[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.

[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

* Toyota's blockchain project - https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/22/toyota-pushes-into-blockch...

* Circle launched international money transfer via Ethereum - http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/15/circle-launches-an-internatio...

* And all these guys working to leverage it - 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.

[Jabanga]

You can run geth --light for much faster synchronization.