Ethereum : the case for prosperity
It’s not very often that a worldwide company or any kind of broadly available asset is undervalued by orders of magnitude. The blockchain-based protocol for programmable payments Ethereum is demonstrating that it is one of them. Buying coins of its cryptocurrency ether (ETH) today feels like investing in TCP/IP, the communication protocol of the internet in the 1990s, if it could have been done. In contrast with bitcoin, a cryptocurrency designed only for peer-to-peer financial transactions, ETH tokens are also meant to be used as the gas fueling the Ethereum network, and its ecosystem of applications. I buy ETH regularly in order to save anything that I can comfortably afford to lose and forget about it. Any kind of correction during which the price starts diving make me smile, because I remind myself that the bottom reached is usually above the price at which I bought ETH few weeks before.
Of course, trees don’t grow to the sky — Nothing goes up forever. People who have been investing in cryptocurrencies since the days when bitcoin accounted for more than 80 percent of the total market capitalization know very well that downturns in crypto assets can be unforgiving. Any kind of crash can happen in the near future, and it can happen extremely fast, preventing you to get out at the price at which your assets are valued, because of the limited amount of available liquidities on markets. This kind of correction happens randomly, and usually eats up massive buy walls, triggering sell orders in a chain reaction. For instance, don’t underestimate the consequences of media coverage of Mt. Gox-like scandals, coin theft, and hacking of any sort. Or even maybe the possibility of finding collisions in the modified secure hash algorithm securing the Ethereum protocol, Let alone the risks associated with a blockchain that could eventually end up being too big to handle securely.
And yet, I’m still looking forward to buying more ETH from weak hands who don t understand the possibilities of this blockchain. Ethereum will continue to gather attention and investments for a while, because its value proposition is a breakthrough, and it has attracted a highly competent team dedicated to making the vision come true. The development roadmap of the protocol proposes solutions to the biggest challenges of block chains in general. Ethereum developers appear to be grounded, pragmatic, and good problem-solvers, and they benefit from the knowledge of bitcoin mistakes and other altcoins successes such as smart contracts, and proof-of-stake. As long as that they will keep to promote logical thinking rather than ideologies as it may be seen elsewhere, this community will handle whatever challenge that may come. Ethereum growth towards a dense worldwide ecosystem is only starting right now, as you can see from the current list of decentralized apps projects, and high throughput scalability developments with the implementation of proof-of-stake, sharding — where only small subset of nodes verify each transaction, and off-chain protocols.
Cryptocurrencies are now becoming a means for the storage of wealth that used to be flowing to offshore tax havens, simply because they provide a powerful method for moving any amount of funds extremely fast, without friction, securely, and facilitate obfuscation by enabling pseudonymous to totally anonymous transfers, and to avoid taxation. Worldwide densification of market places enable those funds to be easily converted from-and-to any local currency. In fact, Ethereum-based solutions alleviate many of the issues of the banking system. A new financial industry is being built. Jeremy Allaire, the founder of the digital currency company Circle, made one of the most powerful statements about finance that I had the pleasure to read recently. He reportedly said: “we don’t think there is any money to be made in payments anymore. The entire business model of extracting a toll or having time delays around the movement of value is going away completely.”
Organic ETH price growth, implying time preference, will be driven by the rise of its user base at faster rates than the linear flow of new ETH coins hitting the market, and the listing of ETH in major exchanges. The flourishment of startups using this protocol is also a good indicator of future growth. Furthermore, and unlike other cryptocurrencies, ETH has attracted corporate partnerships with the enterprise eth alliance, gathering a growing number of Fortune 500 companies willing to develop private blockchains based on the Ethereum protocol. In addition, the potential launch of ETH exchange-traded funds, currently being investigated by the U.S. and other countries could lead to increased investments. Anyway, Ethereum news will be numerous and relentless from now on; and public awareness is on its way.
Educate yourself about Ethereum and other blockchain technologies, get your coins somewhere safe, and enjoy the ride.
