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Short answer is no. It's the future. The long answer is yes... it's a baby currency with problems and not something the real world takes seriously. But that's how it always starts. 50 years ago only kids in their basement cared about IRC. Now days, here we are with Facebook being popular. So things that change the world always start that way.
The reality is, BitCoin won't win, but the industry will. The bankers won't allow for something they can't control in order to control us. Even the government is controlled by the bankers. It's being used a test bed to weed out kinks before we go completely digital. The problems we have with greed BitCoin attempts to solve, which would surface in the digital world in our current system.
So it's coming. May take a couple hundred years, but when the banks and government get on board you can bet they'll create their own digital currency though.
Jeremy Falcon
modified 11-Jul-17 14:05pm.
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And when that happens, I will start buying up all the gold pressed latinum I can get my hands on. 
That is unless the new net neutrality "laws" actually pass. The net is the wild west and if they can wrangle it into what they want then all bets are off.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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Foothill wrote: I will start buying up all the gold pressed latinum I can get my hands on.
What exactly is your height to ear size index?
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: So it's coming.
Indeed it is.
Thirty big banks, tech giants, and other organizations—including J.P. Morgan Chase, Microsoft, and Intel—are uniting to build business-ready versions of the software behind Ethereum, a decentralized computing network based on digital currency.
Marc
Latest Article - Create a Dockerized Python Fiddle Web App
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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Totally. Like self driving cars. Doesn't matter what we think of today... driving ourselves will be a thing of the past too... eventually. About the only constant in life is change.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: . 50 years ago only kids in their basement cared about IRC.
I sure remember that from my childhood, in 1967 when we were doing IRC, fifteen years before the arrival of th Internet. For physical layer transfer, we used semaphore flags, using 6-bit symbols: Each arm could be set in one of 8 positions, so with two arms/flags we got 6 bits per transistion. There were competing technologies, like blinking with a flashlight, using a messy 3-value coding (off, dot, dash) for serializing variable length symbols - it was a really protocol, that never could reach the transfer speed of the clean 6-bit-per-symbol semaphore protocol - yet it almost completely took over visual data communication the last ten year before electronic transmission arrived.
I still feel sorry for my friend living on top of the hill, so his house could be seen from both sides. He was eager the first time we suggested that he could serve as a router for buddies living on the one and the other side, out of sight of each other, but he ended up spending all his time routing messages. When in transmission mode down one side of the hill, he had to use a mirror to look down the other side for new messages. He had a tremendous memory, able to hold several kilobytes of buffered messages - normally held in transient memory, but when he had to power cycle (i.e. be fed), he saved all uncomitted messages on stable storage (paper).
Those were the days! It is a pity that kids don't learn semaphore coding in school today, for communication when the internet connection breaks down.
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: The reality is, BitCoin won't win. The bankers won't allow for something they can't control
vaguely remember something similar being said about the music industry
Sin tack
the any key okay
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The crypto currency *industry* will win. BitCoin won't. Imagine you controlled the world since you control the money... would you give that up just because someone cooked up some new cool tech? Or would you watch that tech and see how you can make it your own and still have oversight of it? Guess which route the banks will choose.
Jeremy Falcon
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My guess is option B, but they'll likely take the MPAA/RIAA model of just lobbying to have competition suppressed, since innovating is hard and costs money... 
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What advantage would a CC like BitCoin or Ether have over current manifestation of digital currency for a major government? They can already increase the money supply via electronic means. The monetization of debt for quantitative easing is such an exercise when the Fed buys back bonds with new e-money. I am probably a bit naïve but it seems the biggest advantage now is the facilitation of criminal enterprise. Does it solve a problem that we can't otherwise solve?
Maybe this is some indication of the future but it seems quite far off. So far off, that the broad implementation will be as different from current CC as a typewriter is from Windows 10. And it will be decades or more. Control over monetary policy is critical for a highly sensitive economy such as ours. Mechanisms outside of control will be resisted and fought, once significant.
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: BitCoin won't win, but the industry wil
I am not going to be holding my breath on that one.
