Hey, so... Ethereum? DAO?
Those two words either have a lot of meaning to you, or they have no meaning to you whatsoever. If Ethereum -- the world's second most valuable cryptocurrency network after Bitcoin itself -- does ring a bell, then you might have some of your valuable Ethers locked up in the DAO... I won't even begin to explain what that is. Decentralized Autonomous something or other; in reality, it was poorly coded, and it became a magical blackhole for money that a hacker exploited, driving roughly $50,000,000 of Ether into a DAO contract of his choosing.
The funds, still within the Ethereum, but unable to be moved off of it and converted into real world paper cash for a temporary period of time, presented the Ethereum community with a window of opportunity to make a conscious impact on the evolution of their community's standards.
Rather than allowing an unknown hacker to radically redistribute ownership of Ether within the network to himself during the project's first year, to the detriment of all other users on the network.
Because the community of miners and users quickly unified around the "fork" or software upgrade offered up by developers as a possible solution, the $50,000,000 in Ether was recovered -- so if you have any of your Ethers locked up in the DAO, rejoice!
Now you can get them back.
It's apparently quite easy to move your funds off the shipwrecked DAO. The Ethereum community's most popular block explorer and contract development suite, ether.camp, posted on their blog a rather simple how-to of the process:
1. Go to the Withdraw contract:
https://live.ether.camp/account/bf4ed7b27f1d666546e30d74d50d173d20bca754
2. Click on the invoke button
3. Select: withdraw function
4. Paste your private key
DONE!!!
But I thought Ethereum was... impossible to use? Sorry, I'll stop trolling the anti-Ethereum trolls. They have a right to be wrong. We all do.
Speaking of which, as @wearsy tweeted at me this morning, "I guess you were right about ETHC....down 26% ATM. Good webcast last night BTW."
You know, I try my best. I'm about conveying information and letting the community decide for themselves. They're certainly smart enough, just give them the facts and let the facts speak. It's also great to know my friends at The Huffington Post, as well as my other media relationships connected to that, have my back in the face of inevitable critique -- and, more important, it is fantastic that they have an ongoing commitment to aggressive commentary of the emerging digital asset industry.
Organizations that have your back and respect your views. An audience that thinks for itself, but also clearly respects some of the legwork I put into these things. What can I say? I'm very fortunate.
HOW DO YOU GET STARTED WITH ETHER & CRYPTOCURRENCY?
Millions of people are already using digital currencies including Bitcoin and Ether. Depending on your level of tech savvy, you could join their ranks in just a few minutes. Watch the recent explainer for how to buy your first Bitcoin or Ether stash:
Full disclosure: Not financial advice, provided for educational purposes only. Not intended as a recommendation to buy or sell any cryptocurrency or asset. At time of publication, I do hold some bitcoins and ethers in my long term portfolio. No warranties or guarantees for the external site's DAO withdrawal tool; cryptocurrencies including Ether are still volatile, and may lose or gain in value rapidly.