I am really surprised with how many people are investing their money in the cryptocurrency (CC for short) without any knowledge. They are only riding the hype. I have explained earlier how that is nothing but gambling, and you usually lose when you gamble.

I have suggested in Part 1 of this article that you should only invest in CC that offer real value. I have mentioned three examples. Today I would like to talk about another case study. But before that let me introduce my Real Value Meter first.

Real Value Meter

I would like to make the evaluation of CCs more accurate (and fun!). I will give a real value score for every CC I study. I will call it the real value meter. The MAX score will be 10 and the MIN would be zero. If a CC gets 10, then it means that in my opinion that project offers a very high real value. On the other hand, if it gets a zero, it means that it does not offer any real value. For example, Peercoin would get a score of 2 or 3.

Whit that said, I suggest that you never invest in a CC that has a score less than 5. In fact, you better restrict your investments to CC with a score higher than 7, except when the CC has a high score in the other factors (I have mentioned earlier that offering a real value is one important factor in choosing the right CC to invest in, but there are other factors that I will explain in later articles)

Example # 4: Etherium

image source: Ether's assets for download.

I am sure that most of you have heard about Ether. Its price is hitting all-time highs (ATH for short) every week (and sometimes every day). One of the reasons behind this soar is that Ether offers real value. The founders of Ether did not copy Bitcoin and change the name! they studied Bitcoin and determined its strengths and weaknesses. They have also studied the needs of the new economy that Bitcoin did not cover. Then they have designed a great CC to offer so much more!

Ether beats Bitcoin in its own game

Ether has all the values of Bitcoin and more. Like bitcoin, you can use it to store value (that is as a currency) and to transfer money electronically. Ether also, has faster transaction and require much less fees.

Smart Contracts

But that is not all. Ether offers real values that Bitcoin does not. One of the real values that Ether offers is smart contracts. Ethereum's website defines smart contracts as :

applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference

Smart contracts in plain English are contracts that can be programmed with the coin. You don't write the terms, but rather you program them! This means that they will be executed automatically. None of the parties can float the contract. The amazing thing is that this is not enforced by the low but by the blockchain itself.

More than a currency!

Moreover, Etherium offers a platform for decentralized apps. That is why you see so many new coins are Ether-based. At the time of this article, Ethereum had 491 dapps!! Ethereum even makes it easy for teams to kickstart their projects with a crowdsale (aka ICO).

Less Security

The only problem with Ether, in my opinion, is that its security is lower than Bitcoin. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying Ether is not secure. I am saying that Ether has traded a little bit of security for faster and cheaper transactions. Security is very important in the crypto world. Therefore, I believe that

Real Value Meter Score for Ether

Based on all that, I would give Ether a score of 8 on the Real Value Meter.

What Do You Think ?!

What about you? What is your opinion? What is your real value score for Ether?
And how much would you give to Bitcoin? (I intentionally did not give Bitcoin a score! I wanted to hear the opinion of fellow Steemians first.