Note from the Publisher: If you read about the recent hack of the DAO digital currency fund, then you're aware that other forms of digital currency beyond bitcoin are starting to gain traction - a sort of Bitcoin 2.0 if you will. In this blogpost, author David Seamen asserts that the digital currency Ethereum, despite it's recent negative news, is a crypto-currency more conducive to widespread corporate adaptation. As we've said before, the emerging trend of digital currencies is one that you should stay on top of.
"Ethereum, the world’s second most valuable cryptocurrency network after Bitcoin, recently fell victim to a sophisticated hack within one of its third party developer contracts, the DAO, which exposed more than $50,000,000 in user funds to loss — although for now, it appears the money is safely in frozen limbo, with a more concrete solution on the way in the form of a coming software update a majority of miners or nodes need to accept, known as a “hard fork” in cryptocurrency lingo.
The loss is embarrassing, but from a technical perspective, no great harm has been done, in my view. (Full disclosure: I do own some bitcoins and ether at time of publication; ether is the built-in currency or “fuel” of the Ethereum network. Like bitcoin, it is mined on computers all over the world.)
Ethereum is a year old in the marketplace, and has already briefly flirted with a US $1.5 billion market valuation. Despite this crazy vote of confidence from the crypto market, the technology is still new. Bitcoin had many problems in its first couple years that required correction or tweaking."
Read Full Article at HuffingtonPost