I am not a time traveler, but this sub is filled with garbage today, so I wanted to share some actual information.
I’m not sure if they’ll be among the upcoming Enterprise Ethereum Alliance members soon to be announced by ConsenSys, but State Street is getting involved with the group. They had representation at the EEA launch and are part of the technical working group already. The name may not resonate on this forum as much as some tech firms as it is not a consumer facing entity, but it is one of the official global systemically important banks with trillions of dollars in both assets under custody and assets under management and they are also putting a lot of money into developing blockchain solutions.

This is significant not only for the size and reach of the institution, but for the possibility that with sufficient support for Enterprise Ethereum financial institutions may be worried about missing out on an emergent blockchain standard considering that, to date, no other consortium or blockchain technology is gaining this much traction. One caveat is that SSB is continuing to aggressively research other blockchain solutions and are working with Hyperledger internally along with PeerNova’s Cuneiform. But at this point their commitment to the tech is not just speculative, they are demoing working implementations for clients. They have also been working with Solidity programming for over a year and describe it as being “intuitive and not dissimilar to coding in C”.

A year ago, when they did their first proof-of-concept, the internal conclusion was that Ethereum was not ready for prime time. But EEA and their new experiments with JPMorgan’s Quorum are convincing them otherwise. If companies start going live with Quorum based solutions for things such as OTC derivatives trading, a successful launch will lead to a desire for public chain interoperability and a need for industry wide standards. The tech is past the speculation phase and getting into the implementation phase. Which brings me to my last point in this exceedingly long post.

People in this sub are not seeing for forest for the trees. This example is just one industry that’s investing heavily and preparing to implement blockchain solutions. Ethereum is quickly emerging as the most likely candidate for a standard and people are still saying they’d be excited if Ethereum’s market cap achieves parity with Bitcoin’s peak.

Satoshi laid the groundwork, but Bitcoin’s market cap is a drop in the ocean if a fraction of these initiatives come to fruition. Yes, the future is uncertain and our investments could still tank, but a challenger likely to beat Ethereum as a new industry standard blockchain has yet to emerge. I think in a year’s time we’ll have a much clearer vision of where things are going but it’s very possible that in the not-too-distant future talk of breaking $250 and scalping 50 cents per ether day trading will seem quaint at best.

TL;DR Buckle up.