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bradley13 writes:

[Ed note: According to Wikipedia, Ethereum "... is a public blockchain-based distributed computing platform, featuring smart contract functionality. It provides a decentralized virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine, that can execute peer-to-peer contracts using a cryptocurrency called ether."]

I've been experimenting with digital currencies over the past few months. As of today, I give up on Ethereum. After the DAO mess, and the hard-fork, the block chain has become huge. I tried a fresh resync today, and gave up after it reached more than 70GB; restarted with --fast (which uses an abbreviated format), and it has been running for hours. Ethereum has apparently become unusable unless you trust an online service, which kind of defeats the point.

On a related note: It is now possible to get a refund from The DAO [The Decentralized Autonomous Organization -Ed.] I received an informative email from the BTC/ETH broker I use, explaining how to do this. In a nutshell:

1. Visit https://www.myetherwallet.com/#the-dao. This will take you to a page called "Withdraw DAO"
2. Locate your wallet - you will have to give the service access (if you don't trust them, create a new wallet). Mist users: Your wallet is a "keystore file", you can locate it under Accounts:Backup:Accounts.
3. You will then have to provide your password, to unlock your wallet.
4. Select Withdraw DAO for ETH

If you bought The DAO near the end, when you were paying a premium, you can repeat the process in the tab "Withdraw extraBalance" to reclaim the premium that you paid. You can also repeat the process, to withdraw into the ETC hard-fork. I went through all of this today, and it was a surprisingly easy process.

Then - since synchronization appears to be impossible - you can use that same online service to get rid of your ETH:

1. Go to your broker, and tell them you want to buy BTC with ETH.
2. Go to MyEtherWallet, select "Send Ether and Tokens", and complete the payment in ETH.
3. Note: You may want to leave 0.05 ETH or so in your wallet, if you think you might want to try ETH again someday. This would pay for "gas" for some future transaction.

Meanwhile, I've not only done all of that, but also submitted this story, and the ETH "fast" synchronization still isn't finished. Bye bye Ethereum...

P.S. I have no connection to bity.com except as a happy customer.

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