Anyway, the mining/staking in crypto isn't primarily about increasing wealth, it is about defending the blockchain. In this aspect, there is a huge difference between the PoW and PoS. If someone has >50% of a PoS token, there is no way to usurp their control of the blockchain unless they willingly sell their tokens. With PoW, because the mining uses a different resource (energy), it is always possible to invest more capital to usurp the control of the blockchain by creating a larger hashrate. The ownership structure of the actual PoW token doesn't really matter, because outside capital can be introduced into the system.
I'm just saying that 'staking' in proof of stake isn't materially different than taking your Bitcoin and purchasing a share of a company that mines Bitcoin. [edit] you can always un-stake by selling your share.
Mining is a business, with real costs and logistics to fret about.
People should really stop doing the mental gymnastics to make push-button passive income generation seem extraordinarily challenging and, even more egregious, extremely equitable (“it’s _at least_ as fair as Bitcoin”).
The primary cost of staking is the initial investment in the stake, handedly.
The initial investment in the stake dwarfs the cost of even the most sophisticated staking infrastructure.
Every well known proof of stake system today was either premined, ICO’d, sold to investors in private rounds at “special” prices, or some combination of these.
Naturally, if you were autoyielding passive income by staking pos coins you had a cost basis of effectively zero in, either because you participated in an ICO, or worse, because you had the right connections, or exploited your privileged position as developer to hard code coin balances for yourself into your own ledger prior to launch, you’d _love_ proof of stake and trumpet its supposed equity and fairness in public.
In reality, the most privileged and exploitative of investors who have the lowest entry price get the highest rate of return on staking (effectively ∞ in the case of premine recipients).
To insinuate this situation is “equitable” is beyond ridiculous.
late entrants add value to networks, and some of that value accrues to early entrants. this is the same for any network. a publicly accessible ico is just as equitable as someone mining btc with their cpu on low difficulty.
once the price of the token goes up, the difference between someone who was invited there early versus found their own way in does not matter to the new adopters. the inequity is felt purely based on the token price difference rather than the security mechanic.
Fairly launched proof of work systems are a great deal more equitable than PoS premined ICO coins. This is just a fact.
> a publicly accessible ico is just as equitable as someone mining btc with their cpu on low difficulty.
No, absolutely not. Obviously someone has to get the ICO money. How on earth is that “just as equitable” as anyone in the world being able to use any old Windows computer to mine coins on demand. With proof of work, money isn’t being transferred from end users to developers, or their many Swiss foundations.
the value accrues to the network (20 million to 300 billion over the last decade or so), not the dollars that went into the ico sale. the ico dollars are a rounding error.
Buying Bitcoin miners at first requires you to spend the Bitcoin.
Mining may help you gain Bitcoin, but it doesn't much allow you to control Bitcoin.
Pos literally gives you voting power over the currency's ecosystem just by having more of it. It completely concentrates control, and then it also returns gains to those with the larger stake (more wealth in said currency).
Pretty sure you got that backward.
Those 0.01% don't have the same control over Bitcoin that the Fed has over the dollar. That is, that 0.01% wouldn't have been able to engineer the enormous inflation we have today for the dollar, but for Bitcoin.
I don't think Bitcoin is about democratizing anything, it's about maybe you don't want your share to be diluted by 2-10% every year.
But to answer your question: the same difference that there is between chance and intention, for example, the same difference that there is between someone being murdered and that person dying accidentally. This difference is very important for most people and can have direct consequences in you life.
In addition, the dollar is guaranteed to be diluted, meanwhile for Bitcoin, there's no such certainty.
People having to HODL tell themselves whatever they need to to feel confident in their so-called investment. Frankly, people that bought towards the top in Bitcoin are still massively down and that lack of certainty isn't exactly a comfort.
Besides, although I tend to think of your comment painting USD in a poor light, the USD is actually working as designed; to be nominally inflationary to encourage spending and investment in productive aspects of society and business and not to encourage hoarding. The USD is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.
Isn't this the case with almost any other asset at the moment?
> The USD is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.
The current levels of inflation weren't planned. But lowering interest rates it's so tempting and easy, and rising them so unpopular.
The US debt has bee doubling every 8-9 years in the XXI century. The current approach is not sustainable and nobody wants to be the one to stop it. I don't foresee a bright future for the dollar and I fear the day our debtors demand actual stuff for our dollars.
That is a common misconception, it seems to me. Assume a PoS scheme in which the probability that you get the reward is proportional to your share of all coins. Yes, large holders are more likely to get the reward, but if they get the reward, it basically increases their share by close to nothing. If a small holder gets the reward, they get a substantial boost. It averages out.
It is a bit like a savings account. Everyone gets X% interest a year, so the big holders get more interest than the small holders, sure. But the proportions of wealth stay constant.
This model unfortunately also exists in stock markets and most aspects of a capitalist society. Arguably PoS returns in crypto networks may be slightly more equitable long-term as it is not a permissioned and closed-door system (validator queues cannot discriminate based on class, race, credit score, region, and family for example).