Ethereum

Of Elon Musk and Why Twitter Erupted After Tweeting “Ethereum”

Well, Elon is known for his stance. He’s a fan of Dogecoin, that’s from his Apr-2 post. He may have posted out of jest but what is emerging is that he may be interested in blockchain. Bitcoin, Ethereum and any other tech based off the distribution of blockchain. Analysts, governments and investors say the technology will shape lives.

The IMF and World Bank for example do mention Bitcoin, Ripple and blockchain in almost all reports touching on disruption of traditional financial systems. Thing is, the financial system is at a cusp, it’s yearning for a change and that means overhauling of the underlying and incorporating the latest trends advocating transparency, speed and well, low cost. Ripple is ahead and Ethereum is trying experimenting with DeFi. Will it flourish? Only time has the answers.

For now, it’s all about Elon Musk, the maverick leader and brains behind both Tesla and Space X. Yesterday he stirred the community and because of all the attention his on-word tweet generated, Vitalik Buterin had to reply inviting Musk to the next Devcon scheduled for Oct 2019 while at the same time listing some opportunities that the network can do like “A globally accessible financial system, including payments, store of value, also more advanced stuff like insurance, Identity: “sign in with Facebook” -> “sign in with an Ethereum account, no intermediaries”. Also web of trust…and we reckon, many more because, well, there are infinite opportunities thanks to smart contracting as all things that can be recorded can be stored in the blockchain.

https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1123039562186596359

Here’s Why Twitter Lit up, People Are Rooting for Ethereum

Why this interest? Why the reaction and optimism around Ethereum? It’s for a simple reason. From an investor’s perspective, many of them don’t want to risk the next move up. That’s FOMO right there. The dreaded fear of missing out on a profit generating, moon-sling like those of late 2017 more so with the awareness that ETH crowd-funded, raising $15 million, made the network open source with each coin retailing at 30 cents.

Secondly, the increasing demand for public blockchain of which Ethereum stands out. Ethereum as a people’s project is an improvement of Bitcoin and through it developers from any part of the world can participate in improving the source code. That means more and more people and organization are rooting for the network despite the proliferation of so-called “Ethereum 2.0 Killers”.

Most of them front speed and scalability at the expense of decentralization and open-source operations. Worse still, most are backed by VC capital through SAFTs where their tokens were sold through secret deals allowing for plutocratic governance especially when tokens have voting weights. During these private sessions, the price and amount of token sold are not divulged to the public despite the transparency code expected from blockchain companies. As a Redditor put it, by the time ordinary investors participate through secondary market, the prices of these tokens have been marked out profiting the wealthy:

“Almost all were and are funded by VCs and the wealthy via SAFTs, often through secret deals where price and amount of tokens are not disclosed. The public is generally not allowed to participate until the tokens get marked up 5x, 10x or 100x before an exchange listing. So you will end up with the vast majority of tokens owned by a very few, already very wealthy people.”

Bottom line is this, Ethereum may be presently slow, but it secure. It may not be scalable, but it is permission less and participatory. Besides, it is developing and has the backing of the developer community.