> clearly crypto mining is emitting using a lot of power and some of that is CO2. But the competition is fiat; backed by fighter jets and nukes; literally
just 2 points:
* using crypto will not make the military stop existing
* switching to Proof Of Stake would solve almost all bitcoin problems
...but bitcoin will not even consider keeping PoW and switching to argon2, since the investment of miners in dedicated hardware is too great
So I think honestly the bitcoin community is stuck. It will not change, not even when there are options that would only improve the technology underneath. Still stuck at less than 10 transactions/sec, I see.
As a tech enthusiast, bitcoin has lost all its value to me. As an investor, the quick value fluctuations and overall value increase are a great thing.
To me, the conclusion is that bitcoin is not anymore about tech (the project is completely static at this point), it's not about anonymity (it never was anonymous), it's not about distributed stuff (dedicated hardware and search for cheaper power are concentrating mining). It's just about quick investment that gets you money. Everything else feels like a lie.
> switching to Proof Of Stake would solve almost all bitcoin problems
This will also create a very severe problem: it makes it so the means of coin production exist solely in the hands of the coin owners today. Those coin owners won't ever sell you enough coins for you to be a competitive staker. At least with PoW, I can make more coins through extrinsic means -- i.e. better mining hardware.
1.) If they dont sell it, its the same as it not existing or having been lost. Liquidity is not a problem in the PoS blockchains that have been operating for years (for example Tezos).
2.) You have to pay taxes on staking rewards. So unless they intend to lose money they have to sell at least that much.
Oh they can and will sell some, and I never claimed otherwise. My point is that they won't sell enough that the buyer(s)' token production rate through staking will exceed their own.
I've contemplated the idea of a coin that has a single wallet per person (sybil-proof identities must be implemented), these wallets have a max-limit of 1 billion coins, and coins are minted/staked and applied randomly to the lowest 5%, maybe it'd have a use-it-or-lose-it thing built in as well, where if you just sit on your coins and never have any transactions occur it just assumes you might be a "dead" account and recycles a percentage of your coins for "unuse", and that percentage goes up the longer you are without any transactions until it just redistributes your entire wallet...
Example would be if you had 1 US bank account sitting on a billion, never used it, so the govt is like, well you're not using that so we'll give it to someone else lol.
I personally am against billionaires existing. So, capping a coin at 1 billion or 999 million, makes sense to me - but only if there can ever be only 1 wallet per person. There could maybe be sub-wallets, but these are more like drawers in a dresser where the dresser is the wallet, and the drawers are compartments. Maybe a compartment in the wallet is a joint compartment that you share with a spouse, child, or a business/DAO or some other form of trust...
There's a lot of things possible, that could happen... but I think PoW still makes bad sense, because we do have a global warming issue that is starting to pick up in terms of severity.
One more factor though: path dependency. For historical reason, BTC is the most popular cryptocurrency. Maybe as you said, an altcoin with PoW is a better choice. (Or maybe there are other reasons PoW is not good. Let's just take your statement as true for the sake of discussion.)
But you can't change everybody's mind like turn off a switch. Adoption takes time and change people's mind is difficult, but it doesn't make everyone else to be lying.
just 2 points:
* using crypto will not make the military stop existing
* switching to Proof Of Stake would solve almost all bitcoin problems
...but bitcoin will not even consider keeping PoW and switching to argon2, since the investment of miners in dedicated hardware is too great
So I think honestly the bitcoin community is stuck. It will not change, not even when there are options that would only improve the technology underneath. Still stuck at less than 10 transactions/sec, I see.
As a tech enthusiast, bitcoin has lost all its value to me. As an investor, the quick value fluctuations and overall value increase are a great thing.
To me, the conclusion is that bitcoin is not anymore about tech (the project is completely static at this point), it's not about anonymity (it never was anonymous), it's not about distributed stuff (dedicated hardware and search for cheaper power are concentrating mining). It's just about quick investment that gets you money. Everything else feels like a lie.