Ethereum, a blockchain programming platform (and client of mine), has started selling ether. As of Wednesday night they've sold around $3.7 million of ether in about 24 hours. You can watch the progress of the sale by looking at the address where they're receiving the Bitcoin.

Congratulations to the Ethereum team!

Ether is to Ethereum as bitcoins (the unit of account) are to Bitcoin (the protocol). For those who haven't heard of Ethereum I recommend reading the blurb on the website and blog post about the sale.

The current sale price is 2000 ether per bitcoin (approximately 3 ether per $1) and the only payment method is Bitcoin. The amount of ether sold in the sale will determine how many are "mineable" per year (according to the blog post, annual issuance = 0.26 x ether sale total). Here's the link to the ether sale (and more information on Ethereum): http://www.ethereum.org/.