23 July 2014
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Ethereum Genesis Sale starts today!
Ethereum is a new crypto-currency that has been under development for the last couple of years lead by Vitalik Buterin. Ethereum is not just another "alt coin" though, it really is the next generation of this paradigm, taking it out of the basic currency role by offering full-scale general purpose distributed application development and testing framework. Ethereum does still have an associated currency aspect called "Ether" (ETH) which performs the important role of "fuel" in the Ethereum network. Distributed applications in the Ethereum network require payments in the form of Ether to fuel every computational step and storage operation on the system.
Bitcoin and Litecoin are often thought of as the gold and silver of the crypto-currencies. To continue with that analogy, Ethereum could be considered as the "oil" of crypto-currency since it plays the role of fuel which can be used for any generic application. Another interesting and important aspect is that Ethereum could help to pave the way towards how a real-world resource-based economy might be implemented, which seems to be the only viable way to transcend the economic bottom-line problem.
Yesterday was a special day for the Ethereum community because the so-called "Genesis Sale" of Ether began. The Genesis Sale is a forty two day period in which Ether is being made available in exchange for bitcoin starting at a rate of 2000 ETH per BTC for the first two weeks and then reducing by 30 ETH each day after that. Ethers are purchased from the Ethereum home page at www.ethereum.org. All the BTC accepted by the organisation for he purchase of Ethers are deposited into a single bitcoin address so that people can easily see how much has been bought so far here. As I write this about twenty hours into the sale over five thousand BTC worth has already been purchased which is over three million US dollars!
See also:
- Ether purchase troubleshooting - what to do if your connection died or something
- Background on the mechanics of the ether pre-sale
