the only way to be in on ether is to hold it. That's true for individuals and for large institutions joining the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. Behind the scenes, large institutions are buying up Ether and anticipating that it will become a part of the financial system (either that or it will become a shadow financial system, and they are therefore incentivized to be early adopters). There's no way to short ether or bitcoin. Everyone who is in is long. dapps don't do much right now (and there's a lot of writing about ponzi scheme dapps), but this is very early days and the flexibility of the ethereum platform is just starting to be fully understood. The article is right about the limitations of the bitcoin blockchain. Some commenters here are right about pieces like these being great advertisements for the platform and driving more buying. 1 Ether > $1000 USD in a matter of months, if not weeks.