MtGox was symbolic. Think banking cartel, "the rich" and governments. So what's the difference to today?
Also I wouldn't even be so sure if it's more energy efficient. Maybe distributed specialized hardware (ASICs) is better than every John Doe with a few coins running their computers instead of just keeping paper wallets, despite all their coins together not even adding up to 50% anyway.
Also I wouldn't even be so sure if it's more energy efficient. Maybe distributed specialized hardware (ASICs) is better than every John Doe with a few coins running their computers instead of just keeping paper wallets, despite all their coins together not even adding up to 50% anyway.
It's not only about electricity. ASICs are a huge step forward for the environment as ASICs cost so much to build (for now) that the overall calculation
profit = mining output - mining effort = mining output - electricity costs - hardware costs - bandwidth costs
with profit close to zero and mining output being 25Ƀ per 10 minutes:
3600Ƀ/day = electricity costs + hardware costs + bandwidth costs
make the equation's big post shift away from electricity to the hardware costs.
With POS the equation should be:
3600Ƀ/day = Ƀ holding "costs" + electricity costs + hardware costs + bandwidth costs
People would invest less into electricity (that destroys the environment) and hardware (that also ends up on the waste dump very quickly) and more into Bitcoin itself to protect Bitcoin. The perfect solution to achieve this might not be available yet but I find it very intriguing to search that solution.
My problem with a heavy POS dependency from the start is the bootstrapping. How should this coin be evenly distributed ever? Therefore I hope Bitcoin slowly adapts POS at some point years from now to stop the sin of wasting tons of uranium on securing what could be secured with tons of Bitcoins as well.
