Topic: PoS vs Pow (Read 1923 times)

I'm sorry, I don't follow.

Yes, in practice when bitcoin was shooting up 30-100 dollars a day (hyper deflation which is the moment when you expect people to be saving the most vs slowly growing in value ) is when bitcoin payment processors saw the largest jumps in purchases. This isn't spikes in transaction volume on the blockchain due to day trading but purchasing goods and services with bitcoin.

I spend bitcoin all the time and in fact I specifically spend it when its is going through a "deflationary spiral" or appreciating in value and than when bitcoin is losing value or acting inflationary I use my fiat. This way I am leveraging bitcoins volatility to insure I always buy goods and services cheaper.

I understand this may seem strange because we were always warned about the dangers of deflation but the data reflects that the Austrian school of economic thinking may be onto something.

I seriously doubt any country will ever adopt bitcoin as a national currency (inflation is how they steal from their citizens)but even if they do that doesn't change the data above.

Yup what you said is true that now people spend more when btc rises its value. But btc is only owned by a few people.  But that would change if an entire country makes it their currency.  As you can see people spend usd euros etc 1 because for daily living.  2. Value goes down because of inflation.  So what do they do they invest their money to beat inflation rate.

But if you adopt btc as a national currency.  Lets say you have 1 btc now.  Current supply would be distributed to people.  Then mining would take place until you reach max supply.  You will be stuck at 20+ million coins forever.  Let us say your 1 btc can buy a car now.  But when max supply is reached and you need to accomodate all people to have btc as currency.  The only thing that everyone can have btc is to increase the price so it can be divided to people.  

Would you still spend btc if you know it would worth so much more on the future?

I agree with most of what you said except the above. I understand we intuitively assume the above to be true based upon the fear mongering Keynsian economists have instilled in the public when they warn of a deflationary spiral. In practice bitpay has release data reflecting they see spikes in spending when Bitcoin rapidly appreciates (Or goes through disinflationary/adoption bubbles). We have been theorizing that this is due to the wealth effect being more powerful than ones hoarding instinct. When Bitcoin goes up in value people are more generous with tips and spend more because they are wealthier and everything has become cheaper.


Bitcoin may eventually need to modify the algo to provide security if transaction volume doesn't sufficiently ramp up. There are many ways to do this but the great risk for bitcoin is too much vested interest in old mining preventing a transition. This is why Vitalik is considering setting up an inflationary bomb in ethereum to go off for the PoW chain of ether when they decide to switch to some yet to be invented TaPoS variation.

Pow for coin distribution and then switch to full POS aka peercoin

nope. you are probably not reading enough. BTC still is the best coin to invest in and still many people believe in it.

go try it yourself post here or other forums and ask them what coin is the best investment with the criteria of active development, coin that you can trust to continue growing and devs not going away.

you may be surprised but most of them would say keep btc as it is the only coin you can trust 100%

as for me i would also dash as a coin to trust.

Pow makes sense more than Pos for me.

Pow creates artificial work because of the mining.
Pos seems a give away for now. buy some coins and get some for free.

yet the biggest problem why btc cant be adopted as a currency is because of its limited supply. meaning price would eventually go up because of scarcity thus making people not wanting to spend.
so PoS has an advantage over there.

maybe Pow Pos hybrid is the best. but not 2 week mining  or short term mining. i would say years of mining then PoS

It is supposed to be wasteful as that provides a unique security value that forces an attacker to spend real money aquiring ASICs and than real money running them to attempt an attack which would allow 2-3 double spends before getting caught.

Perhaps bitcoin should migrate over to a PoW variant like primecoin to search for primes... or maybe recapturing ASIC heat waste is good enough for the future.

What would have happened if Bitcoin had been Proof-of-Stake from the beginning?

What would have happened if Bitcoin had transitioned to 100% Proof-of-Stake sometime in the past few years?

If Bitcoin was PoS right now, what would you tell someone who says Bitcoin isn't real money because it's not backed by anything and people just get it for free?

What would you tell someone who asks where Bitcoin comes from and how they can get some? 

Most people's first assumption was that Bitcoin was a scam, even when anyone could mine it with a laptop.  So how many people would have adopted Bitcoin if the answer was "You can only get Bitcoin by giving real money to the few people who already have bitcoins, and then you can buy in and become a seller yourself!"

Would the average person be more or less inclined to view Bitcoin as a pyramid scheme?

Miners pay for the electricity they use, so the electricity is theirs to do whatever they want with it.  You can talk about waste, but the miners are only "wasting" their own money.  It doesn't affect you negatively, and the miners obviously think it's worth it.  The people "wasting" their own money don't feel like they're wasting anything, and your opinion has no weight regarding their personal choices.  And if they spend a certain amount of money mining, and then sell their mined coins for more than they spent, then they've profited. 

What definition of "waste" are you using that applies to increasing your supply?  "We had 2 dollars, but you went out and got 2 more dollars!  Now we have 4 dollars, which means you're wasting dollars!"  That's what you're saying, when you say mining is wasteful.

Not all work is waste, but not all labor creates value.  Given that there are more efficient alternatives, POW is pretty wasteful for most use cases.  There may be some scenario in which it makes sense, but I don't think a global currency ledger is one of them.

