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Long term outlook for mining isn't good. Ethereum, for example, is moving toward Proof of Stake (https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ https:

Long term outlook for mining isn't good. Ethereum, for example, is moving toward Proof of Stake (https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ), and Bitcoin will become less profitable for miners soon, beginning with the activation of Segwit. The reason for the recent Bitcoin Cash fork, was that miners are terrified of losing control given the substantial investment required to maintain profitability. I don't think Satoshi ever thought mining would become so profitable, centralized, and political. If Satoshi had, he or she may have rethought the mining aspect of Bitcoin. It's the end of days for mining as we know it.

GBiT 9y ago
Miners can choose to include more profitable transactions, skiping segwit ones. POS will not work. you need to back Bitcoins value with something, and its electricity. Gov backing with gold.
- jaekwon 9y ago
  Incorrect. Bitcoin isn't "backed by electricity". You can't turn Bitcoin back into energy. The energy is used to secure a distributed ledger to prevent double spend attacks on ongoing transactions, in a really inefficient way, but don't call it "backing". PoS will succeed. It already has, we've set all the pieces. The thing is, you don't want to live in a world where Bitcoin and PoW dominate our financial transactions. That world is not livable. Bitcoin transactions are secured by spent electricity. PoS transactions are secured by cryptographic signature schemes and reputation of operational security. It's how the world already functions, just more replicated.
  - Taek 9y ago
    It takes a cryptographically provable amount of energy to reverse a Bitcoin transaction, and that amount is equal to the money spent on electricity mining blocks that confirm a transaction. Proof of Stake systems have no equivalent. They operate by trusting the staking parties are not colluding to create an alternate history. But if they do decide to collude, there is little thermodynamic cost to rewriting history. It's a fundamentally weaker system, and one that depends on trust. The whole value of proof of work is that it allows you to escape trust.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - jcfrei 9y ago
      PoS as well as PoW depend on the assumption that a majority (either in terms of value invested in hashing power or invested in tokens) of the network is following the rules. If you try to double spend in a PoW system you are betting your current electricity usage on a new block becoming the longest chain and in a PoS system you are betting the tokens themselves - from an economic point of view those two systems are indifferent (if your attempt doesn't succeed you have wasted either electricity or tokens). Collusion can happen in both cases. PoS systems introduce new (probably yet unsolved) problems but they aren't inferior from an economical point of view imho.
      - Taek 9y ago
        No, in a proof of stake system collusion to rewrite history is essentially free. In a proof of work system, even if you collude you still have to spend a non-trivial sum of electricity to create that alternate history. Electricity that would be making you money via the block reward if you were using it honestly. It is provably more expensive to reconstruct history in a PoW setting, even when everyone is happily colluding.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        jcfrei 9y ago
        Whether it is more expensive or not is irrelevant. If a majority of the network (either in hashing power or number of tokens) decides to collude and start modifying network states for their own benefit then they will ultimately succeed. You argue that in a PoW system rewriting older blocks is more difficult than in a PoS system but that doesn't matter, because when a majority of the network becomes hostile and starts blocking all of your transaction attempts then the value of your coins immediately goes to zero. In a PoW system the records of your older transactions might be around forever but that's little more than damage control. In such an adversarial environment proof of stake even has advantages over proof of work. If in a proof of work system a majority of the network starts to double spend or censor transactions, what can you do? You are essentially powerless because any fork (that tries to fix their malicious blocks) can be quickly taken over by the colluding miners. However in a proof of stake system you could simply fork once and destroy/invalidate all the tokens of the malicious miners.

GBiT 9y ago

Miners can choose to include more profitable transactions, skiping segwit ones. POS will not work. you need to back Bitcoins value with something, and its electricity. Gov backing with gold.

jaekwon 9y ago
Incorrect. Bitcoin isn't "backed by electricity". You can't turn Bitcoin back into energy. The energy is used to secure a distributed ledger to prevent double spend attacks on ongoing transactions, in a really inefficient way, but don't call it "backing". PoS will succeed. It already has, we've set all the pieces. The thing is, you don't want to live in a world where Bitcoin and PoW dominate our financial transactions. That world is not livable. Bitcoin transactions are secured by spent electricity. PoS transactions are secured by cryptographic signature schemes and reputation of operational security. It's how the world already functions, just more replicated.
- Taek 9y ago
  It takes a cryptographically provable amount of energy to reverse a Bitcoin transaction, and that amount is equal to the money spent on electricity mining blocks that confirm a transaction. Proof of Stake systems have no equivalent. They operate by trusting the staking parties are not colluding to create an alternate history. But if they do decide to collude, there is little thermodynamic cost to rewriting history. It's a fundamentally weaker system, and one that depends on trust. The whole value of proof of work is that it allows you to escape trust.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - jcfrei 9y ago
    PoS as well as PoW depend on the assumption that a majority (either in terms of value invested in hashing power or invested in tokens) of the network is following the rules. If you try to double spend in a PoW system you are betting your current electricity usage on a new block becoming the longest chain and in a PoS system you are betting the tokens themselves - from an economic point of view those two systems are indifferent (if your attempt doesn't succeed you have wasted either electricity or tokens). Collusion can happen in both cases. PoS systems introduce new (probably yet unsolved) problems but they aren't inferior from an economical point of view imho.
    - Taek 9y ago
      No, in a proof of stake system collusion to rewrite history is essentially free. In a proof of work system, even if you collude you still have to spend a non-trivial sum of electricity to create that alternate history. Electricity that would be making you money via the block reward if you were using it honestly. It is provably more expensive to reconstruct history in a PoW setting, even when everyone is happily colluding.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - jcfrei 9y ago
        Whether it is more expensive or not is irrelevant. If a majority of the network (either in hashing power or number of tokens) decides to collude and start modifying network states for their own benefit then they will ultimately succeed. You argue that in a PoW system rewriting older blocks is more difficult than in a PoS system but that doesn't matter, because when a majority of the network becomes hostile and starts blocking all of your transaction attempts then the value of your coins immediately goes to zero. In a PoW system the records of your older transactions might be around forever but that's little more than damage control. In such an adversarial environment proof of stake even has advantages over proof of work. If in a proof of work system a majority of the network starts to double spend or censor transactions, what can you do? You are essentially powerless because any fork (that tries to fix their malicious blocks) can be quickly taken over by the colluding miners. However in a proof of stake system you could simply fork once and destroy/invalidate all the tokens of the malicious miners.