![](\"https:\/\/pbs.twimg.com\/media\/CSAvMSEWwAE8hMx.jpg\")
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So you may have noticed that Bitcoin is on fire recently. \u00a0As I write this, the price of Bitcoin is almost $2500<\/a>. \u00a0Yikes.<\/p>\n I continue to be surprised by the escalating price of Bitcoin. \u00a0I’m even more surprised by the\u00a0price of Ethereum<\/a>. \u00a0Bloomberg has an interesting article up this morning\u00a0suggesting that the market capitalization of Ethereum might overtake Bitcoin<\/a> by the end of the year. \u00a0Given last summer’s hack of the DAO (that literally split the currency down the middle<\/a>), this competitive pressure is noteworthy. \u00a0Of course, Ethereum (as a currency) has a way to go before it’ll get to where Bitcoin currently is, but the fact that it’s very much on its way is\u00a0a big deal. \u00a0That suggests a few things to me: 1) we’re definitely in a bubble, and 2) that the smart contract capability of Ethereum gives it legs (despite the hack that would have proven disastrous for another alternative currency).<\/p>\n One of the things that seems most fruitful to watch in my opinion is the\u00a0Enterprise Ethereum Alliance<\/a>. \u00a0Specifically, a number of financial, technology, and other miscellaneous enterprise players are working with the Ethereum blockchain and (I think more importantly) the smart contracts capability that Ethereum has built in under the hood. \u00a0Much of the “buzz” out there is about blockchain specifically – i.e. the Merkle tree<\/a> part of\u00a0how Bitcoin works (the ledger). \u00a0Ethereum is different in that there is another part to it beyond this – specifically, a virtual machine that can run decentralized processing to enforce smart contracts (really any functionality, but the original purpose was contract-related.)<\/p>\n If you’re new to Ethereum, the primary substantive difference is that Ethereum has a “Turing-complete” computing capability built into it for the purposes of enforcing contractual relationships. \u00a0What the hell does “Turing-complete” mean, you ask? \u00a0It’s just a fancy way of saying general-purpose computing capability. Yes, I realize that’s an oversimplification. \u00a0But the point is that it can do stuff: implement functionality the same way that (for example) a Java virtual machine can or that my laptop can. \u00a0So you can literally run application logic on the blockchain itself.<\/p>\n That, in itself, is interesting, and I’m thinking it’s pretty fundamental to where Blockchain applications in enterprise are likely to want to go next. \u00a0Sure, a distributed real estate ledger is interesting. \u00a0But the ability to actually build and implement application logic into a contract is the logical next step. \u00a0It’s powerful – but (as the DOA hack highlights) also ramps up the importance of implementing the logic correctly. \u00a0There’s\u00a0plenty to keep up to date on here. \u00a0On the whole, I’m a little surprised we’re not seeing as much attention and “hype” on smart contracts in the industry hype as we are on blockchain specifically. \u00a0Or maybe people use “blockchain” to refer to both the ledger and also smart contracts? \u00a0I’m not sure they are though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So you may have noticed that Bitcoin is on fire recently. \u00a0As I write this, the price of Bitcoin is almost $2500. \u00a0Yikes. I continue to be surprised by the escalating price of Bitcoin. \u00a0I’m even more surprised by the\u00a0price of Ethereum. \u00a0Bloomberg has an interesting article up this morning\u00a0suggesting that the market capitalization of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[17,50,112],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security","tag-blockchain","tag-ethereum","tag-smart-contracts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/securitycurve.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/securitycurve.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/securitycurve.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/securitycurve.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/securitycurve.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/securitycurve.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/securitycurve.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/securitycurve.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/securitycurve.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}