Ethereum definitely looks like it is in bubble territory to me. There's been a 3000% runup in the past few months. Most of the applications as you mentioned are based off the promise of something amazing rather than delivering something useful today.
I think the biggest hurdle is size of the blockchain. I tried downloading the entire blockchain and it got stuck... like downloading one block every 10 seconds, when the blockchain is roughly growing by this size. Found out I had to run geth --fast which donwloads only the headers for the blocks.
I'm just wondering how the average user or investor who is not a programmer is going to get the blockchain and backup their coins properly. Likely most people will keep their ethers on an exchange which is not secure.
I think the biggest hurdle is size of the blockchain. I tried downloading the entire blockchain and it got stuck... like downloading one block every 10 seconds, when the blockchain is roughly growing by this size. Found out I had to run geth --fast which donwloads only the headers for the blocks.
I'm just wondering how the average user or investor who is not a programmer is going to get the blockchain and backup their coins properly. Likely most people will keep their ethers on an exchange which is not secure.