Re: what do we know about
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/28/business/dealbook/ethereum-a-virtual-currency-enables-transactions-
that-rival-bitcoins.html?
action=click&contentCollection=Media&module=Trending&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=arti
cle
and the block chain conference.
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Some thoughts:
Popper in general is somewhat full of shit. Not a huge fan.
The DTCC meeting is probably a bit of a scam "that stuff is broken, use our stuff". It's all just as broken in my opinion -- or rather their stuff is more broken in certain ways. Their panels are underrepresented in terms of people building some of the more critical infrastructure and a lot more of the booze and schmoozer types. Not that there aren't good people listed there...
Ethereum is operating like a pyramid scheme to a certain extent. A lot of their claims are bunk. A concrete example is that they claim to not have the scalability problems Bitcoin has, which is a half-buth. They don't have the same problems, they have worse problems. They're trying to lie to a lot of people to boost their market cap because their companies are broke after poor business decisions.
Ethereum is (imo) far from even #2. The technology from Zerocash has a lot more promise for the future of cryptocurrency, and some of it has already worked its way in (see Zero Knowledge Contingent Payments, essentially a fair way to trade solutions to computational problems for bitcoin). It's number 2 in market cap, but the technology is assuredly not there. I think the closest analogy is that Bitcoin is designed a little bit like a web browser and Ethereum is like Java apps. Obviously a browser is a limited platform, but ultimately the sandboxing and isolation of a browser make a lot safer product than installing a more versatile Java app (which can install viruses, malware, etc).
@JeremyRubin