New ideas that work have an incredibly rapid adoption rate. Cell phones are a perfect example of that with the adoption not only in first world nations but third world as well.
Now electronic payment options, such as those available via cell phones, will have legs.
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What just got hacked? Where's the link, the only recent thing I am aware of is the arbX exchange 'issues' as seen here.
The whole crypto arena a boiling pit of technology that is still trying to find it's ultimate use case to drive breakout. It is coming though, there is no stopping it I don't think.
Financial analysts predict continued growth of both BTC and ETH over the next few years. one has BTC hitting 50,000 USD in 5 years and ETH to hit 1,000 USD by end 2018. Never mind all the others that are also gaining momentum in their relative spheres of influence. XRP continues to grow in the financial sector and LTC is becoming an attractive alternative to BTC.
At the end of the day, these things will only have value if they are adopted....With an international banking transaction taking days to complete and costing a small fortune in fees, near real-time transfer and low fees in the crypto world does sound very appealing doesn't it.
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swampwiz wrote: "ether" cryptocurrency (CC) just got hacked for $200M ... BitCoin getting hacked a while back
Link? You probably mixed up exchange site with cryptocurrency itself.
swampwiz wrote: REAL CASH have a very strong level of safety with a code of law, the government as law enforcer, etc., to ensure that it won't disappear.
Haven't you heard about things like quantitative easing?
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Nothing has intrinsic value, it's just that more people realize this about bitcoin.
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swampwiz wrote: And the financial institutions that deal with stocks & REAL CASH have a very strong level of safety with a code of law, the government as law enforcer, etc., to ensure that it won't disappear. Where the hell is that with CC? Where are the security guards? I see this as the 21st Century tulip mania!
You do realize that despite all these laws, there is far more debt in the world than there is money?
So yes, by definition "value" will dissapear once those debts are called.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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So let me feed into your fears: a cyber-attack in a BitCoin (&etc.) world would stop all commerce at all levels everywhere. Except, perhaps, in the primitive country that uses actual currency (and who coincidentally launched the cyber attack).
Having access to all of your assets, directly and at all times, is both exciting and frightening.
As for currency values, or even gold: neither is good if you're hungry. Only what you can exchange them for - if anyone wants to exchange for them. Stocks? The real value of most stocks is, well, nothing! Voting power in the companies management (not for your or me, with 1/10,000th of 1% of the shares) - so a few blocks of stock run things for their own benefit. The only value they hold is the same as currency, gold, or BitCoin: what will someone give you to get them from you. Look up hyperinflation[^] to realize your faith is anything but well-founded.
In a very real sense, they're all the same: dependent upon a market for 'them' when, in fact, it is not 'them' that is wanted but what 'them' can be exchange for!
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Bitcoin's problem is hyperdeflation 
Cheers,
विक्रम
"We have already been through this, I am not going to repeat myself." - fat_boy, in a global warming thread
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W∴ Balboos wrote: Having access to all of your assets, directly and at all times, is both exciting and frightening.
If you think about cloud computing, it's the same thing in a way. As a whole, we're moving towards a more connected whole, in more ways than one.
Jeremy Falcon
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I a pretty militant non-advocate of cloud computing. For now, I'm safe.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Your grandchildren won't think it's a big deal. Welcome to change.
Jeremy Falcon
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LOL, if the stocks become worthless, that means that our civilization store has become worthless as well, and I guarantee that folks won't be bartering with CCs - it would be like Mad Max, with any kind of physically valuable material (e.g., liquid or solid fossil fuel); those ruffians would not be transferring bits on their iPhones.
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What Jeremy said, plus, there is a much broader movement toward decentralization with particular emphasis on decentralizing social media.
Also, keep in mind that blockchain underlying technology can be used for creating any kind of contract/transaction, not necessarily one involving "coin" or even having a direct translation to hard currency.
Marc
Latest Article - Create a Dockerized Python Fiddle Web App
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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Swampwiz.
Am gonna take the time to answer back with two hopes in mind
1) you can read my comments amongst the full barrage of responses, both bad and good you'll get with such an opinionated post.
