BlockchainThe Financial Tech Revolution Will Be TokenizedRobert HackettSince writing about bitcoin rival Ethereum and its visionary creator Vitalik Buterin for Fortune’s 40 Under 40 issue last year, the market for alternative currencies, or digital tokens, has exploded.There’s arguably no hotter (and more bubbly) trend in all of financial technology than the ICO, or initial coin offering, which allows startups pushing blockchain tech, an accounting innovation that replaces middlemen with ledgers shared across decentralized networks of computers, to host crowdfunded sales of their own invented monies.(To learn more about ICOs, read this Q&A I did with my Fortune colleague Erin Griffith.)On Friday, I spent the day at the Ethereal Summit in Brooklyn, which brought together a motley crew of blockchain acolytes to celebrate the cultural movement—and it is one—around Ethereum, a system that proponents hope will re-decentralize the Web, taking power away from present-day brokers like Facebook (fb), Google (goog), and Amazon (amzn).

As I walked around, I stumbled into an art installation—a giant, undulating, plastic bubble heated by a cryptocurrency mining rig, basically a computer blowing off steam as it generates digital currency.The piece resembled a big tarp pillow that you could walk inside.I learned that an old high school friend built it.bitcoin korea premiumHe's working on a startup that has something to do with real estate and these newfangled digital tokens.bitcoin bear whale(I'm still vague on the details.).litecoin mining software listOf course, he's mulling an ICO later this year.Get Data Sheet, Fortune's daily tech newsletter, where this essay originatedJoseph Lubin, CEO of ConsenSys and co-founder of Ethereum, was, unsurprisingly, bullish about the ICO gold rush.ethereum coinbase wallet

"It will be responsible for a great thawing of capital," he told me, referring to the ability for people easily to buy and sell the tokens that fuel ICOs.Token holders can trade these assets online at any time, unlike traditional venture capital investments, which are often locked up until a company is acquired or holds an initial public offering.bitcoin scratch cardDespite concerns about the legality of ICOs—are tokens essentially unregistered securities?bitcoin geld ohne banken(blockchain proponents say no)—Lubin noted that U.S.bitcoin euro wertregulators are hesitant to crack down on the nascent sector for fear of crippling its potential.bitcoin ticker software"They've got one eye open," he said of the enforcers.Justin Newton, CEO of Netki, a bitcoin wallet startup, and a participant in my blockchain panel at last year's Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference, told me that he was reluctant to invest in the ICO space because he felt that the products were not yet sophisticated enough.bitcoin club 365

If and when investors rush to cash out their tokens, the companies on which they're based will collapse, he said.Newton mentioned that while sharing rides in Lyft cars in recent months, he has met, on three separate occasions, twenty-something students who were interning at crypto hedge funds, firms that hold positions in tokens minted by blockchain startups."When I was in college I took a job at Wendy’s," he said.Critics and boosters alike are comparing this moment in the evolution of blockchain business to the heady dot-com boom of the '90s.While I was too young to appreciate all the excesses of that era, I'm certain the echoes are present in today's token revolution.As one entrepreneur told me, "this is happening right now whether I’m involved or not, so I may as well take advantage."Intime, it will become more clear who has taken advantage, and who has been taken advantage of.by Tyler Durden Two weeks ago, in our latest comparison of Bitcoin and its up and coming competitor, Ethereum, we said "step aside bitcoin, there is a new blockchain kid in town."

Actually, we said that for the first time back in February when Ethereum was still trading in the low teens (the return on ETH since then is roughly 3000%), but the most recent glance provided some perspective on where the competition between the two largest cryptocurrencies may culminate, because according to at least two venture capitalists, the market cap of Ethereum - currently roughly $35 bilion - and whose share of the market has been soaring, will surpass that of Bitcoin, at ~$43 billion although it changes by the second, sometime before the end of 2018.Two things: first, at the current rate of gains in Ethereum market share (and loss in Bitcoin's), the inflection point between the two will come not in months, or weeks, but perhaps days.Second, said inflection point may come in even faster if Vladimir Putin has anything to say about it, because as Bloomberg reports, "Ethereum has caught the attention of none other than the Russian president as a potential tool to help Russia diversify its economy beyond oil and gas."

Putin met Ethereum's young founder Vitalik Buterin on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum last week and supported his plans to build contacts with local partners to implement blockchain technology in Russia, according to a statement on Kremlin’s website.Speaking at the Economic Forum, Putin said that "the digital economy isn’t a separate industry, it’s essentially the foundation for creating brand new business model" and discussed means to boost growth long-term after Russia ended its worst recession in two decades.As explained repeatedly over the past 6 months, besides being a method of exchange, Ethereum is also a ledger for everything from currency contracts to property rights, speeding up business by cutting out intermediaries such as public notaries.It also does not suffer from some of the size limitations that have paralyzed bitcoin in recent months.Furthermore, just like the western Enterprise Ethereum Alliance which consists of JPMorgan, Intel, Microsoft and other leading blue chips, Russia’s central bank has already deployed an Ethereum-based blockchain as a pilot project to process online payments and verify customer data with lenders including Sberbank PJSC, Deputy Governor Olga Skorobogatova said at the St. Petersburg event.

She didn’t rule out using Ethereum technologies for the development of a national virtual currency for Russia down the road.Adoption of Ethereum in Russia has been brisk also in the private sector: last week, Bloomberg reports that Russia’s state development bank VEB agreed to start using Ethereum for some administrative functions.Steelmaker Severstal PJSC tested Ethereum’s blockchain for secure transfer of international credit letters.Blockchain may have the same effect on businesses that the emergence on the internet once had -- it would change business models, and eliminate intermediaries such as escrow agents and clerks,” said Vlad Martynov, an adviser for The Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization that backs the cryptocurrency.“If Russia implements it first, it will gain similar advantages to those the Western countries did at the start of the internet age.” What about price targets?Pavel Matveev, co-founder of Wirex told CNBC today that Ethereum could reach $600 by the end of the year, leaving bitcoin in the dust.