It's hard to explain to folks the value of ethereum

It's not, though. It's just that nobody does.

The value of Ethereum is that it's the native currency for a globally-distributed financial machine that can do most of the automated transactions and interactions of the Internet without any central control or chokepoints. Ethereum is what makes a global information framework run, and it takes Ethereum to make that framework run fairly. If you say that Ethereum allows for an Internet that everyone can interact with, transact with or profit from without interference simply by having a connection, you've got it. That's it. Right there.

But nobody bothers to explain it that way. Nobody wants to explain why the hell the root word is "cryptography." Nobody wants to use the word "distributed." Instead they go "look - a fake cat is worth a hundred thousand dollars, therefore buy ether." At least Beanie Babies were soft.

Yeah, mom'n'pop folk (or more accurately, their driving-for-Uber children) don't "get" bitcoin because nobody has bothered with the fundamentals since before it was $100. This is why every traditional investment manager under the sun barks "Tulip crisis!" in a Pavlovian fashion whenever you say "crypto" or "bitcoin."

I read a great quote from Eric Schmidt this morning:

The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.

People think they understand the Internet. My beef is they have no interest in understanding crypto, but they're all eager to buy some.