Kalp Studio's BUILD Bharat Initiative Expands with Nationwide Scholarship Program with IBM

Yahoo

2 hours ago

Yahoo

Ethereum Has Already Won—Paul Brody

At the end of this month (July), the Ethereum public blockchain turns 10 years old. An inordinate amount of time in the world of crypto has been spent on discussing whether or not Ethereum will succeed and become the foundation for the next iteration of global commerce and finance. All this speculation is wasted effort. Ethereum has already won. The losers just don't know it yet. You may be tempted to discount my opinion because I'm a notorious ETH "maxi" and have been for a little over a decade now. Hear me out anyway. Side note: Yes. Really. Over a decade. Vitalik Buterin got me started on Ethereum and in my prior incarnation as an IBM executive, I showed off IBM's first foray into blockchain technology at CES in January 2015. That's a story for another day, but I've been in this since the beginning. Blockchains are, first and foremost, technology platforms. We talk about them like they are financial systems, but they behave, and they grow, like technology platforms. And if we look at the history of technology platforms, we can see some clear patterns emerging that Ethereum tends to follow. First, it's a winner-take-nearly-all business. IBM has 100% of the mainframe software business. Windows has 90% of desktops. Android covers about 90% of all smartphones. TCP/IP is about 99.9% of all network traffic. This pattern repeats itself because computing platforms have two factors going in favor of a winner-take-all business model. First, zero marginal cost from adding users. Each additional user costs nearly nothing, so networks can add new users for free. Second, network effects mean that more users make networks more valuable and, as a result, it's extremely hard (but not impossible) for laggards to catch up with the leaders. In the early days of platform development, it's often easy for winners to come and go. Network effects aren't big enough matter, and better products can sweep aside prior leaders. We saw this early in the world of PC and mobile devices as early leaders (Apple II, Commodore 64, and later with Nokia and Blackberry smartphones) were swept aside by impressive new platforms. In all those cases, however, the platform "type" was itself very new (less than a decade old) and broad adoption was also relatively low (under 10% of the public). With Ethereum's official 10th birthday at hand, we have passed by both of those metrics. By many accounts more than 20% of the U.S. population owns crypto and blockchain platforms are more than a decade old now. There are, from a technological standpoint, better blockchains than Ethereum out there. One of the foundation lessons of global standards is this: the best technology never wins. From video cassettes to DVDs to mobile computing, platforms gain traction when they get "good enough" for a certain set of use cases like payments of NFTs. Many of the most successful platforms never really solve all their key issues and they often get shoe-horned into use cases for which they were never really intended. Case in point: the internet itself was never designed for voice and video and has never really fixed issues with quality-of-service management. But it's good enough and we all have it, so that's how we make calls these days. Yeah, but? So, if Ethereum really won, you might be asking, why are there still so many other thriving blockchain ecosystems? I think there are two answers. First, big network and technology leadership wins don't happen instantly. They take years to manifest fully and in the fog of battle, it can be hard to see who is pulling ahead. With Ethereum's transition to proof-of-stake and the creation of the L2 ecosystem, it's clear the network has seen off its biggest challengers and is steadily building on an already dominant position. Number two players will come and go, but turning back Ethereum's dominance now looks nearly impossible. Ethereum had a near-100% share of the smart contract ecosystem for a long time. As other chains came online, Ethereum's share of key measures like the DeFi ecosystem fell significantly, bottoming out at around 50% in 2023. Since then, it has stabilized and started to rise again, fueled by the success of the L2 ecosystem. No other single ecosystem has even a 10% share of the total market. This isn't an unusual pattern. Microsoft Windows became the largest desktop computing platform in 1984 after a fierce fight in a crowded market. At that time, it still faced intense competition from Commodore, Atari, Apple and others. NeXT, Commodore, Atari, and the Apple II continued to be sold well into the 1990s. BlackBerry sales actually kept rising for the first two years the iPhone was available. Only the Mac survived the long-term PC competition. In the mainframe business, the exit path was even longer. IBM came to dominate the mainframe business after the release of the System/360 in 1964. Unisys, IBM's last global competitor created by the merger of Burroughs and Sperry (of Univac fame), manufactured their last proprietary hardware mainframe in 2015. Secondly, the structure of the blockchain ecosystem itself will further extend the "shelf-life" of those networks that failed to gain traction. Most of these are run by foundations, not corporations. As such, there are no shareholders who can demand a return on their capital. Consequently, there's no real exit pressure on chains that haven't succeeded. Expect them to keep on releasing minor updates and mountains of Ethereum-related-concerns on X for the foreseeable future. If there is one final lesson we should take from the world of technology standards, it is this: once locked in place, it is astonishingly difficult and exceedingly rare for the leaders to lose their top spot. Windows has been the winner on the desktop since 1984. IBM has won the data center since 1964. I'm willing to bet that Ethereum will still be the world's preeminent blockchain ecosystem in 50 years. Disclaimer: These are the personal views of the author and do not represent the views of EY.

