With the recent surge in the Ethereum price (ETH reaching 30% of Bitcoin’s market cap at nearly $5 billion), I find myself reassessing a number of my conclusions, to the point where I’m wondering whether it could overtake Bitcoin as the dominant cryptocurrency at some point in the future.Because of various network effects, I hold a cryptocurrency maximalist position, believing that one protocol will eventually win +80% of the market.With that as a given, I currently have a binary view on the ecosystem: either Bitcoin will win, or Ethereum.Here are my assumptions about the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, compared to Bitcoin’s:“Turing vulnerable”, i.e.has a much larger attack surfaceLess backwards compatibleOn track towards a more centralized futureTransaction finality is less certainIts proposed proof-of-stake mining algorithm won’t be more efficient than proof-of-workWill suffer more blockchain bloat than Bitcoin, leading to more risky design paths such as sharding.Based on these assumptions, I had until recently projected a path forward where Bitcoin continues to dominate the cryptocurrency market.However, the following observations give me pause:Ethereum Enterprise Alliance is making a good impression, lending the Ethereum project credibility in the highest levels of finance.Bitcoin faces a scaling bottleneck with no clear short term solutionEthereum’s current on-chain tx fees are much lower than Bitcoin’sIts great flexibility makes it attractive to developersSeveral projects are making the transition to the Ethereum platform, or are creating applications for it: Brave, Storj, Shapeshift.The NY Department of Financial Services (DFS) has given Coinbase official authorization to offer ETH to its customers.I am still skeptical about the long term merit of the Ethereum blockchain as a store of value (and with that, of its long term staying power), but nonetheless I am seriously considering the following questions:What if the current lull in attacks to the network can be maintained, or if the market comes to accept hard-fork interventionism?What if the market majority wants a more centralized—governed—cryptocurrency?What if Ethereum’s developer community is capitalizing on Bitcoin’s deadlock and is gaining enough momentum to take the upper hand?What if Ethereum solves its scaling conundrum with payment channels?

According to Raiden’s team lead, the software is getting close to launch.What if ETH finds a way to make PoS work, and people buy into the good sounding narrative that PoW is more wasteful?In short, what if Ethereum manages to become a good enough cryptocurrency and thereby wins this protocol war?At the risk of making an all-too-simplistic comparison, Betamax had better picture quality than VHS.But VHS had a better marketing strategy (rental market), and had tapes that ran the length of a feature film, which was more in line with what the market wanted.On the flip side, I see the following:Bitcoin has a consistent track record of being an immutable ledger (ideal for long term value preservation), versus ETH’s interventionist historyLikely higher developer activity in Bitcoin vs EthereumBitcoin has 100 core contributors, ETH has ???Core dev Vlad Zamfir: Ethereum isn’t money, safe, or scalableLegal concerns about ICOs and ETH/ETC launches, SEC fallout possibleButerin’s & Zamfir’s approaches to scaling (Casper) seem to divergeProblematic scaling future, e.g.bitcoin thrift store

“mathematical proof that it is impossible to determine the ‘true’ transaction history in a proof-of-stake blockchain without an additional source of trust”, sharding…Future inflation rate unknownUncertain fundamental value proposition over Bitcoin’s modular designBitcoin also has a few aces up its sleeve:Segwit can be activated via UASF, circumventing miners and allowing immediate activation of alpha status lightning payments.(If that fails, Lightning can be implemented even without segwit.)Rootstock could port Ethereum’s tech to Bitcoin.Sidechains are close to production-ready, don’t need segwit and allow for unfettered experimentation with additional features.ethereum stock review(In this way, anyone who just wants cheap extra block space can find it on a sidechain.)If it is true that over time one cryptocurrency will overwhelmingly dominate as the basis for an ‘internet of property’, then a lot of capital is at stake when considering the question who is winning this protocol war, Bitcoin or Ethereum?In that regard, here are some questions I’m hoping to find answers for:What are the different challenges for implementing payment channels (lightning, raiden) on Bitcoin vs.dogecoin vs usd

