> As far as GDP, Ethereum spawned an entire new industry with tons of companies paying actual salaries to people (in fiat, if I might add), all of whom bought lattes and cars and houses, and some, I'm sure, also bought Peloton bikes.
Paying developers goes in the cost column, not the benefit column. (If you hire a bunch of developers and pay them to sit around twiddling their thumbs all day, you're not growing the economy but rather damaging it - they could've done something more productive instead). The question is what value the ecosystem produces that people are paying in for. And there's certainly a subjective element to that, but the market price should be a sanity check.
Peloton sells exercise bikes and delivers virtual spin classes etc.. And while you can certainly argue they're overvalued (and I'd agree with you, FWIW), it's easy to see how they're actually doing something valuable in the real world - something that, in a small marginal way, improves peoples lives. We can have a sensible conversation about whether a weekly Peleton class is worth $45/month, but people are paying that much for it, not as a speculative "investment" but as a simple exchange of money for goods and services. Real people are better off - in that they were able to take the class and get fitter or whatever. There's certainly a speculative element on top of that, but at the foundational level there's real value being produced.
Where's the product or service for Ethereum? They've had long enough to come up with one. People used to talk about doing cross-border currency transfers (genuinely useful) or that cat breeding game (potentially genuinely fun), but nowadays fees are too high for either of those to be worthwhile and people don't really talk about them. It's not just excessive speculation on top of a fundamentally sound business; there's simply no there there.
Paying developers goes in the cost column, not the benefit column. (If you hire a bunch of developers and pay them to sit around twiddling their thumbs all day, you're not growing the economy but rather damaging it - they could've done something more productive instead). The question is what value the ecosystem produces that people are paying in for. And there's certainly a subjective element to that, but the market price should be a sanity check.
Peloton sells exercise bikes and delivers virtual spin classes etc.. And while you can certainly argue they're overvalued (and I'd agree with you, FWIW), it's easy to see how they're actually doing something valuable in the real world - something that, in a small marginal way, improves peoples lives. We can have a sensible conversation about whether a weekly Peleton class is worth $45/month, but people are paying that much for it, not as a speculative "investment" but as a simple exchange of money for goods and services. Real people are better off - in that they were able to take the class and get fitter or whatever. There's certainly a speculative element on top of that, but at the foundational level there's real value being produced.
Where's the product or service for Ethereum? They've had long enough to come up with one. People used to talk about doing cross-border currency transfers (genuinely useful) or that cat breeding game (potentially genuinely fun), but nowadays fees are too high for either of those to be worthwhile and people don't really talk about them. It's not just excessive speculation on top of a fundamentally sound business; there's simply no there there.