$2.60 / 2.43 euro. It also passed Ripple and Dogecoin in volume. I put 75 euro in when it was under 90 cents a pop. One more day of this trend and I'll have tripled my money! Thank god for stop loss orders. mk
LOL can we all just look back on this post...
Are you selling all through the stop loss? I am holding ETH as well, and won't sell for anything in the near term. There are too many events this year that will likely put positive pressure on the price. Here are three: 1) More exchanges, especially in China, 2) Homestead release, 3) Switch to PoS from PoW. The marketcap is only 200M USD today. If you consider that Ethereum will reach the levels of adoption that bitcoin has, the price will be far higher. Of course, it's not a given, but don't let the price movement influence your decision to sell. Of course, if you can't bear to watch these gains disappear in the interim, and/or if you need the money, then selling makes sense. But, be able to live with yourself if the price drops to $1.50 tomorrow, then is at $20 in March. :)
It’s always 1 year out…. I’ll believe it when I see it like self driving cars. 4x series Gpus coming this year 25% power boost but 10-15% more power draw so probably mostly a wash for mining. Depends on if they leave the hash rate limits on considering the current stock price.
This probably shows a major lack of understanding surrounding the technology of Ether (though I think I get the concept) but could it be used for Hubski donations? For me at least this is entirely theoretical, as I'm only holding Bitcoins at the moment, but I'm confused about the whole contracts system and I think this might help clear it up for me. Do there need to be conditions for both sides in the contract? Is escrow required for Ether? Or can more one-sided interactions, like donations, occur?
In the hour or so since I posted, the price went back down to $2.40 / 2.20 euro, so my super tight stop losses were activated. You're right though, it's a long term game, so I'm putting that right back in. I'm probably going to put some more in - the chance of me losing all my profits are quite slim.
I need to read all those links, honestly. I know very little about what Ethereum is, how it differs from Bitcoin, how to buy and sell it, etc. Any recommendations on where exactly to start?
I'd start with Wikipedia. Read the short article, then work through a number of the referenced articles in the bottom. ethereum.org also has information. However, their blog can be a bit thick. In short, Ethereum is a blockchain-secured decentralized global computer. It has little power, but can enable fancy transactions and contracts. Ether (ETH) is the token that secures it, and it must also be spent to execute code on the network.
I'm kind of a backward luddite, and not at all easily excitable about these kinds of things. I think that bitcoin is doomed to failure, for example. However, even though I'm not super well versed in ethereum, I'm pretty excited about it. Eventually, the payments system--which is one of the only good things that banks do for you and I--is going to be updated. It is outdated, slow, bloated, expensive, and inefficient. There seems to be a concensus forming that block chain technology is what is going to replace it (e.g. here is one example among many). Among the current contenders, ethereum appears to be the best positioned to do so (according to the experts, of which I am decidedly not one--not even sure I'd be considered a layman at this point). Banks are busy making their own block chains, but they need a public one to talk bank to bank, and that's where eth might be useful. One grand advantage it has is that it doesn't have the currency cult that btc does, which may be btc's undoing. Crypto "currency" will never be a real currency, because currencies are what they are due to their statutory position as the government's guarantor of debts. But cryptos can be a great way to settle payments and move money quickly and cheaply, which is something we could all benefit from. It is possible that something even better will come along before eth is widely adopted, then it could become obsolete as well. However, if that doesn't happen within the next year or two, I think it will have secured its place as a valuable tool. Once one of these protocols is accepted by the major banks, it is going to be a very valuable tool by which our day-to-day lives operate (even if it remains unseen to the average consumer).
What is the current payments system you made reference to, the one that Etherium could replace? Is it the ACH I hear about sometimes? The Clearing House? What's the difference between say, Venmo, a friend-to-friend payment method, the Clearing House, and Ethereum/ether? Sorry, I inow you qualified yourself as barely a layman on this topic, so maybe mk could help me, too?