2) you can have a real change of heart not because of my actual words, but by the intellectual process that occurs with the interchange of ideas which, in the end, form the basis of any modern society and form the inherent concept of value.
With that in mind, I will be brief.
First... I will refer to you, and older article which was written in 2011 which did precisely what you now do: overestimate a paradigm shift and catalogue all of them involve as fringe and subject to your contemptuous judgement.
The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin
Second... I will show you another article, which clearly shows what happened next and how Ethereum learned from bitcoin's mistakes and move further along the lines.
The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin and the New Kid on the Block
With those two things in mind, let us elaborate on your superficial post.
You put REAL MONEY in all caps, but fail to mention what your currency of choice is. Venezuelans, today, don't have that luxury and British thought that they had it two and after the Brexit vote, lots of products have inflated due to the inherent vision that things are gonna get bad before they get better in the U.K. after Brexit.
So, your idea of REAL MONEY is essentially an illusion but regardless, is a useful illusion.
Then you mention, the physical quality as something important and forget that the U.S. dollar overtook it's namesake, the Spanish Dollar or Piece of Eight or 8 real silver coin not with a coin, but with a banknote which ironically was worth in those silver coins it replaced. So physicality is neither something set in stone nor really important when speaking about currency.
Which takes to the central point of your rant, FORKING REAL CASH in favor of an illusion. Ironically, you'd been doing that since your birth. The actual REAL CASH is products and services. Money is the first instance of virtuality, that is, Bank Notes and coins are our first technological tool and it predates the pencil, paper and even monoliths. The only physical and real is what you produce in an economy, but ironically, you have to give it value in order for it to be desirable. Don't think a BMW Series 3 costs anything more than a VM Jetta. In Germany, Mercedes Benzs are Taxis and Ubers. The moment you export Corona Beer, Swaroski crystals, iPhones and Big Screen TVs, that's the moment that their value increases.
So, value is not a matter of physicality, tangibility or even usefulness. It's a matter of perception and conviction. A Xiaomi phone might be physically more adept than an iPhone 7, but brand awareness makes it better.
So that we can leave past doom predictions and dogmas, let's focus on the the essence of your post. Are we in a bubble (of bits)? Is Ethereum (or Bitcoin for that matter) just vaporware and it will vanish because it's a fad by fringe groups? Only time will tell.
But in the meantime you could be on the side of success or you can be on the side of failure. You only can decide. Any great rewards demands a great risk. If you are not a risk taker and you let your dogmas move your business decisions, go ahead, you have nothing to lose.
But the again, in REAL ECONOMICS there's something called the Opportunity Cost, that is, as per the Wikipedia:
"In microeconomic theory, the opportunity cost...is the value (not a benefit) of the choice of a best alternative cost while making a decision. A choice needs to be made between several mutually exclusive alternatives; assuming the best choice is made, it is the "cost" incurred by not enjoying the benefit that would have been had by taking the second best available choice."
Are you willing to have that Opportunity Cost? Are you 100% your choice is not the second best?
Only time will tell...
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I'd rather place my trust in strong (sovereign) states instead of some anarcho-technologists.
On a side note, I remember when I was a lad in my first well-paid gig, a colleague was telling me about this Ponzi scheme that he "investing in". He said that all he needed was for his branch to go a very levels and he'd be fine. I suppose that investors in these CCs figure that there are "greater fools" out there that will continue to drive the price up. There is no doubt that the folks who bought in a year or so ago have done well, but the only thing I can say about them is that they had a good handle on human psychology to be able to correctly predict, at that time, that more folks would buy into this, driving the price up.
Getting back to the original topic, I get a sense that these CCs are extraordinarily thinly traded, which means that they are very sensitive to any kind of run on demand. If I'm going to invest in this, I think I will invest in CC shorts.
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I had been using KeepVid.com, but it seem that now it requires a "pro" subscription to get the top level of quality. Certainly, there must be another website that is offering this service without requiring a subscription - unless of course, YouTube et al somehow have the video in some type of encryption, only allowing the highest quality download to those that pay up. 
For YouTube, I know there is a console app youtube-dl I could use, but I'd rather just have a website do this.
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