I hate reading crypto articles that preclude the meat of the story with the entire history of Bitcoin and blockchain only to leave you with the new information appended at the end… hmm, kinda like a blockchain no? Let’s just SegWit this one and assume you know enough about blockchain to understand why the technology is important.

Why has the price of Ether gone up ~800% since January 1st?

Answer: Investors are speculating that blockchain technology will become ubiquitous — across all industries, in our daily lives and in every nook and cranny of the global economy.

So, if you’re an investor that believes the prevailing theory that this Blockchain thing is BIG, like internet 3.0 BIG, what specifically do you bet on?

Answer: Ethereum and specifically it’s crypto-currency Ether (ETH)

Ethereum is like Amazon Web Services for blockchain technology. Organizations looking to harness blockchain(s) need not worry about implementing their own proprietary blockchain network if they build their solution on Ethereum. They’ll pay a small fee in the form of gas to the network in exchange for executing the logic contained within their smart contracts — programs that run on the Ethereum Virtual Machine, written in Solidity, a javascript like language.

This paradigm can be thought of the same way that Amazon Lambda works today — a function that waits in the Amazon cloud and executes it’s logic when called upon.

With Ethereum however, the “cloud” is decentralized - there is no Amazon like entity that owns the network or infrastructure. It’s made up of nodes that can be owned and operated by anyone using the laptops, Raspberry Pis and desktops we already have.

In the near future our phones will also join in — before long, we’ll be witness to a decentralized network that’s global in scope with billions of nodes working together — the world computer.

Simply, that’s what Internet 3.0 is. That’s why so many geeks are screaming “THIS IS GOING TO BE BIGGER THAN THE INTERNET”. Because it literally and figuratively could be.

Ethereum is the AWS of blockchains. Investors are betting on it.

Why do investors believe that Ethereum will come out on top?

Answer: Consensus.

Recently a coalition called the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance was created. Founding members include Microsoft, J.P.Morgan, Intel, BP and others who have essentially put a stake in the ground, confirmed that blockchain is for real, and that Ethereum (not Bitcoin) is the blockchain technology that will bring these new use cases to fruition.

Ethereum’s intrinsically trusted system is the most promising solution for enterprise Blockchain adoption, given its maturity and multi-purpose design. — Ethereum Enterprise Alliance

Even the United Nations is now distributing aid via an Ethereum powered dapp.

Blockchain is here, it’s here in a big way, and it’s here to stay. Investors are betting on it.

Full Circle

If Blockchains permeate our world as widely theorized, and Ethereum is THE network of enterprise blockchains, then having access to the network resources will be important. Much like how AWS charges by the resource hour or utilization, Ethereum runs on “gas” which is a transaction fee paid in Ether as an incentive for the nodes’ participation (Proof-of-Work today, Proof-of-Stake in the Metropolis release). Simply, to run a dapp or release a coin on Ethereum, you’ll need Ether.

For all intents and purposes once Ethereum’s Casper / Proof-of-Stake is implemented, ETH monetary inflation rate will be close to zero ongoing as policy.