What Is Ethereum?
Ethereum is one of the biggest players in the cryptocurrency market. It’s a blockchain platform. Ethereum generates the second most valuable cryptocurrency in the world, Ether (ETH).
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Vitalik Buterin proposed the Ethereum blockchain in 2013. It is a tool to help us build decentralized applications.
Should I Buy Ethereum? All You Need to Make An Informed Decision
This begs the question, “What are decentralized applications?”
Simple, they’re applications running on the blockchain. Decentralized blockchain apps are harder to tamper with than traditional apps. It sounds complicated, yet it’s not.
Imagine, you give a friend $1. For it, he promises you an ice cream cone tomorrow.
The next day comes, the friend tells you that he doesn’t have the ice cream and can’t get it. You have to trust that your friend’s telling the truth.
Later, you see the same friend, eating a decadent ice cream cone. He lied to you. You feel betrayed. When you confront him, the friend denies getting the $1 bill from you the day before.
It is his word against yours.
This is the simplified situation the Ethereum blockchain solves.
With a smart contract, you give your friend the $1 and make a smart contract. Smart contracts are automatic and tamper-proof agreements.
You will automatically get an ice cream cone tomorrow, as long as your friend has one and he received the $1 from you. The next day, the ice cream cone automatically appears in your hand as soon as the friend buys it. Even if he had no intention of giving it to you.
Your friend can’t mess with this agreement. Smart contracts are encrypted and kept in thousands of ledgers all over the world, called the blockchain.
Should I Buy Ethereum? All You Need to Make An Informed Decision
Your friend would have to change every ledger recording your agreement. It is practically impossible. Much better than relying on trust, right?
Keeping the blockchain running takes a lot of computing power and electricity. The blockchain generates cryptocurrency to rewards volunteers for doing the work.
In the case of Ethereum, this currency is called Ether or ETH. It’s the second most valuable cryptocurrency in the world, after Bitcoin. The first step in answering the “Should I buy Ethereum?” question is to know what it is.
To make an informed decision, however, there still are a lot of things to cover, so keep reading.
How Is Ether Mined?
To keep the blockchain secure, it encrypts every transaction that happens on it. Then, the blockchain updates ledgers all over the world. The system records every change in blocks. When one block reaches its capacity, the blockchain creates another one.
The blockchain encrypts each transaction. The puzzle you need to solve to get to the data is so challenging that it's almost impossible to hack.
You can call the people solving puzzles that make the blockchain work miners.
Ether is mostly mined using the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and specialized ASIC machines. Most Ethereum mining operations reach the industrial scale.
Should I Buy Ethereum? All You Need to Make An Informed Decision
Solving difficult puzzles to make Ether requires your system to run full throttle at all times. It costs a lot in electricity bills. The hardware wears out much faster than usual too.
Have you ever grumbled about insane GPU prices? Now you know why they are like that. Supply falling behind the demand = skyrocketing prices. It’s capitalism at its best.
So, when you ask yourself, “Should I buy Ethereum or mine it?”, the answer is likely going to be to buy it. Unless you can invest a fortune in building your mining facility.
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Ethereum Transaction Speeds
Scaling is one of the biggest obstacles to the adoption of blockchain technology. More transactions = longer wait for the blockchain to catch up and process them all
Centralized competitors can offer faster transactions when compared to the blockchain.
The Ethereum blockchain can process 15 transactions; VISA processes 45,000.
Ethereum developers actively work on their blockchain’s scalability problem. Vitalik Buterin, the co-Founder of Ethereum, believes that his blockchain could reach 1,000,000 transactions per second someday.
Ethereum Safety
Safety is one of the greatest Ethereum selling points.
The apps built on this blockchain (called dApps or decentralized apps) are significantly safer and more resistant to hacking than the software you use now.
It’s impossible to mess with the Ethereum ledger. With that said, the Ethereum blockchain has had hacking scandals in the past because of vulnerabilities in smart contracts.
Should I buy Ethereum: Ethereum Classic.
The most famous one is the DAO hack, where a badly-written smart contract resulted in around $50M-worth of Ether falling in danger of being stolen.
To get around the issue, the Ethereum blockchain users voted and changed the rules governing the system.
They performed a “hard fork” and split the Ethereum system into two competing systems, Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.
The blockchain grew since that time, a lot of people asked themselves, “Should I buy Ethereum?” and most of them answered YES!
The answer to the question, “Should I buy Ethereum?” is currently “Maybe, depends.” You need to know more before you go out (or online in this case) and decide on doing it.
Supply: there may be a finite number of bitcoins (21 million) which are expected to be mined by 2040. Plus, availability fluctuates depending on the rate at which they enter the market.