Re:Ethereum Proof-of-Stake
by yellowapple on Thursday July 07, 2022 @01:48PM
(#32017099)
> Imho, they are inferior to real currencies at everything except for that.
Add to that list the transaction speeds for just about any PoS cryptocurrency. A new transaction is visible to others on the network within seconds, and is fully validated within a few minutes (as I just observed moving some Cardano around last night). That first metric is on-par with your average credit/debit transaction while the second blows it out of the water (credit/debit transactions can take multiple days to actually move out of a "pending" state). The only thing other than a PoS cryptocurrency that's even theoretically faster on both points would be a payment app like PayPal or Venmo, and that's only if you're maintaining a balance in those apps (otherwise they fall back on credit/debit or bank withdrawls anyway).
There are other possible superiorities or inferiorities which are indeed a matter of opinion (for example, IMO the inability to reverse a cryptocurrency transaction makes it superior to a credit/debit charge or wire transfer or payment app, and the "downsides" are better solvable with escrow anyway; as another example, IMO the ability to send arbitrarily-large-or-small amounts of cryptocurrency makes it superior to said alternatives), but transaction speeds are factual and readily observable.
Add to that list the transaction speeds for just about any PoS cryptocurrency. A new transaction is visible to others on the network within seconds, and is fully validated within a few minutes (as I just observed moving some Cardano around last night). That first metric is on-par with your average credit/debit transaction while the second blows it out of the water (credit/debit transactions can take multiple days to actually move out of a "pending" state). The only thing other than a PoS cryptocurrency that's even theoretically faster on both points would be a payment app like PayPal or Venmo, and that's only if you're maintaining a balance in those apps (otherwise they fall back on credit/debit or bank withdrawls anyway).
There are other possible superiorities or inferiorities which are indeed a matter of opinion (for example, IMO the inability to reverse a cryptocurrency transaction makes it superior to a credit/debit charge or wire transfer or payment app, and the "downsides" are better solvable with escrow anyway; as another example, IMO the ability to send arbitrarily-large-or-small amounts of cryptocurrency makes it superior to said alternatives), but transaction speeds are factual and readily observable.