I wish there would be more debate about the equity of a cryptocurrency amongst the tech community. Why should the least well off in society be part of a crypto-coin whose supply has been given to early adopters and insiders? Ultimately the social compact of the economy you create will involve everyone, so we should design a coin that solves hard problems, not just narrowly defined ones that conveniently benefit a narrow minority.

Bitcoin had by far the fairest distribution and the largest holder (Satoshi) hasn't touched his coins and for all practical purposes they are gone. You just can't replicate the same conditions which lead to it's existence today.

From what I've seen, the main purpose of like 90+% of altcoins is to benefit their developers and investors and they'll likely all die and disappear.

> Why should the least well off in society be part of a crypto-coin whose supply has been given to early adopters and insiders?

They shouldn't, what Bitcoin is enabling is the ability for whoever to use whatever kind of coin they want. Bitcoin opened the whole pandoras box where anyone can create their own coin if they want.

However, for each crypto coin there is clear incentive to make the coin more useful in transactions, both for those more well off and for those less fortunate. Typical BTC holder wants to make BTC useful for everyone, because that adds value for their holdings. That usefulness might add value to those less well-off. If not, they can use something else - in the end there is more choice in the marketplace which should (in theory) benefit everyone.

> Why should the least well off in society be part of a crypto-coin whose supply has been given to early adopters and insiders?

Just taking a stab at it, maybe bc we haven't come up with a notion of how a viable crypto-coin could be started by the least well off, who are -by definition- at a competitive disadvantage in launching successful projects.

I'm not saying it's an impossible problem, just that these systems tend to be driven by economies of scale, whether it's new/disruptive, or the product of an older, more established regime.

And to be clear, I am not suggesting this with the finality of a foregone conclusion, but merely thinking aloud about the dynamic of the underlying problem.

> A PoW miner has to spend to cover their costs, a staker doesn't have any cost to cover, providing a cryptographic signature requires no energy on an ongoing basis, just an initial investment.

And that is great news for crypto holders, cause that means PoS rewards can be way smaller than PoW rewards, which means less devaluation of existing coins and lower transaction fees!

It's good news for current holders with large holdings, it's bad news for new people coming into the system which is why I said it makes it exclusionary over time.

That isn't a counter argument to the rich get richer. POW is still a race to the bottom that favors the well funded.

What commercial activity doesn’t “favor the well-funded”? That’s a rather moot point, wouldn’t you say?

Staking coins just means clicking a button and receiving a financial yield proportionate to your initial investment. Simply showing up with money on day one is enough to earn money on your money.

People financially invested in staking frequently pretend like button-clicking auto-yield is the exact same thing as A) procuring powerful computers which rapidly become obsolete year after year, and B) paying for electricity and hosting facilities for those computers over a long period of time. But the difference between the two scenarios is night and day, and no amount of waxing poetic over “commerce favoring the well-funded” will change that fact.

To act as if staking has exactly the same economic properties as mining is false equivalence.

There's a difference between a billionaire generating yield on their money by investing and taking risks vs the Fed just sending them x% of freshly printed money because they are already a billionnaire.

PoS requires constant investment in terms of lost time value of money.

Are you implying you can’t get liquidity from staked coins? This can be worked around by posting your stake as collateral.

There are more effective ways to make money in PoS networks than staking.

Staking is not all that profitable, really. The rich get richer at a rate which is comparable to a Vanguard ETF but the price volatility is much higher than a Vanguard ETF.