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Profile of Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum

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Re: Profile of Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and ChrisDeRose have no regard for truth and certainly have no problem spreading FUD for your own gain. You don't truly care about crypto, decentralization nor freedom but only about counterparty and bitcoin going up for your own selfish gain. Hope you can sleep well at night.

He is Chris De Rose.

Yes he is :) Here are some of my chief complaints about Ethereum atm: http://www.coindesk.com/turing-complete-smart-contracts/ (There are others.)

Re: Profile of Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum

#32

Vitalik and his organization achieved a lot, Gavin deserves a mention as well as the guy who had the math behind ethereum. Nevertheless I don't see any killer apps coming out, so overall, its just another rerun of bitcoin.

I think Ethereum has the potential to be the BitTorrent to Bitcoin's Napster.

A lot of the killer Bitcoin apps (gambling, drugs, etc.) make it too easy for law enforcement or site operators to steal everyone's money due to their centralization. It's a long shot, but if Ethereum gets really big really fast it's going to be much, much harder to shut down these apps.

Re: Profile of Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and ChrisDeRose have no regard for truth and certainly have no problem spreading FUD for your own gain. You don't truly care about crypto, decentralization nor freedom but only about counterparty and bitcoin going up for your own selfish gain. Hope you can sleep well at night.

He is Chris De Rose.

No, I'm Chris Derose.

Re: Profile of Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum

#34

No one needs ethereum. It's a penny stock scam that sells the cure to whatever ails you to any willing solutionist that's looking to get rich quick.

You and ChrisDeRose have no regard for truth and certainly have no problem spreading FUD for your own gain. You don't truly care about crypto, decentralization nor freedom but only about counterparty and bitcoin going up for your own selfish gain. Hope you can sleep well at night.

I don't care about anything. I hate myself.

Re: Profile of Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum

#36
post #32

Vitalik and his organization achieved a lot, Gavin deserves a mention as well as the guy who had the math behind ethereum. Nevertheless I don't see any killer apps coming out, so overall, its just another rerun of bitcoin.

I think Ethereum has the potential to be the BitTorrent to Bitcoin's Napster. A lot of the killer Bitcoin apps (gambling, drugs, etc.) make it too easy for law enforcement or site operators to steal everyone's money due to their centralization. It's a long shot, but if Ethereum gets really big really fast it's going to be much, much harder to shut down these apps.

Maybe you can answer one persistent question I've had about Ethereum contracts. My understanding is that you can encode logic in the contract so that you and I can, for example, gamble on the outcome of the Superbowl and the contract ''knows'' to ask some trusted authority for the result of the game and then pay out accordingly. Isn't this only decentralized insofar as you and I both trust the trusted authority and that authority isn't ever compromised? Doesn't that authority become the point of attack for hackers? Such that if I lose the Superbowl bet but I can hack the ESPN API at the right point in time, then I can trigger the wrong payout on all contracts and there is no recourse.

Re: Profile of Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum

#37
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the article is distasteful in its focus on personalitiy... ...but as someone who's deeply involved in this technology (and an unabashed believer in the ethereum technology stack) I personally consider Vitalik's combination of skills in systems architecture design, cryptocurrency protocol coding, and cryptoeconomic analysis to be unmatched by anyone else in the community.

I think the HN crowd tends to forget that most people are simply hardwired to be interested in stories about other people, rather than concepts (or things)[0]. It's the best way to disseminate ideas to the general public. [0] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11031-011-9273-2

Most people are also pretty hardwired to suspect that someone regarded as an beatific genius with unearthly powers by his friends might just be a weirdo with a few savant-like abilities surrounded by sycophants though. Which might be a hugely unfair characterisation of Buterin, but the article is much less a story about how he came about to create something, or how people are starting to benefit from stuff he's done, and much more a collection of testimony from people throwing the word genius around rather liberally. I almost burst out laughing when the author put the bit about losing millions of dollars in parentheses, as if they were worried that giving it full paragraph status might damage the financial whizzkid narrative.

Re: Profile of Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum

#39
post #36
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Ethereum has the potential to be the BitTorrent to Bitcoin's Napster. A lot of the killer Bitcoin apps (gambling, drugs, etc.) make it too easy for law enforcement or site operators to steal everyone's money due to their centralization. It's a long shot, but if Ethereum gets really big really fast it's going to be much, much harder to shut down these apps.

Maybe you can answer one persistent question I've had about Ethereum contracts. My understanding is that you can encode logic in the contract so that you and I can, for example, gamble on the outcome of the Superbowl and the contract ''knows'' to ask some trusted authority for the result of the game and then pay out accordingly. Isn't this only decentralized insofar as you and I both trust the trusted authority and t…

It's my understanding that the Augur project solves this issue by decentralizing the reporting.

That is, individuals vote for which outcome is correct in proportion to their balance of 'reputation'. If an individual votes for the correct outcome (as determined by the majority of votes), they gain reputation, otherwise they lose it.

Reputation is valuable because it entitles voters to a share of the platform fees. Therefore there is a strong incentive to play fair in order to grow the platform and the value of one's reputation (similar to miners in Bitcoin).

https://augur.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/208857885-For-Re...

Re: Profile of Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum

#40
post #36
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Ethereum has the potential to be the BitTorrent to Bitcoin's Napster. A lot of the killer Bitcoin apps (gambling, drugs, etc.) make it too easy for law enforcement or site operators to steal everyone's money due to their centralization. It's a long shot, but if Ethereum gets really big really fast it's going to be much, much harder to shut down these apps.

Maybe you can answer one persistent question I've had about Ethereum contracts. My understanding is that you can encode logic in the contract so that you and I can, for example, gamble on the outcome of the Superbowl and the contract ''knows'' to ask some trusted authority for the result of the game and then pay out accordingly. Isn't this only decentralized insofar as you and I both trust the trusted authority and t…

AFAIK, yes, that is an issue. But it's not like it's a completely new issue. Timely information alteration is a long-standing tradition commonly known as "conning", as in "conman" as in "confidence man".

Under one perspective, the root of blockchain technology is a rigorous way to determine consensus reality. Ethereum is then an evolution on top of that - giving a good way to process that consensus reality.

Theoretically, one could begin implementing sensors of actual reality - is it raining today? who won this sportsball event? - within the system.

The TL;DR is that: Yes, but a) that's not a new problem and b) that's why this is all still under development and experimental, and why other people in this discussion only advise entering this market as an enthusiast.

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