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What makes you so sure the existing lobby are not the ones pushing for this? Also what makes you so sure that the banking/Wall Street lobby is not larger than t

What makes you so sure the existing lobby are not the ones pushing for this? Also what makes you so sure that the banking/Wall Street lobby is not larger than the crypto lobby in terms of $$$? I suspect it is much larger. I also suspect they are the ones more ideologically aligned with DC here. Proof of stake and other “environmentally friendly” consensus algorithms allow a select few to control the network and benefit the most from it which I suspect is the real goal here. The “environmental impact” is just an excuse. It’s true that a large percentage of Bitcoin is owned by a few people, but at least now the benefit to them is only financial gain. Once you start to allow rich people to validate the blockchain itself, then they can begin to censor and block transactions or wallets from any individuals they deem unworthy or a threat to the powers at be. We’ve already seen this happen with pretty much every traditional payment provider over the last few years to some extent so it was only a matter of time before they decided to come for Bitcoin. Their real goal is to cripple and control the Bitcoin network. If they really cared about the environment they would go after energy companies or defense contractors or the banking industry who all use orders of magnitude more energy than Bitcoin miners. As a sidenote, the executive branch has become much too powerful. They were never supposed to legislate like this. Every president since George W Bush has used extreme executive power, and no one seems to care. We are supposed to have elected representatives to legislate, not a king.

tremarley 4y ago
Very well said!
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> what makes you so sure that the banking/Wall Street lobby is not larger than the crypto lobby These are the same. Well, at least Wall Street. Main Street banks may be positioned against (I have seen no evidence of this), but that’s just community banks at this point. The big boys are universal. What you’re seeing is the environmental and anti-finance lobbies allying. The fact that crypto users see Wall Street as the enemy constrains its leaders, who can’t openly ally with traditional finance on policy without looking compromised.
- fsociety999 4y ago
  I don’t think they are necessarily the same. People on Wall Street only see crypto as an opportunity to make more money. Switching to proof of stake does nothing to really change that. On the other hand, at least some people in the crypto industry care more about the other proprieties: anonymous, unconfiscatable, censorship resistant, fixed issuance/supply, free of central bank/government control, etc. If you are correct, what reason would Wall Street folks have to be against a ban on mining? If anything all a ban would do is enhance their ability to take control of crypto and make more money since they will be able to simply buy up the network ownership with their virtually unlimited cash. At least with POW, it actually takes some effort to buy up mining hardware, find an energy source, run the software, keep up operations, keep hardware and software up to date, etc. Much simpler to just buy up a stake and do nothing.
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
    The number of those other people must be very small. Otherwise Tether would not have a market cap of $50 billion printed out of thin air
jongjong 4y ago
PoS is not as bad as Bitcoin maximalists make it out to be. Bitcoin mining is also centralized in the sense that it requires a lot of capital in order to mine... It gives more power to the fiat-rich. I managed to get into a top forging position on a major DPoS blockchain in spite of both founders and the CEO of the project hating my guts. It's not fair to suggest that it's like institutions within the fiat monetary system. Imagine being promoted as a Google executive if CEO Sundar Pichai, Larry Page and Sergey Brin all hated you; that would never happen. That said, I think it would be dangerous to have 1 PoS blockchain with no other alternatives. The presence of alternatives is what enables any meritocracy to exist.
idiotsecant 4y ago
I'm curious what properties PoS has that 'allow a select few to control the network' that PoW does not have. With PoS consensus you put up a big pile of money and validate transactions. With PoW consensus you put up a big pile of money, turn that money into ASICs, burn some electricity, and validate transactions. PoW seems like PoS with extra steps to me....
- NhanH 4y ago
  The mining capability is external to the network. You have a big enough pile of money, and you are guaranteed to be able to join the validation process meaningfully. There is nothing anyone can do to stop you joining with a big ass mining hash power. The stake, however, is internal to the network. Even if you have a big pile of money, there is no guaranteed that the big stake holders are willing to sell you their coins. I think the majority of the arguments about the advantages/ disadvantages of PoW and PoS stems from that difference
  - nootropicat 4y ago
    Yes, which is exactly why PoS is censorship resistant and PoW isn't. Taking over PoW is just a matter of acquiring resources - can be via regulation, or outright buying. The cost of mining hardware isn't very big. It's impossible to mine anonymously with any non-negligible hashrate due to power differences and required specialized hardware - all trivial to track. Taking over PoS is much harder because there's no way for governments to print tokens. It's easy to stake anonymously. A closed stable state in which only non-censoring validators control the network is always possible to achieve.
    - fsociety999 4y ago
      The main difference I see here is that buying up mining hardware actually has limitations and constraints. You have to find enough supply of the hardware, find enough energy to run it, find a location big enough to house it, make sure to keep it up to date, etc. With PoS, although governments can’t print tokens, it doesn’t really matter. The governments and central banks have unlimited money. They control the money supply. Even if some of the top stakers won’t want to sell, they would still be able to find enough sellers who are. We have already seen how a single tweet from someone like Elon Musk can cause thousands of people to buy or sell. Manipulating the market is easy and doesn’t require permission from the people with the largest stake. All they would need to do is float a bill that they are planning on making Bitcoin illegal and then after it is on the front page of all the news sites, when everyone is rushing to exit, swoop in and buy up the supply. I think Wall Street has already done this to a large extent. Hence, this is why I believe they are likely the ones behind this push as opposed to the people who will be hurt as a result. All of that said, I’m willing to keep an open mind and see what happens to Ethereum after its switch to PoS. If I had to guess, I suspect we will begin to see stories of blocked transactions and blocked wallets, etc.

tremarley 4y ago

Very well said!

