[alistproducer2]

I've been following the project since last summer. Since it wasn't released yet and it was obviously a HUGE upfront time investment to learn the ecosystem, I decided to wait until it was actually released to invest the time to learn it.

I think a lot of the cryptocurrency speculation at this point is...speculation. Eth differs from bitcoin in the sense that it gets its value from it's utility as a regulator of computation, whereas with bitcoin the value is derived from its unique ability to convey value in a (almost) instant, provable, and irreversible way. True price discovery of Eth is long way away.

The utility of the platform remains to be seen. The complexity of the virtual machine, language (solidity), and tool chain remains a huge barrier to entry for all but the most ardent true believers. I'll give the devs a lot of credit as they seem to be working very hard to make a tool chain that is much more user friendly.

My personal opinion is that the EVM (ethereum virtual machine) will excel at providing microservice-like backends to apps for features that benefit from the trustless and/or irreversible aspects of blockchain tech.

IMO the limitation of Ethereum is how many general purpose apps _need_ decentralized and trustless functionality to the point where it is worth the upfront investment of learning a [at the moment] very complex system? Is there a natural ceiling to use cases for such tech? I don't know.