Reading about Ethereum has been a really interesting adventure into the incredibly powerful information bubbles we live in and the market bubbles they create.
At the start of the year, Ethereum was worth about USD$30. At that time I was trying to figure out how to start mining it. I was having some trouble and decided to pause for a few months. Fast forward to May and it is worth USD$150 per unit. At this time, I learned my computer couldn’t handle mining Ethereum. Within a month, Ethereum topped out at around USD$420. As I write this, it has started to crash (a.k.a. perform a market correction,) back to the USD$200 range.
Leading up to and during this market spike, there was an incredible amount of press being generated. Companies were doing ICOs (initial coin offerings,) where their digital coin would be built on top of the technology of Ethereum itself. Other companies performing services related to cryptocurrencies were gaining millions of dollars from startup investors. And, the optimal video cards that were used to mine Ethereum were selling out worldwide. All of this was being publicized.
On top of that, professional finance traders were creating or attempting to create and trade cryptocurrency portfolios. To follow suit, local and national governments were quickly rolling out regulation or legislation regarding tax codes, legality of…