Yahoo

5 hours ago

Yahoo

Ethereum Has Already Won—Paul Brody

At the end of this month (July), the Ethereum public blockchain turns 10 years old. An inordinate amount of time in the world of crypto has been spent on discussing whether or not Ethereum will succeed and become the foundation for the next iteration of global commerce and finance. All this speculation is wasted effort. Ethereum has already won. The losers just don't know it yet. You may be tempted to discount my opinion because I'm a notorious ETH "maxi" and have been for a little over a decade now. Hear me out anyway. Side note: Yes. Really. Over a decade. Vitalik Buterin got me started on Ethereum and in my prior incarnation as an IBM executive, I showed off IBM's first foray into blockchain technology at CES in January 2015. That's a story for another day, but I've been in this since the beginning. Blockchains are, first and foremost, technology platforms. We talk about them like they are financial systems, but they behave, and they grow, like technology platforms. And if we look at the history of technology platforms, we can see some clear patterns emerging that Ethereum tends to follow. First, it's a winner-take-nearly-all business. IBM has 100% of the mainframe software business. Windows has 90% of desktops. Android covers about 90% of all smartphones. TCP/IP is about 99.9% of all network traffic. This pattern repeats itself because computing platforms have two factors going in favor of a winner-take-all business model. First, zero marginal cost from adding users. Each additional user costs nearly nothing, so networks can add new users for free. Second, network effects mean that more users make networks more valuable and, as a result, it's extremely hard (but not impossible) for laggards to catch up with the leaders. In the early days of platform development, it's often easy for winners to come and go. Network effects aren't big enough matter, and better products can sweep aside prior leaders. We saw this early in the world of PC and mobile devices as early leaders (Apple II, Commodore 64, and later with Nokia and Blackberry smartphones) were swept aside by impressive new platforms. In all those cases, however, the platform "type" was itself very new (less than a decade old) and broad adoption was also relatively low (under 10% of the public). With Ethereum's official 10th birthday at hand, we have passed by both of those metrics. By many accounts more than 20% of the U.S. population owns crypto and blockchain platforms are more than a decade old now. There are, from a technological standpoint, better blockchains than Ethereum out there. One of the foundation lessons of global standards is this: the best technology never wins. From video cassettes to DVDs to mobile computing, platforms gain traction when they get "good enough" for a certain set of use cases like payments of NFTs. Many of the most successful platforms never really solve all their key issues and they often get shoe-horned into use cases for which they were never really intended. Case in point: the internet itself was never designed for voice and video and has never really fixed issues with quality-of-service management. But it's good enough and we all have it, so that's how we make calls these days. Yeah, but? So, if Ethereum really won, you might be asking, why are there still so many other thriving blockchain ecosystems? I think there are two answers. First, big network and technology leadership wins don't happen instantly. They take years to manifest fully and in the fog of battle, it can be hard to see who is pulling ahead. With Ethereum's transition to proof-of-stake and the creation of the L2 ecosystem, it's clear the network has seen off its biggest challengers and is steadily building on an already dominant position. Number two players will come and go, but turning back Ethereum's dominance now looks nearly impossible. Ethereum had a near-100% share of the smart contract ecosystem for a long time. As other chains came online, Ethereum's share of key measures like the DeFi ecosystem fell significantly, bottoming out at around 50% in 2023. Since then, it has stabilized and started to rise again, fueled by the success of the L2 ecosystem. No other single ecosystem has even a 10% share of the total market. This isn't an unusual pattern. Microsoft Windows became the largest desktop computing platform in 1984 after a fierce fight in a crowded market. At that time, it still faced intense competition from Commodore, Atari, Apple and others. NeXT, Commodore, Atari, and the Apple II continued to be sold well into the 1990s. BlackBerry sales actually kept rising for the first two years the iPhone was available. Only the Mac survived the long-term PC competition. In the mainframe business, the exit path was even longer. IBM came to dominate the mainframe business after the release of the System/360 in 1964. Unisys, IBM's last global competitor created by the merger of Burroughs and Sperry (of Univac fame), manufactured their last proprietary hardware mainframe in 2015. Secondly, the structure of the blockchain ecosystem itself will further extend the "shelf-life" of those networks that failed to gain traction. Most of these are run by foundations, not corporations. As such, there are no shareholders who can demand a return on their capital. Consequently, there's no real exit pressure on chains that haven't succeeded. Expect them to keep on releasing minor updates and mountains of Ethereum-related-concerns on X for the foreseeable future. If there is one final lesson we should take from the world of technology standards, it is this: once locked in place, it is astonishingly difficult and exceedingly rare for the leaders to lose their top spot. Windows has been the winner on the desktop since 1984. IBM has won the data center since 1964. I'm willing to bet that Ethereum will still be the world's preeminent blockchain ecosystem in 50 years. Disclaimer: These are the personal views of the author and do not represent the views of in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data

