Let's look at it from the perspective of "I'm going to put my life savings into this thing" and hold on to it for at least 10+ years.<p>Do I put it into Bitcoin which is simple, secure, battle tested, moves slowly but with broad consensus, has had a much fairer distribution, is not controlled by the whims of it's creator, etc?<p>Or do I put it into eth that's been forked pretty easily after the dao hack, moves much faster, has significantly more complexity and critical bugs go unnoticed for months[1], that's in the middle of switching over to a significantly more complex, not battle-tested long enough PoS system with significant technical and also philosophical problems like embedding "rich gets richer" deep into the protocol, that's been pitched as a smart contract platform for years?<p>You can still use the smart contracts using Bitcoin on top of eth, so it's not like you don't have access to them.<p>The way I look at it, Bitcoin is my data (aka value) and eth is my computer (aka financial transaction platform), I switch computers every other year, but my data comes along with me.<p>This is the question I've been pondering lately and it's pretty clear to me which one I'm choosing. That said, I have a stake in both and hope both succeed.<p>1: <a href="https://cryptonews.com/news/disclosed-ethereum-lived-with-a-major-threat-for-18-months-10368.htm" rel="nofollow">https://cryptonews.com/news/disclosed-ethereum-lived-with-a-...</a>
Why do people keep pushing blockchain tech as store as value? As far as ETH is concerned I see it more like the web, dns, IPFS. It's infrastructure software. It's not meant to be store of value.<p>This frenzy looks more like the dot com bubble when everyone was thinking domain names will become the store of value of the future(i.e pets.com).<p>I can see value in ICOs just like there is value in penny stocks or other secondary markets but that depends by the company that offers the shares/tokens. Of course if you know that someone will pump it and keep it up(i.e like banks do on IPOs) then there is speculative value as well but that's a different story.<p>This being said I'm hopeful that some good tech will stick around just like the web tech did.
> The basic premise is that money is simply technology that makes our wealth today available for consumption tomorrow. Thus the "best" money is the one that will give its holder the most purchasing power over time.<p>This is absurd. A complete misunderstanding of what money is for. Money is a means of exchange. The "best" money is the one that's most widely accepted in places you want to spend it. It only needs to function as a store of value in the short term. Anything with less than 10% inflation per year should work.
So Ethereum is better because it's deflationary, and proof of stake in which the rich get richer? Both of those are terrible.<p>The reason why no one trusts Ethereum as a proper store of value is because it's not very decentralized, has a clear owner that can be pressured by governments to reverse transactions, the owner + early developers hold the vast majority of the Eth in existence, and there's been a clear precedence of the developers reversing transactions due to a bad smart contract.
Just wait a few months, when millions(?) who "own" ethereum on Robinhood realize not only do they not really own ETH, they actually "own" a security that tracks the price of Ethereum 1.x, and therefore can't upgrade to ethereum 2.0 or earn "staking" rewards. Proof of Stake is genuinely neat, but the transition to Ethereum 2.0 is going to be rocky because it will involve another hard fork that will create severe confusion for millions of Robinhood users. Furthermore, there are other cryptocurrencies, such as Tezos, which currently offer proof of stake, with staking rewards, etc. I don't get how Ethereum is better set up as a store of value at this point.
Gold is a real thing. Crypto, no matter the stake, is a figment of our collective beliefs. Collective opinion isn’t something that can be split or analyzed, otherwise we’d already know everything.