Then all work is waste.  Quit your job, if you have one.



Longer than you can fund the instaminers. 



None of us will have a retirement if we depend on government.  The government creates money that doesn't require any work, which makes it more and more worthless.  So keep buying other currencies that are also worthless.

The biggest problem with digital currency:  people think it's just created for free, out of nowhere, and that therefore it is worthless.

For some coins, that is true.  It's worthless money that costs nothing to make.  People just type numbers, and you pay them money for it.  They can create 1 million coins, or they can create 1 billion coins for the same amount of effort.  The coins are free, they come from nothing, so they are worthless.

With proof of work without premine, that is not true.  Nobody created free money and sold it, and nobody can print new money for free. POW costs electricity and equipment - it takes work.  Bitcoin comes from work, and therefore it carries the value of the work that created it.  If it costs you $200 to mine 1 Bitcoin, then you will want to sell it for more than $200.  The value of the coin is based on the cost of mining and maintaining the network.
 
With 100% proof-of-stake, what is the value based on?  Maintaining the network costs much less, so the value of the coin is decided arbitrarily by the few people who already own coins. 

But, depending on the initial distribution, POS has advantages.  I can't mine Bitcoin with my PC, or even with my expensive video cards.  So I can't participate in the network, other than running a node, and even that may soon change.  But with proof of stake, I can participate as much as anyone else who has coins.  So, depending on where the coins came from - ideally from a POW period - the coins might be worth buying in order to participate in maintaining the network. 

And of course some projects use coins as fundraising tokens or investment shares.  For these coins, especially if they pay dividends, POS is ideal because there is more going on than just mining and coins.  When the coin is mainly a placeholder for something else, you don't want to spend a lot of money running the blockchain;  you want the value of the coins to be based on something else, with the blockchain being only one part of the project rather than the entirety of the project. 

But if you're just talking about a typical altcoin that never had a POW distribution, that isn't used to represent shares in a company, that pays no dividends, that doesn't do anything other than what Bitcoin already does, that was instamined and then sold rather than given away for free, then what do you really have?  Just empty made-up money that someone created for free.  There would be no good reason to pay real money for it.

I see...  feigning incredulity.

I already have done my homework and am providing you the research to educate yourself. Please come prepared next time; I look forward to hearing the specific objections.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/lightning-network-another-proposal-to-make-bitcoin-scale-970822
http://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper-DRAFT-0.5.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zVzw912wPo
http://lightning.network/lightning-network.pdf
http://www.coindesk.com/could-the-bitcoin-lightning-network-solve-blockchain-scalability/

I even provided you with a nice slideshow and video if the whitepaper is too overwhelming for you.

I have.... please clarify with specific technical objections that aren't already addressed in the whitepaper and by the developers. Please be very specific citing the page and /or article as well and with a detailed explanation for us to take you seriously.

... or are you feigning incredulity due to your shitcoin becoming obsolete before anyone even notices it?

PoW/TaPoS hybrid with lightning network


https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/lightning-network-another-proposal-to-make-bitcoin-scale-970822
http://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper-DRAFT-0.5.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zVzw912wPo
http://lightning.network/lightning-network.pdf
http://www.coindesk.com/could-the-bitcoin-lightning-network-solve-blockchain-scalability/


 45,000 instantly confirming transactions  per second and being able to scale without bloat

The future is so Bright we all are going to have to wear shades 

PoS really doesn't have to stand for "Piece of Shit" although as currently implemented it usually does.

The real issue with the usual implementation of proof-of-stake is the ludicrous drop in coin production as it shifts from proof-of-work (or IPO, or whatever) to proof-of-stake.  You have a short mining period that maybe a few dozen people get in on, and then from there on the creation of coins is hundreds, or even thousands, of times slower AND restricted to those few dozen people.  Which means both that there's absolutely no reason for anybody besides those early miners to ever use the coin, AND that it's a horrible investment.

It's possible to implement a good PoW/PoS hybrid.  The problem is we've only seen the scammers' version of a PoW/PoS hybrid.  The structure and rules of a good one would be dramatically different.

Yes that is basically a POS coin. Flash mining with POS with 100% a scam.. I always feel sorry for the sheep

Cryptocurrency should be designed for the people, although distribution is usually not fair, POW makes it much more fair. POS is a really bad idea. It is trying to turn crypto into penny stocks when really it is a currency. POS is an example of making the rich richer, all that is wrong in the world really. Do no work, get money. POS is mostly used to scam people (look at iGotSpots coins 10k etc.). I think POW with useful research algorithms will be the best in the future.

Absolutely.  I think permissionless block formation, for at least transaction fees, is an important feature of a winning implementation.  This is one of the reasons I think block formation should not be determined by stake share.  It's okay for people to have a motive that varies in proportion to their stake, but it should never be zero-stake=no way to form blocks nor zero-stake=no reason to form blocks.

POS might have merit after long (and I mean long) periods of actual POW mining (we're talking years, if not decades). These flash POW periods of 2 weeks before converting to POS are ridiculous.

Ultimately the market will converge on some kind of PoS system.  It doesn't have to support the mining costs that Bitcoin does, so it has a competitive edge. 

But right now Bitcoin has an enormous network advantage - it may take many years before a period of market chaos big enough to overcome that arrives.