Buy Or Sell IBM Stock Ahead Of Its Upcoming Earnings?

Forbes

6 hours ago

Forbes

Buy Or Sell IBM Stock Ahead Of Its Upcoming Earnings?

Photo by Joan Cros Garcia/Corbis via Getty Images IBM (NYSE:IBM) is set to publish its earnings report on Wednesday, July 23, 2025. Over the past five years, IBM has shown a pattern of achieving positive one-day returns in 63% of the cases following its earnings releases. The median positive return during these periods was a notable 4.8%, with the highest one-day positive return soaring to 13.0%. For those traders focused on events, while the actual results compared to consensus and expectations will be essential, an awareness of these historical trends can potentially provide an advantage. Traders typically utilize two main strategies when addressing IBM's earnings: The current consensus forecasts for IBM's forthcoming earnings stand at $2.66 per share on revenue of $16.58 billion. This reflects an increase from the year-ago quarter, which saw earnings of $2.43 per share on revenue of $15.77 billion. From a fundamental standpoint, IBM presently has a market capitalization of $265 billion. Over the past twelve months, the company generated revenue of $63 billion, attained $10 billion in operating income, and recorded a net profit of $5.5 billion. That said, if you are looking for upside with less volatility than individual stocks, the Trefis High Quality portfolio offers an alternative — having outperformed the S&P 500 and produced returns surpassing 91% since its inception. Additionally, see – RGTI Stock: Path To 10x Growth See earnings reaction history of all stocks IBM's Historical Odds Of Positive Post-Earnings Return Here are some insights regarding one-day (1D) post-earnings returns: Additional data for the observed 5-Day (5D) and 21-Day (21D) returns following earnings is summarized alongside the statistics in the table below. 5-Day (5D) and 21-Day (21D) returns following earnings Correlation Between 1D, 5D, and 21D Historical Returns A relatively less risky approach (though not beneficial if the correlation is weak) is to assess the correlation between short-term and medium-term returns following earnings, identify the pair with the strongest correlation, and execute the corresponding trade. For instance, if 1D and 5D exhibit the highest correlation, a trader can position themselves 'long' for the subsequent 5 days if the 1D post-earnings return is positive. Here is some correlation data derived from 5-year and 3-year (more recent) history. It is important to note that the correlation 1D_5D pertains to the relationship between 1D post-earnings returns and the ensuing 5D returns. Correlation Between 1D, 5D and 21D Historical Returns Learn more about Trefis RV strategy that has outperformed its all-cap stocks benchmark (combination of all three, the S&P 500, S&P mid-cap, and Russell 2000), delivering strong returns for investors. Separately, if you are interested in gaining upside with a steadier performance than an individual stock like International Business Machines, consider the High Quality portfolio, which has outperformed the S&P and achieved >91% returns since its inception. Invest with Trefis Market-Beating Portfolios See all Trefis Price Estimates

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Ethereum Has Already Won—Paul Brody

Ethereum Has Already Won—Paul Brody

Buy Or Sell IBM Stock Ahead Of Its Upcoming Earnings?

Kalp Studio's BUILD Bharat Initiative Expands with Nationwide Scholarship Program with IBM

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Ethereum Has Already Won—Paul Brody

Ethereum Has Already Won—Paul Brody

Buy Or Sell IBM Stock Ahead Of Its Upcoming Earnings?

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