This is a friendly attempt to give you speculators some information to prevent you from shooting yourselves in the foot, because of your myopia. These risks aren't disclosed to you in the prospectus for the smart contract app ICOs. Bitcoin is rising in price (likely heading to $2500) and I would want to keep my powder dry to buy the best opportunities based on the following risks...
Make sure that if you are buying these ICOs that the coins will become free trading on exchanges well before the end of this year, because it is very likely I will have launched my project by the end of the year and it will then be clear to everyone that app tokens have no value (i.e. that the paradigm of creating a separate token for each smart app is nonsense and will be replaced by smart apps that use the mainstream tokens):
https://github.com/Scanate/UltimateICOCalendar
I used to think that. I even offered an idea and discussed (in the Bitcoin Technical discussion forum) with @TierNolan and @jl777 how to deal with the jamming (Sybil attack) problem of his atomic cross-chain exchange protocol.
Decentralized exchange singular (not distributed exchanges as that is what we have now) won't ever be adopted because speculators want the highest liquidity, the lowest spreads, the fastest trades, and the most accurate aggregate trading statistics. I have instead switched my focus to a payment channel invention I have which can make it impossible for centralized exchanges to lose coins (i.e. the user never gives up the private key control).
Gazillions of currencies won't work because there are huge losses for businesses and individuals when not having the same unit-of-exchange as the unit-of-account. Hedging just the major currencies is already a major headache for international corporations. This is why Germany created the Euro so they could charge the cost of the appreciation of the German mark (due to Germany's higher industrial productivity) to the PIIGS.
Also make sure that no Ethereum smart contract will be "hacked" (how can you
), because if another is hacked, then likely all smart contract apps will be sold off in a stampede.
Note I want to use this poll both to gauge popular opinion and also as a form of motivation for myself. I prefer when I am doubted and love the underdog position.
Edit:
Make sure that if you are buying these ICOs that the coins will become free trading on exchanges well before the end of this year, because it is very likely I will have launched my project by the end of the year and it will then be clear to everyone that app tokens have no value (i.e. that the paradigm of creating a separate token for each smart app is nonsense and will be replaced by smart apps that use the mainstream tokens):
https://github.com/Scanate/UltimateICOCalendar
... And a monetization model that doesn't require all the app vendors to create their own unwanted tokens as in the current Ethereum "smart contract' ICO craze...
Regarding ICOs, one of the aims of my project that is different from Ethereum is that via the distribution model, I intend (i.e. hope to) provide a way for the derivative "smart contract" (or apps) projects to monetize their business model without creating a useless token and ICO lie. I am attempting to change the entire paradigm to not only a legal but also a viable one. @Skalpell although you make reasonable arguments in some respects, you seem to have a blindspot on the fact that these ICO tokens are completely unrealistic in that the world won't be using 100s of colored coins with a separate coin for each "smart contract" or app. The world will rally around one or at most a few leading units-of-exchange and units-of-account. The ICO model is not viable long-term. It is a FOMO delusion that works for now because speculators haven't yet learned that 100s of tokens isn't going to work.
Token utility linkage is not always there
The assumption that everything with a potential network effect is going to work with a decentralization starting point is not entirely true. The blockchain is not for everything.
The solution or product being developed needs to have a solid business model linkage that has a particular value when decentralization and/or tokenization of actions take place. The promise of a new model needs to be very compelling.
In the name of decentralization, the promises are big. You cant just slap a token to anything, and expect magic to happen.
The token is not the business model. The value proposition or utility that is enabled by the token is the business model, and that linkage needs to be there early on. If the direction is not right, the chosen path will not lead to a good place.
The marketing hype is frightening
Some ICOs are being marketed like a rocket ship, but in reality, no startup is a rocket ship. A lot of the communication is biased towards the most optimistic assumptions, but nothing goes up in a straight line.
The assumption that everything with a potential network effect is going to work with a decentralization starting point is not entirely true. The blockchain is not for everything.
The solution or product being developed needs to have a solid business model linkage that has a particular value when decentralization and/or tokenization of actions take place. The promise of a new model needs to be very compelling.
In the name of decentralization, the promises are big. You cant just slap a token to anything, and expect magic to happen.
The token is not the business model. The value proposition or utility that is enabled by the token is the business model, and that linkage needs to be there early on. If the direction is not right, the chosen path will not lead to a good place.
The marketing hype is frightening
Some ICOs are being marketed like a rocket ship, but in reality, no startup is a rocket ship. A lot of the communication is biased towards the most optimistic assumptions, but nothing goes up in a straight line.
I see potentially a web of gazillions of currencies, connected by gazillions of distributed exchanges.
I used to think that. I even offered an idea and discussed (in the Bitcoin Technical discussion forum) with @TierNolan and @jl777 how to deal with the jamming (Sybil attack) problem of his atomic cross-chain exchange protocol.
Decentralized exchange singular (not distributed exchanges as that is what we have now) won't ever be adopted because speculators want the highest liquidity, the lowest spreads, the fastest trades, and the most accurate aggregate trading statistics. I have instead switched my focus to a payment channel invention I have which can make it impossible for centralized exchanges to lose coins (i.e. the user never gives up the private key control).
Gazillions of currencies won't work because there are huge losses for businesses and individuals when not having the same unit-of-exchange as the unit-of-account. Hedging just the major currencies is already a major headache for international corporations. This is why Germany created the Euro so they could charge the cost of the appreciation of the German mark (due to Germany's higher industrial productivity) to the PIIGS.
Also make sure that no Ethereum smart contract will be "hacked" (how can you
), because if another is hacked, then likely all smart contract apps will be sold off in a stampede.Note I want to use this poll both to gauge popular opinion and also as a form of motivation for myself. I prefer when I am doubted and love the underdog position.
Edit:
It also means that after 3 years of waiting for Ethereum to gain millions of adoption, its established inertia is not necessarily indicative of future success. Inertia tends to metastasize and rot. Saplings grow to oak trees, but aging oak trees don't grow to the moon. The early adopter exponential phase of Ethereum's growth is over. Just like Bitcoin, the dynamic headroom of what it can be is already baked into its inertia. ETH and BTC have one more 10 bagger (up to and less than 100X) run in them (per the technology adoption curve since they passed the first hump already), but that is all. Ditto Monero and Dash.
Speculators are attempting to know what is impossible to know too early. And thus they are being taken in by 100s of ICOs and going to end up in an ICO graveyard.
It used to be that speculators could perhaps gauge which ICOs had a superior level of hype and marketing, so they could speculate not on actuated creative technological achievement, but on the ICO being the actual launch of the manipulation of the minds of speculators (aka "mining the speculators"). But now we are entering a new phase where there will be an an oversupply (market saturation) of ICOs which have copied that "the ICO is the launch of the reality distortion field" paradigm. Ethereum is spawning offspring (i.e. smart contract) copycats of its own reality distortion field business model, which may cannabalize ETH itself.
Speculators are attempting to know what is impossible to know too early. And thus they are being taken in by 100s of ICOs and going to end up in an ICO graveyard.
It used to be that speculators could perhaps gauge which ICOs had a superior level of hype and marketing, so they could speculate not on actuated creative technological achievement, but on the ICO being the actual launch of the manipulation of the minds of speculators (aka "mining the speculators"). But now we are entering a new phase where there will be an an oversupply (market saturation) of ICOs which have copied that "the ICO is the launch of the reality distortion field" paradigm. Ethereum is spawning offspring (i.e. smart contract) copycats of its own reality distortion field business model, which may cannabalize ETH itself.