[ExI] Thoughts on Ethereum?

[Brent Allsop]

Extropians,

On 3/15/2014 4:58 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote:
> It all depend on how much people is willing to buy and hold long term 
> ethers just because they are valued (they think ethers will retain, 
> maintain, increase, their value in the future). If no one want keep a 
> significant quantity of ethers for long periods of time (because they 
> prefer Bitcoin or gold or whatever), then the contracts will not 
> take-off.

Here's my thoughts.  I would love to know if anyone agrees or disagrees.

Bitcoin has about 12% new coins moving into the market, per year, via 
mining, for more than the next 3 years before it drops to half that.  I 
bet Venezuela, Nigeria, Iceland, and other countries experiencing 
terrible inflation have far less than 12% per year new coins per year 
causing their inflation.  Obviously nobody wants to hold Naira any 
longer than necessary, because of the terrible inflation rates caused by 
less than 12% new coins / year, obviously outpacing their economic growth.

But Ether coins will have 50% / year new coins coming onto the market.  
That just seems brain dead to me.  I certainly wouldn't want to hold any 
such coins with that kind of inflation.  Doge coin has a similar 
inflation rate.  This is what people do to stop people from hording the 
currency, thinking it will make using the coin, for tips and such, 
easier.  For exactly the reason Micro gives, this strategy will back 
fire and make inflating currencies crash and fail, once they reach their 
maximum saturation of popularity rate.

Invictus Innovations Bitshares, on the other hand, will have zero new 
coins coming into production after the initial genesis block is seeded.  
In my book, this will be a much better investment (I have invested in 
them).  But then, there is unobtanium coins, that takes this theory to 
the extreme, and it isn't doing well either, so who knows.

To me, all these hard coded inflation rate currencies are 'dumb' coins, 
which will never work in the long run, and are nothing more than flashes 
in the pan (although very big flashes).  I think a 'smart' coin that can 
intelligently adjust will easily out compete any inflexible dumb coin.  
That is why we're toying with the idea of a smart coin.  
http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/150/6.   The inflation rate could be 
determined by an amplification of the wisdom of all the holders of the 
coin canonization process.  Also, the new work that get's done to earn 
the new coins would also be determined by the holders of the coins, for 
whatever work they saw fit from improving canonizer.com, to charity, to 
anything else the holders of the coin wanted done.  And, if any currency 
were more like shares in a company, having real PE and dividend 
potential, why would you hold any coin without such?  So, in other 
words, the leaderless Canonizer.com could go "cryptographically public" 
so to speak, converting the current "recognition shares" people have 
earned for open source development work done to date in "Canon Coins" 
which would be shares in Canonizer.com.

But, then, there seems to be very few people that think any such will 
work, so maybe not?

Dumb idea?  Good idea?  Is it worth trying?

Brent