Very much so. The true con men and fraudsters have smelled blood in the water and are now gathering together a few token coders and a collection of cribbed marketing catchphrases to test out the limits of the greater fool theory.

Not a single one of these ICO-backed companies will be an ongoing endeavor in five years.

The way I see it, all asset classes are inflated: stocks are at nosebleed P/E ratios, bonds have next to no yield, house prices are once again at historic levels, and Silicon Valley unicorns are again getting unrealistic valuations. There's a lot of money sloshing around the economy looking for return. It's no wonder some of it ends up in cryptocurrencies.

Wait, if everything is inflated, then really, everything is actually in balance? But ok, so if most things are inflated, then what has proper value or is under valuated?

Subject being blockchain, I'm pretty sure Ethereum, Augur & MakerDAO are ones of those few rare under-valuated assets. Disclosure: I might own a few coins of each.

ethereum is undervalued @ over $200 a token because...what?

this is tulip mania. at least when a stock price shoots up over news, that company is (generally) backed by revenue. a sales channel. assets. something. anything.

a cryptographic signature is only worth something if a group of people all agree it is worth something.

before someone makes the fiat argument -- the USD is worth something because there are a lot of bullets and bombs behind it.

The correct analogue of cryptocurrency is not USD (because of the bullets and bombs you mention), but rather precious metals, particularly gold and silver. Yes, the metals do have practical applications, but that does not account for the majority of their price (value?).

You're gonna have a bad time if you are comparing cryptocurrency to metals. There are dozens of currencies that are widely used at the moment, and I'm willing to bet over the next 2-4 years we will get into the hundreds. Your cryptocurrency isn't valued because its rare, it's because everyone else is buying into the same coin. It only takes one new currency to come in and be better than YOURS to reduce its demand and subsequent value - no matter how rare your coins are. It's a stock market not a gold coin collection.

Well, not me, because I use the analogy to metals to not invest in crypto currency either. They're non-productive assets. I stick to stocks, bonds, and real estate.

USD was last valued in gold in the 1970s, it is a free floating Fiat currency since Nixon took down the Bretton Wood's gold backing.

USD is now viewed as obligations of the Government of the United States which gets its revenue from taxing its economy (a function of GDP) and is secured by the bullets and bombs parent writes about.

USD is _currently_ valued in Gold. Roughly 1238 USD = 1 oz of gold.

I think you meant "backed" by gold?

No it isn't, Gold is valued at 1238 USD per ounce.

It is also priced/valued against other major sovereign currencies like the euro, renminbi, yen, aud with enough spread for profitable arbitrage across exchanges when trading hours overlap for Sydney, Hong Kong, Beijing, Mumbai, Frankfurt, London and New York.

This would be true if people were creating new types of precious metals everyday

In my opinion, what it means is that you can expect lower than historically average returns on investments over the next decade or so. This could mean a crash followed by normal returns or just pitiful yet slow and steady growth -- no way to predict the path we get there.

It also means cryptocurrencies will be bid up in the short to medium term without regard to their fundamentals. Best of luck with your coins.

Everything can be inflated as these are income paying securities. If all securities pay meagre (or negative!) returns then all assets can be inflated simultaneously.

There are a lot of virtual asset holders that don't want to convert to money because of paying taxes, waiting to the day they don't have to at all. Some of them having so much that they can afford a few thousand ether, just to diversify and play lottery in the next big pump game. The project has someone known in the crypto-world behind it, and the claim is it will solve the speed, performance and transaction fee problems of major virtual assets. I guess they think this is enough assurance that it will offer some substantial ROI in the next bullish period of the crypto market.

As someone from that era, this seems much worse. It just seems like a scam to me. I keep noticing this trend that whenever there's a sudden drop in the price of a cryptocurrency the exchanges in question conveniently go offline. Seems a little more than coincidental. It's too easy to manipulate. Especially with the new trend of ICO's offering a "new" cryptocurrency built around their exchange. What happens to the currency if the exchange goes belly up? Plus they don't even have it working yet. No code, nothing. Even the write up in the article seems suspect.

"It would be able to process millions of transactions per second with no transaction fees."

"...namely transparency, security, process integrity, speed and lower transaction costs"

Which is it? None or lower? And lower than what? Pick one! It's like the old adage "A fool and his money are soon parted." If it sounds to good to be true, it's because it is.

It is well on its way to dwarf it.