[spir]

Cryptocurrency is not an abject disaster.

Drew is right that proof of work mining is expensive and has serious negative externalities.

Drew is also right that cryptocurrency, via its growth, hype, and decentralized and self-sovereign nature, is often an ideal vehicle for certain kinds of criminal activity, including pump-and-dump fraud or ransomware.

Drew is right (perhaps indirectly) that many or most well-meaning crypto projects will end up losing money for most of their investors.

But, there's a lot more going on in crypto. At this point, if you think crypto is wholesale a scam, bad for the world, or a fad, you're simply misinformed.

As Drew observes, Bitcoin has a cost problem. For that reason, many crypto insiders think that BTC's reign as the #1 top crypto will come to an end within a few years.

More reading on Bitcoin's cost problem https://twitter.com/RyanBerckmans/status/1386505715938775044

In contrast to Bitcoin, the Ethereum community is actually building many useful things and will soon stop proof of work mining, replacing it with proof of stake. As a result, Ethereum earns enough actual revenue that ETH is expected to generate lots of cash, like a Buffet stock, in the coming decade.

Today, much of Ethereum's revenue is what we may call "reflexive" or insular, in that the revenue is related to cryptocurrency services or speculation. That might make Ethereum's apps appear to be "not useful" or "scams". However, I think it'd be a mistake to conclude that just because most early Ethereum apps are related to crypto, that they'll all be. Ethereum apps are increasingly connecting with the regular economy, and that's the primary growth opportunity.

Further reading on Ethereum's cash flow https://ethereumcashflow.com

Disclosure: I hold ETH and no BTC, and am the author of both links.

[knorker]

> At this point, if you think crypto is wholesale a scam, bad for the world, or a fad, you're simply misinformed.

Could you inform us, instead? Nothing you said contradicted this.

[RoyTyrell]

What are the useful things that are being built on Ethereum? The PDF you linked was high level and didn't really provide any specific applications.

[tom_mellior]

And for bonus points, are any of those useful things useful in domains other than financial speculation? That is, not DAO/De-Fi/prediction markets?

[argvargc]

I can't imagine why you're being downvoted, for a well-balanced, educative post with full disclosure.

No wait, I can - and it sucks.

[acdha]

Here I thought it was from portraying Ethereum as solving the problems with Bitcoin but hand waving past the part where that’s remained vaporware for years and making the same kind of unspecified claims about innovative useful things Bitcoin salespeople have been making for the last decade. It should be easy to point to something real if it is that different.

[shkkmo]

I did not learn anything from that post, it mostly read as an advertisement for ETH and the linked websites. If you are going to toute the actual legitimate use cases for blockchain, please name at least one.

[eric_cc]

Not OP but the easiest one: De-Fi

[throwaheyy]

That’s still a handwavy theoretical category of vaporware. Not one concrete example of a tangible application where “de-fi” replaced a previous technology with a better solution?

[acdha]

Can you explain in detail? Citing sources for claimed benefits over the established services it’s replicating?

[eric_cc]

Sure, if you compensate me for my time and effort in doing so. I'll compile a report for you for 0.0037 sats.

[acdha]

I'll take that as “no”, then. I mean, you're the salesguy popping into the thread to say we should all buy in to something, you might need a better pitch if you want to get rich that way.

[robjan]

0.0037sats is currently US$0.00000197. We have a deal but I'll transfer another currency since the transaction fee is several orders of magnitude greater than your quoted price.

[colpabar]

>Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. [1] (emphasis mine)

The comments section is for discussion, why not discuss?

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[argvargc]

This is simply wrong. I frequently see comments on comment downvoting causing a reconsideration and reopening of closed discussions, resulting in discussion value.

Whether this was achieved or not in this case is debatable, but that doesn't nullify the base premise. (OTOH, quoting forum rules is almost universally boring. ;))

[happosai]

Proof of stake has been promised for years, so I quite sceptical of the "ethereum will switch soon" argument.

[spir]

Here's some info on Ethereum's apps:

Today, two of the most promising app ecosystems are

- Decentralized Finance (DeFi). Here's a community favorite 3rd party leaderboard for DeFi apps https://defipulse.com/

- Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). NFTs are popularly known as digital collectibles, but may represent any kind of non-fungible property. We can see some of the top digital collectibles here https://dappradar.com/nft . But, there is a lot more to NFTs than just collectibles or art. For example, the Ethereum Name System (ENS) uses NFTs to represent domain name ownership https://ens.domains

Another interesting Ethereum use case is https://www.eco.com/ . Eco is a mobile app that's a cash wallet and payment method. Eco is a competitor of Venmo, Cash App, Visa, and Apple Pay. Eco is not a crypto app, there's no tokens or anything like that. Instead, Eco is like if you took Venmo, added Apple Pay to it, and then completely cut out the banks by using the USDC stablecoin backboned onto ethereum to connect to an industry group of financial services that have also cut out banks, and in return Eco is able to offer their customers 5% APR and 5% cash back, because of the savings from cutting out the banks and other middlemen.

If you are interested to dip your toe into the ethereum pond, here's a great weekly newsletter that's aimed at developers

https://weekinethereumnews.com/