SWIFT I have a dollar. You have an apple. We want to deal. 1) We can both agree to use The Bank of Venmo. Sure, it may look like an app, but it's Paypal, which is a financial institution like any other. I offer you a contract that entitles you to a dollar from Venmo. Venmo charges me a dollar for the privilege. We're still dealing in dollars, operating under the banking regulations of any country the transaction occurs under, and shows up on SWIFT just like any other banking transaction. 2) We can both agree to use SWIFT, except we can't, because we're not banking institutions and not governed by the bylaws of international finance. So you still have an apple, I still have a dollar, and no sales happens because our current banking system does not allow you or I to act as a financial institution. 3) We can agree to use some form of cryptocurrency (CC$). I send a command to the network to give you the equivalent of a dollar in the CC$ of your choice, which, and b_b is right, is only really of value because of the secondary market of buying and selling CC$. The value of that CC$ is generally volatile and there may be a lot of wiggle between the time I send it and the time you receive it - this is one of the big beefs against BTC at the moment, there's only like six transactions a second that it can handle, which would barely get through Craigslist in a large city, let alone provide a financial backbone for the whole of the world. BUT when all is said and done, the system/network/computer/whatever you want to call it ensures that for one brief shining second, my dollar and your apple crossed paths at the agreed upon rate with no bank standing between us. ___________________________________________________ But that's not really the interesting part, it's just the low-hanging fruit. Fundamentally, we're not trading dollars for apples. We're trading value for value and value comes in ways far more diversified than currency and finance. Your apple actually reflects, for example, 1/50th of your bikeride to Safeway, 1/52nd of your day at work, and 1/10th of your hunger because you really want that apple. Meanwhile, my dollar represents approximately 42 seconds of mixing crap reality television (a true statistic, by the way). Let's say I've got my mixing console wired into Ethereum. Let's say you've got your bicycle wired into Ethereum... and so does everyone else. Vast and mythical forces that I don't even need to know about can value my time at the mixing console down to the second and algorithmically remunerate me for my mad skillz. An ad-hoc network of bicycle delivery services could monitor your Ethereum-connected bicycle and credit your bike for the number of miles it travels x the mass it carries factored by the temperature and humidity. Both of these points could actively negotiate on the network in real time and not only hunt for the best exchange between reality television mixing and apples, they could actually optimize the exchange for both of us. Never mind the fact that value can be traded completely without intermediary - the thing that excites nerds about cc$ is its ability to dissolve "money" as a marker and facilitate a true form of non-intermediated commerce. Right now, of course, cc$ is hot mostly because shady fucks can use it as a coupon for shady shit that you flat out can't do through SWIFT. But hey. VCRs wouldn't exist without porn, probiotics wouldn't be cost-effective without the Soviet bioweapons program and computers as you know them were largely developed for modeling nuclear weapons blasts so it's not like shady starts are uncommon.What is the current payments system you made reference to, the one that Etherium could replace?
What's the difference between say, Venmo, a friend-to-friend payment method, the Clearing House, and Ethereum/ether?
But it does a lot more than that. Imagine walking up to a car, depositing $2000 into an Ethereum account, and suddenly when you wave your phone over the handle, the door opens. You get in, conduct your business, and when you get out you withdraw your money, minus cost for gas, insurance, etc. All of this done anonymously, and perfectly securely, without anybody trusting anybody else to deliver the goods.
Money exists so that people who don't trust each other can conduct business together. In order for that business to happen, there needs to be something in the middle that they both trust. Traditionally, that "something in the middle" has been a bank and/or government. Contracts are the same way - in order for two parties to overcome their individual distrust, they both had to trust something bigger in between. Bitcoin uses math and distributed computing to make that "something in the middle" a faceless, anonymous crowd while maintaining the trust. Unfortunately there are problems with the math and distributed computing that is already crippling the ability of Bitcoin to be "something in the middle" for more than the lunatic fringe that is already using it. Still more unfortunately, the people who are helping to shape Bitcoin aren't cooperating very well and the trust is eroding somewhat. Ethereum is an idea similar to Bitcoin, but there are no design flaws that will eventually lead to the problems Bitcoin has right now. Because of this, the techno-nerds who like the idea of cryptocurrency for what it means for innovation prefer Ethereum. There has been substantial excitement this week over the sour grapes departure of one of the main Bitcoin developers, which has caused Ethereum to go up in value by about 150%. And yes, you can mine it but because it is a more clever protocol, it puts a substantial load on your GPU. Therefore, archetypal BTC miners won't work.