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> what makes you so sure that the banking/Wall Street lobby is not larger than the crypto lobby These are the same. Well, at least Wall Street. Main Street banks may be positioned against (I have seen no evidence of this), but that’s just community banks at this point. The big boys are universal. What you’re seeing is the environmental and anti-finance lobbies allying. The fact that crypto users see Wall Street as the enemy constrains its leaders, who can’t openly ally with traditional finance on policy without looking compromised.

fsociety999 4y ago
I don’t think they are necessarily the same. People on Wall Street only see crypto as an opportunity to make more money. Switching to proof of stake does nothing to really change that. On the other hand, at least some people in the crypto industry care more about the other proprieties: anonymous, unconfiscatable, censorship resistant, fixed issuance/supply, free of central bank/government control, etc. If you are correct, what reason would Wall Street folks have to be against a ban on mining? If anything all a ban would do is enhance their ability to take control of crypto and make more money since they will be able to simply buy up the network ownership with their virtually unlimited cash. At least with POW, it actually takes some effort to buy up mining hardware, find an energy source, run the software, keep up operations, keep hardware and software up to date, etc. Much simpler to just buy up a stake and do nothing.
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  The number of those other people must be very small. Otherwise Tether would not have a market cap of $50 billion printed out of thin air

jongjong 4y ago

PoS is not as bad as Bitcoin maximalists make it out to be. Bitcoin mining is also centralized in the sense that it requires a lot of capital in order to mine... It gives more power to the fiat-rich. I managed to get into a top forging position on a major DPoS blockchain in spite of both founders and the CEO of the project hating my guts. It's not fair to suggest that it's like institutions within the fiat monetary system. Imagine being promoted as a Google executive if CEO Sundar Pichai, Larry Page and Sergey Brin all hated you; that would never happen. That said, I think it would be dangerous to have 1 PoS blockchain with no other alternatives. The presence of alternatives is what enables any meritocracy to exist.

idiotsecant 4y ago

I'm curious what properties PoS has that 'allow a select few to control the network' that PoW does not have. With PoS consensus you put up a big pile of money and validate transactions. With PoW consensus you put up a big pile of money, turn that money into ASICs, burn some electricity, and validate transactions. PoW seems like PoS with extra steps to me....

NhanH 4y ago
The mining capability is external to the network. You have a big enough pile of money, and you are guaranteed to be able to join the validation process meaningfully. There is nothing anyone can do to stop you joining with a big ass mining hash power. The stake, however, is internal to the network. Even if you have a big pile of money, there is no guaranteed that the big stake holders are willing to sell you their coins. I think the majority of the arguments about the advantages/ disadvantages of PoW and PoS stems from that difference
- nootropicat 4y ago
  Yes, which is exactly why PoS is censorship resistant and PoW isn't. Taking over PoW is just a matter of acquiring resources - can be via regulation, or outright buying. The cost of mining hardware isn't very big. It's impossible to mine anonymously with any non-negligible hashrate due to power differences and required specialized hardware - all trivial to track. Taking over PoS is much harder because there's no way for governments to print tokens. It's easy to stake anonymously. A closed stable state in which only non-censoring validators control the network is always possible to achieve.
  - fsociety999 4y ago
    The main difference I see here is that buying up mining hardware actually has limitations and constraints. You have to find enough supply of the hardware, find enough energy to run it, find a location big enough to house it, make sure to keep it up to date, etc. With PoS, although governments can’t print tokens, it doesn’t really matter. The governments and central banks have unlimited money. They control the money supply. Even if some of the top stakers won’t want to sell, they would still be able to find enough sellers who are. We have already seen how a single tweet from someone like Elon Musk can cause thousands of people to buy or sell. Manipulating the market is easy and doesn’t require permission from the people with the largest stake. All they would need to do is float a bill that they are planning on making Bitcoin illegal and then after it is on the front page of all the news sites, when everyone is rushing to exit, swoop in and buy up the supply. I think Wall Street has already done this to a large extent. Hence, this is why I believe they are likely the ones behind this push as opposed to the people who will be hurt as a result. All of that said, I’m willing to keep an open mind and see what happens to Ethereum after its switch to PoS. If I had to guess, I suspect we will begin to see stories of blocked transactions and blocked wallets, etc.