[davotoula]

A very good question for which the answer was NO for a long time.

Prism is a live service using Ethereum smart contract(s).

It is from the Shapeshift people and is a kind of "digital asset portfolio". You can invest in many types of digital assets without having to hold them.

People are spending real money on this Ethereum smart contract.

https://blog.prism.exchange/blog/introducing-prism-the-world...

[tom_mellior]

If I read that correctly, "digital assets" is just a fancy expression for "other cryptocurrencies". So that does come back to pure cryptocurrency speculation, except that it's across a range of them, not just Ethereum itself.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Man, this is JUST like the .com v1 bubble: "I'll buy your over-inflated N billion dollar company using the stock from my over-inflated M billion dollar company."

[bhouston]

Technically Prism is a means of investing in cryptocurrency (which is primarily motivated by speculation in these cryptocurrencies), thus I think it still falls into the idea that most things are pretty incestuous still in this market.

I think one thing that plays against using these cryptocurrencies for other things besides speculation is that they are so speculative, huge ups and downs with lots of opportunities to win just trading them. Because of that they are being treated a lot like stocks (which often appreciates if you hold it) rather than currency (which is usually slowly depreciating, which encourages spending.) I think the incentives for these cryptocurrencies is sort of wrong, they are cryptostocks.