time.

Anyway, it might still be upcoming, but just becomes something is on the
roadmap doesn't necessarily make it vaporware.

ex:

* Brendan Eich's Brave Browser & Ad/Tracker blocking bypass token for publishers - [https://brave.com/publishers.html](https://brave.com/publishers.html)

* Toyota's blockchain project - [https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/22/toyota-pushes-into-blockch...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/22/toyota-pushes-into-blockchain-tech-to-enable-the-next-generation-of-cars/)

* Circle launched international money transfer via Ethereum - [http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/15/circle-launches-an-internatio...](http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/15/circle-launches-an-international-money-transfer-service.html)

* And all these guys working to leverage it - [https://entethalliance.org/members/](https://entethalliance.org/members/)

I would wager that in the shorter term most end users will not be interacting
directly with the blockchain, and that said kind of interaction is not where
the more immediate value lies. It will build out in time, and more reliable
sources will emerge for people to interact with the network financially. It's
the writing that I see on the wall, anyway.

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Jabanga
Fantastic article, even if I think it misses some of the potential the
projects analyzed have.

My biggest disagreement is with the article's look at Melonport. While I
wouldn't recommend buying any token right now, including Melonport's, this is
one of the most impressive projects I've come across. In my opinion, it's
years ahead of its time. I do not own any MLN and it's way too early to say if
Melonport will be financially successful, but I think the analysis done on it
is extremely shallow.

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mdotk
Great article, I could never really get what these ICOs were about, now I know
why. Well said.

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wellinever
There is still massive FOMO when you go over an ICO, decide its stupid, and
then post ICO it goes up 1000%. Its a ponzi scheme, sure, but people are still
making 1000% in 2 weeks. So what do you do? Stick to your guns and ignore it?
Or have a cheeky swing at it?

Its like the r/investing reddit since 2011 - twice a week someone asks "should
I invest in bitcoin/ethereum?" and the knowledgeable investors like clockwork
say "no, its not an investment". Meanwhile, everyone who did is up
10,000%-100,000%, while the average r/investing poster is happy to make 2%
above the S&P500 return. Many things are sort of a bubble or ponzi, the people
who really make truckloads of money are either very lucky, very stupid, or
mentally ill in some way.. This goes for property markets - where the spoils
go to the people who con the banks for as much credit as possible and buy
house after house in a manic way, or in business eg. uber, where someone with
a god complex raises some ridiculous amount of money and just expands as fast
as they possibly can.

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mpfundstein
So how does it work? Let's say there is an ICO that I want to make a quick
buck from. I first buy Ether, then I participate in the ICO early enough to
get enough token. And then? The only option is to wait until the token hits
Poloniex and sell asap when price > invest.. is that the strategy?

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wellinever
Yes.. I think the ship has sailed now however because in the big league ICO's
(eg. BAT) it is almost impossible to buy in time

