This is really poorly researched, which is a shame because blockchain projects are open and transparent and Steemit should hold articles critical of competitors and other chains to higher standards, if only for the fact that they will naturally draw in people from other projects and perhaps be the first thing by which they judge Steem. In this case, they would think we can't research, analyze, or write well.
Here is an example of non-existent reseach.
The article claims: "As more and more tokens are created, large sums of ETH is taken out and set aside, this creates a bubble. Most of these tokens if not all have a monthly burn rate, which means they all have to dump ETH to supposedly fund their projects. We will reach a point where the ETH being dumped far exceeds the ETH being locked away."
The amount of ETH locked up in contracts for ICOs and tokens is not even 3% of all ETH. It is not even a material amount of ETH. Furthermore, the largest token contracts that hold ETH have barely sold or not sold any ETH.
To check to see if this analysis makes any sense, you can look at the daily trading volume of ETH and compare it to the amount of ETH locked up in these contracts and see how much market impact these token contract held ETH have relative to the market. In the last 24hours, there has been $500mm in trading volume in ETH. That is more than ALL the ETH held by token contracts. This thesis doesn't hold water.
And the research is so bad here that it makes Steemit look bad. We need to hold our articles to higher standards than this.
Part of the appeal of Steemit is that there are only community standards. True it lets in unfounded claims etc. but the benefit is a variety of viewpoints. The community may at times upvote complete hogwash but that's a small price to pay for a system that has more freedom and flexibility than other social media.
In the future I hope to see the API lead to iterations of Steem front-ends which cater to different communities and their needs. For example I'd rather peruse articles with more science and critical thinking as opposed to conspiracy theories, religious writings and woo. Such a community could form their own filtration of the blockchain and hold their own standards.
My point being if it's submitted it's on the blockchain and that's fine. It's the filtering that needs some work so people can apply the standards they seek. If somebody wants to find what you consider poorly researched opinion pieces isn't it their right to find that here?
To be clear I'm not challenging your assertions about ETH. I'm making comment on your starting point about standards. By all means it's up to the Steem users to use their voting power to create standards.
No worries, your comment is spot on.
It's a little different than my point, which is that for the growth of Steemit today, blindly upvoting articles that are 1) poorly researched and 2) will antagonize or put off people who would fit in well with Steemit is bad strategically. For anyone from the Ethereum community whose first experience with Steemit was this article and see how successful it was, they would laugh off Steemit as a joke.
You can't please everybody.
Your point is taken. It's just that first of all I doubt reasonable people would blow off Steem because some percentage of the content is at odds with them. Secondly, and it's hard to phrase this properly without sounding elitist, do we really need people here who are so easily turned off? Consider that this is community generated content. You'll seldom find complete accuracy here although one would wish the best examples of researched journalism would receive the most backing.
Your call for quality journalism is commended. alas it's something that while we might assume cream will rise to the top people flock mostly to what they want to hear.
Humans.
Well put. I am glad that someone else was also able to point out his mistakes. Not many people payed attention to my comments above.
You know what your talking about. Don't know why I was not following. Don't worry I fixed that problem.
People hold ETH because it is a better store of value than Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency right now. It is trending up, and people expect that to continue. There is a shortage of stable tokens which requires the current situation. Also it's not easy to spend ETH, there aren't shops accepting ETH like it is currency, and taxes are high for those who cash out into fiat. Typically people spend as little of it as possible and hedge.
One thing about Ethereum is, it's market cap is likely to go up when it switches to Proof of Stake and everyone else expects similar. So it's hard to sell it for peanuts. Whether it is a bubble? Most spaces are in a bubble, real estate, stocks, housing, so why would crypto be any different from everything else in the economy?
It's also a typical bubble. We get these cycles and have seen this before in 2011 and in 2013.
There is a difference between performance of an asset and its quality as a store of value. ETH has seen tremendous performance recently - other assets might enjoy a position as a better long term store of value.
Yes, people, please read this and use your brain. I couldn't have written it better.