on Ethereum?What are today’s non-speculative ETH use cases?(What do people need ETH for?)And, related, what are some revenue generating ETH smart contract based businesses?Are there ways to quantify the differences between Ethereum’s and Bitcoin’s security model?What proxies do we have to assess the aggregate quantity and average quality of Bitcoin vs.Ethereum core development?What are potential analogies with historical protocol wars?What kind of security analysis has been done on blockchain bloat and sharding?Thanks for reading, I’m eager to hear your thoughts and discuss.I own BTC, I don’t own ETH (for the time being).Shareonline bitcoin wallet redditIn a sweeping, 2,500-word blog post today, Fred Ehrsam, the co-founder of one of the best funded blockchain startups, Coinbase, took aim at what he called a "stagnant" bitcoin community that he characterized as being outperformed by innovators working on the Ethereum network.bitcoin hard drive thrown away

Coinciding with the rebranding of the Coinbase exchange and the launch of trading for Ethereum's blockchain token, ether, the public comments are the latest sign that Coinbase leadership remains dissatisfied with what they perceive as a lack of progress among bitcoin’s developers and with the technology as a whole.In the post, Ehrsam sought to position Ethereum as a possible competitor to bitcoin, indicating his belief that the competing protocol could "blow past bitcoin entirely".ethereum java client"There is nothing that bitcoin can do which Ethereum can’t.bitcoin trading secWhile Ethereum is less battle tested, it is moving faster, has better leadership and has more developer mindshare.bitcoin hype overFirst mover advantage is challenging to overcome, but at current pace, it’s conceivable."china warns on bitcoin

The statements follow months of tensions between the once fast-growing startup and the bitcoin community, which found CEO Brian Armstrong often calling vocally for bitcoin developers to increase a limit on the amount of data that could be included in blocks on the bitcoin blockchain.Armstrong sought to position this inaction as a limiter of growth on the network as a whole, a position that showcased the divisions between bitcoin developers and its business community that saw this as a roadblock to new customer onboarding.Still, Ehrsam sought to position Ethereum as moving the development of "digital currency" and its technology forward, emphasizing that Coinbase intends to support both protocols, and that it sees them growing together to become “low-level protocols” in what could be a new Internet for value exchange."Competition and new ideas create better outcomes for everyone.Even if Ethereum goes up in flames our collective knowledge in digital currency will have leveled up significantly," Ehrsam said.

The comments drew some notable commentary that characterized Coinbase’s statements as perhaps being the result of issues it faces as a venture-backed startup, with a former business development executive at the company tweeting: “Important to remember: bitcoin has infinite patience and no burn rate.Take individual perspectives with a big grain of salt.” Though Ehrsam lauded the success of the bitcoin network, his blog post was sharply critical of the developer community and business ecosystem that has thus far developed around it.In particular, he questioned why only "infrastructure apps" have been built on the bitcoin blockchain, drawing attention to the idea that seven years into its development, the digital currency had produced no "killer apps".Ehrsam sought to position this as the result of bitcoin’s limited scripting language, though he acknowledged that this was intended by its design."My theory has been that the scripting language in bitcoin — the piece of every bitcoin transaction that lets you run a little software program along with it — is too restrictive," he wrote.

Likewise, he framed Ethereum as more friendly to those who want to develop blockchain-based applications, calling the level of app development in the community "already faster than bitcoin’s".Coinbase developers, he said, have been able to use the platform to build simple apps in just a few days, a data point he contrasted to the difficulty of performing a similar feat on the bitcoin network."I cannot overemphasize enough how important this combination of full programming functionality and ease of use is," he continued.Ehrsam further framed Ethereum as empowering a new generation of developers, in part, due to what he termed a "healthy" core development team that he sees as encouraging collaboration.In particular, praise was given to Ethereum inventor Vitalik Buterin, who Ehrsam lauded as seeming comfortable as a community and technical leader.Ehrsam went on to contrast this with the bitcoin developer community who he sought to characterize as both divisive and a contributor to the loss of interest in the platform.