First of all, I write this as an entrepreneur currently invested in this subject. There are plenty of financial and programming experts around Medium if you rather take a more analytical approach to this subject. I’ve spread a few links to their work in this article.

I don’t call myself Hype over nothing. If I’ve been reading so much about something it usually means it is close to the threshold of mainstream consciousness.

I’ve been keeping a close eye on digital currency for a few years now, but never really decided to pull the trigger on any investment until last week.

In case you don’t know what Bitcoin and blockchain mean, here is my take on it:

Bitcoin is “programmable money”. Each unit is a piece on a vast network called a blockchain, designed to make decentralized secure encrypted transactions.

What does “decentralized” mean?

Think about the Internet. It is centralized, meaning they run on computers owned by a company or a government. If these central computers go down for any reason (such as an attack or a power failure), the whole network goes down with them.

A decentralized network is made of everyone’s computers.

If a service such as Twitter or Facebook runs like this, the only way for it to shut down is if every computer on the network gets shut down.

This is the greatest benefit of a decentralized network, there is no single point of failure.

While Bitcoin is limited to secure encrypted transactions, Ethereum allows what they call “smart contracts”. Simply put, it is a way for contracts to be handled between two parties with no need for a third party mediator. Ethereum is a blockchain network for “programmable contracts” with code that is streets ahead of Bitcoin in terms of flexibility.

There are many people calling Ethereum the first step in a so called Internet of Agreements. A revolution of sorts, decentralizing crucial operations in our everyday lives, making it more secure against ill intent, fraud, collusion and other types of shenanigans by cutting out the middlemen and lowering costs for the user.

In a very near future, banks, law firms and businesses will be hiring tons of developers to engage in Solidity coding, the programming language used by Ethereum. Some of them already are.

As I’ve said, Solidity is more flexible than Bitcoin’s code.

Check out this comparison shamelessly copied from this article:

Here’s an example of a script in Bitcoin:

OP_DUP OP_HASH160 62e907b15cbf27d5425399ebf6f0fb50ebb88f18 OP_EQUALVERIFY OP_CHECKSIG

And one in Ethereum’s Solidity:

contract Simple {

function() {

var two = 1 + 1;

}

}

This simplicity means that developers that never worked with crypto can hit the ground running and create decentralized applications(called dApps) in a matter of days.

While Bitcoin was created by a nearly mythical anonymous guy/gal/crew that calls itself Satoshi Nakamoto, Ethereum was created by Vitalik Buterin, a highly accessible man that usually responds questions on twitter and makes himself known all around the cryptosphere.

There are many uses for this technology, but is it worth investing on?

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance seems to think so. They are a recently created consortium composed of companies such as Intel, Samsung, Microsoft, Toyota, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse and many others.

Here is the EEA’s mission statement:

“A clear roadmap for enterprise features and requirements

Robust governance model and accountability, clarity around IP and licensing models for open source technology

Resources for businesses to learn about Ethereum and leverage this groundbreaking technology to address specific industry use cases”

Early adopters were greatly rewarded for their support. The Ethereum currency ETH was valued at $8 in January 2017 and as of right now(May 31st 2017), it is valued at $228.

And this is just broaching the surface. When you read about the applications in development and the tokens market, there are tons of new material to study.

Ethereum may be well on its way to becoming something incredible.

Yet, the future is not set in stone. No one knows the truth about tomorrow.

Get as much information as you can from all sources, those who speak well,

those who speak ill and find your own truth.

If you are going to invest, remember:

The best time to invest was yesterday, the second best time is now.

Never invest what you cannot afford to lose.

Keep yourself informed.

I must thank the great communities of r/ethtrader and r/ethereum for being great sources of information and discussion.

Cheers