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NYTimes: Move Over, Bitcoin. Ether Is the Digital Currency of the Moment. (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The price of Bitcoin has hit record highs in recent months, more than doubling in price since the start of the year. Despite these gains, Bitcoin is on the verge of losing its position as the dominant virtual currency. The value of Ether, the digital money that lives on an upstart network known as Ethereum, has risen an eye-popping 4,500 percent since the beginning of the year (alternative source). With the recent price increases, the outstanding units of the Ether currency were worth around $34 billion as of Monday -- or 82 percent as much as all the Bitcoin in existence. At the beginning of the year, Ether was only about 5 percent as valuable as Bitcoin. The sudden rise of Ethereum highlights how volatile the bewildering world of virtual currency remains, where lines of computer code can be spun into billions of dollars in a matter of months. [...] The two-year old system has picked up backing from both tech geeks and big corporate names like JPMorgan Chase and Microsoft, which are excited about Ethereum's goal of providing not only a digital currency but also a new type of global computing network, which generally requires Ether to use. In a recent survey of 1,100 virtual currency users, 94 percent were positive about the state of Ethereum, while only 49 percent were positive about Bitcoin, the industry publication CoinDesk said this month.
I seem to only comment every few years...so just thought I would log back in and say hello. I shall now go back to my experiments. Good day to you sir!!
by airrage on Thursday June 18, 2015 @04:10PM...
by airrage on Friday January 21, 2011 @04:26PM
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
- Not only are 4+ GB graphics card (GPU) prices going up, high wattage power source units (PSU) are on back order and prices are going up. (2 GB GPUs and lower have hit obsolescence with popular coins like Ethereum).
- Asic mining has made Bitcoin mining all but irrelevant for the Average Joe. But speculating, trading, holding, mining, and supporting other currencies that do not benefit from Asic mining and trading some to hedge your bet with Bitcoin is possible. Bitcoin is still the gold standard. As it rises, it has dips and corrections. It has not seemed to stabilize yet.
- Exchanges have made it easy to trade 100's of currencies for Bitcoin for cents per trade. One example is Cyptopia: https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/Exchange/?baseMarket=BTC
- APIs like Shapeshift have made currency exchanges within your wallet possible. No need to use an exchange for the more popular/adopted currencies. They also charge pennies on the dollar.
- Want to figure out what you can mine at the best value per dollar based on your GPU rig: whattomine.com
- Want to turn your Bitcoin into money? You have several options. https://bitpay.com/ offers prepaid visa debit cards for a fee %. Or you can link paypal, a bank account, etc. to something like https://www.coinbase.com.
- Some merchants are taking Bitcoin and other crypto currencies directly as payment without need to exchange for local dollars.
There is no doubt that most of the crypto currencies will fail to materialize profitability. It is safe to safe for the time being, acceptance is growing and people are profiting and creating crypto economies with a select few currencies. Beyond speculation, there are many uses for these cryptocurrencies. It may seem counterintuitive to say gold or coins, but those intrinsic materials have access issues for the world's poor. When hyperinflation hits a place like Venezuela and its citizens don't have access to gold, they have access to Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. They may not have access to mining equipment either, but still hedging inflation with digital currency only requires money to trade, internet access, and knowledge of how cryptocurrency works. People will always find a way to get paid, as in the will learn how to use alternative currencies. Yes cryptocurrencies are also used on black and grey markets by those who crave anonymity to some degree, making borderless transactions at the push of a button that is as fast or faster than banks. However, governments are starting to recognize these cryptocurrencies as well and figuring out how to tax them. Crytocoins will stabilize individually, but the Cryptocoin market as whole has yet to stabilize.
Uses for cryptocurrencies are growing daily, markets are being created around these currencies, and governments are taxing these markets.