Etherum blockchain is too slow. PoS might help a bit, but the technology for blockchains that require smart-contracts are too slow to handle the number of tokens and TPS, and they continue to burden the network. That is why it is a good thing to let people believe ETH is worth $1400 and will be back there in due course because eth has been a dream for shorting, and provides a short opportunity every bounce north. I have said it before, eth (the token) will go the way of the Dodo-bird, in time.
garyfung
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@biffbifford, it's too slow. *For now*. I don't know what the upcoming sharding + PoS work will enable in terms of network TPS, and neither do you.
biffbifford
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@garyfung, "The block time is able to be lowered because validators aren't burning cash on electricity to mine, which makes producing uncles much less painful relative to the canonical block. Validators are rewarded on the basis of how they place their bets, and won't lose money so long as they always bet on blocks which make it into the security record. So their profit is slightly higher for betting on a canonical block relative to an uncle, but their cost is the same either way (and much reduced relative to PoW mining, as is the reward).
Casper therefore, in addition to its much-improved security properties relative to Proof-of-Work, is able to provide much lower confirmation latency. This does not mean, however, that we have improved Ethereum's underlying efficiency in terms of transactions per second. With Casper, Ethereum is still a single-threaded global computer, and any improvement in TPS will come from validators upgrading their hardware.
Sharding, not Casper, is Ethereum's proposed scaling solution for increasing TPS by orders of magnitude." youtu.be/3g2CwTnn0Us
It will have to be by orders of magnitude if they continue to run ERC-20 tokens on top of the chain in record numbers. But from a technical perspective, we do have an idea of how fast the TPS rate will be.
garyfung
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@biffbifford, no you don't. It's "orders" of magnitudes, plural. How many orders? I can guess, Buterin can guess, you can guess. It just means true scaling comes with Plasma, and thus by your own admission, its future TPS to match Visa or whatever transaction system is at least possible.
And since Casper dramatically lowers mining cost (validation cost, rather as it's not really mining anymore by PoW means), the same computers in the network can run multiple times more nodes, inversely proportional to the mining cost lowered, without adding more hardware. And since Plasma makes the network scalable in a BitTorrent/decentralized way, there'll that much more economic incentive to add as much hardware as the network needs in transaction speed, to make dApps useful. And no, I don't count cryptokitties, that is the first party trick.
biffbifford
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@garyfung, And so how do you value the token? The blockchain has intrinsic value based on its usefulness, but the extrinsic value of the token is different, and therein lies the million dollar problem. I find the irrational exuberance in crypto's interesting in that it values the valueless and as proof, I offer you the current price along with the hopes and dreams of those holding above $300. I do respect the due-diligence you are doing into your (possible) investment and the insight to bring to the discussion and, within the context of this conversation, cryptokittes is not a factor as we must assume that ERC-20 contracts of that nature were a known deficiency of the TPS rate and the reason for the new scalability. Good luck kind sir, I can care less which direction ETH goes as I seek to profit from both sides. any price predictions; timeframes?
garyfung
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@biffbifford, I can't value the token based on fundamentals. It's driven currently entirely by sentiment of future potential, and I do believe the potential is there. It can be the next phase of the internet in disrupting world industries.
I'm also fully aware the market has run far ahead of fundamentals, and the market is going to do what it will. Just like gold for example. What is gold? I has value because it's glittery and because people think it has value since dawn of civilization. And gold price is now also entirely driven by sentiment, since no real currency is pegged to gold. Though with much irony, there are new stablecoins in crypto that wants to peg their price to gold to reduce wild volatility that bars crypto from being used as currency.
I'm ranting. And we are more alike than we are different when it comes to "profit from both sides". Or rather for me, just one side as I never short as a matter of principle. Aren't we all if we are looking at charts on a site like this?
My target for ETH based on counting Elliot Waves over different time frames is it will bottom between $125-150. Then we are off the races on the next wave 5 rally to hit new ATH. Then it'll drop wildly, and then it'll rally even more wildly. It's like watching the stock market movements that spanned decades, squeezed into a time span of mere years.
Risks? Governments have tried to kill cryptocurrencies and so far they've failed. The only real success is against fiat exchanges with centralized servers, and in time there will be decentralized exchanges. Then it'll be unkillable without shutting down the internet, which isn't going to happen. So until something changes in terms of what could truly, definitely kill cryptocurrencies as a new class of decentralized software, I for one will continue speculating on the upside and get out of the way on the downside.
If you have targets to "profit from both sides", do share.