The price of Ethereum is soaring because of the DAO experiment
qz.com
qz.com
How wise is the crowd? They gave almost $2 million to Solar Freakin Roadways. That's how wise.
EDIT: How about Twitch plays venture capital?
Has anyone come across a DAO where the voting power lies with the board of directors?
I'm of the perspective that Ethereum is the next evolution of Bitcoin/Blockchain/RPOW. In my readings, I'm of the belief that it's not about currency/fiat (although that does play a big role). I think the techies, who helped create Bitcoin, realized that Bitcoin's value is much greater than a replacement currency for a nation (or the world for that matter).
Think of it today. Google, FB, hell Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, etc, they all have TROVES of data about US as individuals. What if you could create a layer on top of the internet that anonymizes your behavior and you could SELL your data, only when you CHOOSE to release it? I think this is what the 'Bitcoin experiment' has taught many of the developers and they are going to try to flesh out their idea, which, IMHO, is to allow software to improve, in an open data set, without infringing on our personal privacy.
I think this system could be breading ground for an AI birth. I'm not the only one (@aantonop has said something recently[1]) and I know AI has been speculated for a while but...this new model excites me. Mainly because Skepticism is at the root, the blockchain is a trustless system. If AI were to come about, shouldn't it think critically? Anywho, that's my current fantasy/theory/perspective. As for the 'value of Ethereum' I see it in the tech not a monetary value.
If you're thinking of shorting ETHUSD, I did some digging and found that the creation period ends at 2AM pacific on May 28. You can verify this by looking at the fourth constructor argument for the contract, which is the so-called "closingTime" in the contract:
https://etherscan.io/address/0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d...
The fourth constructor argument is 0x57495e10, which is the UNIX epoch time corresponding to 2AM pacific on 5/28.
Once they start spending money on proposals, I could imagine more ETH getting into the market, but this would happen slowly, since proposals pay out over time.
There is some talk that a single shareholder could, theoretically split his portion of the unspent pool of ETH into a new DAO, which he has full control over and could then sell, but such a process would be complex (he'd have to split it, then form a proposal and vote on that proposal to send the money to an address he controls, all through a command line interface, interfacing with the Dao contract directly. Not impossible, but over most people's heads).
Instead, I'd think they'd rather than just sell their DAO tokens on the open market for ETH, BTC, or whatever else. If they sell it for ETH, they'd be effectively putting even more buy pressure on ETH, which may increase the ETH price even further.
Here is more information on how The Dao can be split in order to get ETH funds out:
https://forum.daohub.org/t/how-do-we-get-our-eth-back-from-d...
i.e. they're not using it as it is
A giant digital scroll in the sky is meaningless, but Ethereum lets you write actual programs as entries in the scroll that define what new entries actually mean. The DAO defines entries that mean "I'm funding the DAO", "I'm voting for a DAO proposal", and "I'm withdrawing my remaining funds from the DAO". Since these entries can't be modified, any app can evaluate the scroll and display conclusions about what has happened in history.
Since Ethereum is Turing-complete, any interaction between people can be defined as entries in the scroll. Ethereum is the raw material for social coordination. Instead of dreaming of ways the world should work, you can build new ways and see if people want to use them. It's incredibly exciting, and I hope more people join us in building social software that users control.
How much adoption would it require? It seems incredibly ambitious which is great but what can _we do_ to make it more likely to succeed? What does the next 3-5 years look like?
Is it meant to be a new form of government at a state level? Or more oriented to small scale like a company?
I don't think it's really about replacing governments or companies. I view this technology as a way to empower individuals. Think of how marketplaces like eBay, Uber and Airbnb have empowered individuals to trade without an employer. Imagine those without the monopolist middlemen taking a cut and kicking people they don't like out of the market. Imagine open, efficient marketplaces for every kind of trade that free more and more people from the soft feudalism of corporate employment. Imagine new kinds of incentive systems to get more good outcomes and fewer bad ones.
Our economy is our collective nervous system, and we can now program the whole thing without permission. If you want to see this technology to succeed, you can help build products that use it or be an early adopter whose feedback helps guide products in the right direction. We'd love to have you in r/Ethereum.
*some may argue it's just as challenging to pick winning investment managers as it is to picking winning investments. My personal opinion is it's pretty easy to avoid those totally inept, but even after to doing so, is your basket of returns any better (higher and less volatile) than an SP500 index fund?
Edit: this is not an advert, there has been plenty of speculation that Genesis is skimming from the returns and I was just providing a datapoint.
I'm backing ethereum because wall street is backing them so I expect them to hype it in the mainstream press enough to provide a steady intake of new users.
I also (not so) secretly believe in the project itself.
I did sell out btc at 440 and bought back in at 390-ish when that story hit hacker news about the button tx saturation "issue"
Two things I go by:. 1) the market is not efficient. 2) herd behavior can be your friend.
Luck then, oh well, congrats anyway.