[qwtel]

You raise good points. I think one of the reasons why the conversations surrounding cryptocurrencies are disproportionally emotional is that everybody is long something and inevitably biased because of it.

Also, I agree that comparing BTC and ETH is bogus, they share nothing more than a blockchain but have completely different goals and governance structures, ETH being more like a traditional startup.

In a world were most people haven't heard of blockchains or distrust them, 'competing' with other blockchains is just silly (nobody is really competing anyway, except for mindshare on forums).

Now, disclaimer, I am long ETH, though not by much. Cool sci-fi stories and evangelism aside, I think it's like other startups so it should face the same risk of ruin, which is roughly 90%. So in that sense we might even agree, except I feel like this "very first generational, highly unproven, highly unstable" might turn into something.

> once you have the unikernel model down, who cares if it's Ethereum?

That's a very technical argument, but I'm not at all convinced that the world will adopt a technically superior solution, especially if it is late to the game. Without momentum behind it, it might not even be superior for long. So if there is any application for blockchain VMs, it will probably run on the EVM, all else being equal.

[Moshe_Silnorin]

>You raise good points. I think one of the reasons why the conversations surrounding cryptocurrencies are disproportionally emotional is that everybody is long something and inevitably biased because of it.

These tokens ruin a lot of the incentives that makes open source software work. They attract non-technical people and ideologues. The whole thing is a mess.

[Anonobread]

Bitcoin and Ethereum investors who put a few thousands of their own money on the line years ago have seen it rocket up in value into a considerable fortune.

Naturally, to the extent an investment makes you "rich", the investment occupies a proportionately larger share of your net worth. And to the extent it's a major component of your net worth, especially if your net worth allows for you to retire early, this makes for a situation where you will justify doing and saying anything and everything possible to promote your own interests, which are now dominated by, in our case Bitcoin or Ethereum.

This is why distinguished readers can practically see the greed pouring out of people's eye balls as they discuss these "technologies". Pro tip: call it a "technology" when you're invested in it, but call it an "investment" when you're not.

As you've noted, this gets incredibly frustrating to deal with in the cryptocurrency world. Not just because it applies to so many people, but because cryptocurrency itself is all just a confidence game of trying to get people to buy into a particular unit of account.

For example, I doubt if any of the Ethereum people actually use smart contracts, like ever. They're only using that as an angle to poach investment capital off Bitcoin. We all can see this is true because no one is making any money on "smart contracts". Ironically, the only people who have ever made money on smart contracts - cough Ethereum - did it by selling other people on the idea of smart contracts. Buy smart contracts now!