Ask HN: Is there a bubble occurring with Ethereum?

It depends upon the context. I'm inclinded to say yes because I see my 22 year old coworkers buy eth on margin. Usually when new investors are buying on margin its a sign that there's a bubble forming or it may even be hitting its bubble peak soon. But I could be wrong I haven't watched the news on it so I'm not aware of the context of the rise in value.

I failed to understand the awesomeness of Ethereum to be honest.

I also think, most people who tried to explain it didn't do good job either.

The most frequent explanation you would hear is that Ethereum is a Turing complete world computer that can do anything.

But in my opinion, the above sentence is misleading marketing.

You would also hear statement like "Ethereum is a blockchain that runs code". Well a blockchain is a datastructure, like a linked list. A datastructure only stores data, a datastructure doesn't run code.

If you look closer (correct me if I'm wrong), each program has to be executed by every single machine in the network to get cross verified. So the computation power of Ethereum is not the combination of all computers in the network, like you would imagine of a "world computer".

Also, the program has to be deterministic. This means it can't have random number, can't read data from outside APIs. I don't think being Turing complete is that useful.

It seems that way. It isn't new money entering the market, as chart data across Poloniex, BFX and BTC-E shows the biggest inflow is BTC/ETH. It's just the same old speculators getting in on the rush of a cheap alt-coin with better technological potential thats riding on some good news about its partnerships. It's a bubble, but who knows where the top is.