Just did a test run with Shapeshift. 0. Buy some BTC on an exchange. Apparently, if you are not already part of an exchange, buy some BTC on localbitcoins. They have an awesome guide here. 1. Create an address on MyEtherWallet. 1b. Go to https://www.myetherwallet.com/#generate-wallet 1c. Open up a text document. Type a password into the document. Save the document. Copy and Paste the password into the password field. 1d. Click Generate. 1e. Where you typed out password down, also save your address, private key (encrypted), private key (unencrypted.) Save it again. 1f. Download the encrypted and unencrypted .json files. Save these in the folder with your ether password document. 2. Go to Shapeshit.io. Select BTC on the left and ETHER on the right. Note the limit / minimums on the BTC side (right now they're Deposit Limit: 2.5285 BTC Minimum: 0.00012962 BTC). 3. Go back to MyEtherWallet (if you still have it open) or your text document and copy your ADDRESS. It should look like 0x7cb57b5a97eabe94205c07890be4c1ad31e486a8. Paste this address into the ETH side under "Your Payment Address". Include the 0x. Double check it. Check the "I agree to terms box". Click "START". 4. You will now have a DEPOSIT ADDRESS and a WITHDRAW ADDRESS. Take a screenshot of this page. Click the status button. Leave this open. Check the address again to make sure you control it and have all the information to that address (private key or .json and password.) 5. This is where I don't know what to do. I assume you somehow move your BTC from the exchange. You basically want to send whatever BTC you bought to the DEPOSIT ADDRESS shapeshit gave you. 6. Wait. 7. It should confirm. You can also look at https://etherchain.org/account/0x7cb57b5a97eabe94205c07890be4c1ad31e486a8 -- change the URL to be your address. At some point, Ether will appear there. 8. Remember that folder we made with the text document and json files? These should be kept in at least 2 places. I personally have them on my computer, on dropbox, on a flash drive at my parents house, and printed out here. I've got a lot of Ether though so I'm fucking paranoid as shit. --- Original Comment: As far as I can tell, the easiest way right now is to buy some BTC on an exchange (kraken or poloniex), then you use Shapeshift.io to change the Bitcoin into Ether. Correction: the easiest way is to buy bitcoins via localbitcoins.com. Create a new Ether wallet instantly using my awesome tool MyEtherWallet.com. I believe mk walked others through it, maybe he can type up a step-by-step. I haven't bought since the presale. There are also a ton of reddit threads. Save everything MyEtherWallet spits out at you (and shapeshift and the like) and keep it safely on your hard drive, in cloud storage (ie: dropbox), and physically on a piece of paper. Wait a while, then sell, and buy a house. I traded in all my BTC (save for a random donation link that still has like .02 BTC) in for Ether in August 2014 during the presale. I am a very happy camper these past couple days. So is my friend:
The easiest way to buy right now, IMO is to use Coinbase, or Circle to buy BTC and then buy ETH with that. On Kraken you can buy ETH with USD or BTC. If you are not on Kraken, you can buy ETH with BTC by using shapeshift.io. I just use a paper wallet to store my ETH. If you have BTC, to buy ETH with shapeshift.io: 1. At https://myetherwallet.com create and print a paper wallet. Keep that screen open, because you'll want to copy the public address (aka public key). 2. At https://shapeshift.io select deposit BTC, receive ETH. 3. Add the public key of your paper ETH wallet in the receive address. Click start. 4. Send BTC to the deposit address given by shapeshift (from Coinbase, Circle, or wherever you have it.) That should do it. Keep your paper wallet safe. Have two copies in two different places.
Yep, as soon as Kraken verifies me I'm getting in the game. Thanks to you, kleinbl00, b_b, and especially insomniasexx for all the cc advice in this thread.
Easiest way is to go to kraken.com and exchange some real coin for cryptocoin. I've grown quite frustrated with coinbase because they're shady fucks but so far so good on kraken. You can also play games with paper wallets. insomniasexx and a friend coded up something called myetherwallet that will give you a magic number. Put some real money into kraken or coinbase and then send it to that address and you now have a slip of paper that corresponds to the magic hex address where your abstract money lives.