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Great! Unlike BTC the miners can sell their gear so they are not down on their investment.. I imagine BTC miners putting up a good fight if this was on the tab

Great! Unlike BTC the miners can sell their gear so they are not down on their investment.. I imagine BTC miners putting up a good fight if this was on the table and they stand to lose all their asics

andruby 4y ago
Is there a real proposal to turn BTC into PoS?
- leroman 4y ago
  If this works for ETH, I don't believe there's a real reason why this couldn't work for BTC ** ** big asterisk here as I have spent no time trying to understand how they made it work for ETH and how/if this actually applies to BTC..
  - valzam 4y ago
    There are huge concerns over centralization. As it stands 2-3 entities (e.g. Lido, binance and Coinbase) over 50% of all validators. This is due to a mix of issues (no withdrawal making liquid staking very attractive, 32Eth limit leading to hugely inflates numbers of validators and no stake delegation creating the need for off chain pools). I would say there is about a 1-2% chance that BTC adopts PoS on a good day. Based on what Ethereum has delivered it's very close to 0.
  - survirtual 4y ago
    This is laughable. I support bitcoin because it is a pattern that allows value transfer absent intermediaries, binds value directly to energy and computational capacity (work), and has clear mechanisms for any new party to enter into consensus. In other words, if PoW is attacked by say a governmental entity, a massive mining op or central mining shuts down, it does not fail. The hash rate just gets distributed. I don’t support bitcoin to get rich. I support it for freedom from tyranny. I support it for independence from oligarchs, banking authoritarians, and a corrupted monetary system. PoS is a carry over of aristocracy and oligarchs. The oligarchs are just called “stakers” now. And with a name behind the stakers, governments can enter and control the mechanisms. With a massive stake locked in an asset you become vulnerable to control from external forces. There are so many problems with this pattern one could write, at the very least, a very long article on it. But it would seem reason and freedom is as a fart in the wind these days. Tldr: Bitcoin will never move to PoS because it is inferior.
    - kinakomochidayo 4y ago
      > I support it for freedom from tyranny. I support it for independence from oligarchs, banking authoritarians, and a corrupted monetary system. This is the main reason why many big brains either moved to Bitcoin Cash or Ethereum in 2017. Bitcoin basically got taken over by Blockstream and other L2 VC-backed companies, holding it hostage with small blocks just so these intermediaries can skim profits off of transactions with their half baked federated solutions. Rationale is pretty much “if Bitcoin has been taken over by toxic lead developers who are in it for the money, then I might as well look for the next best thing (even if it’s less decentralized) with good developers, and many discovered Ethereum fits the bill.
- tremarley 4y ago
  Infinitely unlikely. Bitcoin is the representation of Decentralised Proof of Work. I couldn't imagine any Bitcoin loving person to ever consider a POS BTC reality.
- unboxingelf 4y ago
  No. PoW enables real decentralization. No party/company/govt can control a PoW network like BTC. This is why it’s considered a commodity by many. PoS is almost the opposite. A small group with stake control the network. This is why it’s considered a security by many. For Bitcoin, PoW is a feature not a bug.
  - unboxingelf 4y ago
    I’d love a rebuttal to backup the downvotes.
- zionic 4y ago
  Not yet, but when the combined effects of the merge + EIP 1559 drive ETH to flip BTC _and_ the ever-increasing "BTC wastes X countries worth of power per day" it will eventually happen. No chance at all while BTC remains top dog (in market cap)
friendzis 4y ago
One, they are going to sasturate the market which will drive the prices down significantly. They cannot not saturate the market, because GPUs age due to new developments by manufacturers. This already makes the prospect of recouping initial investments rahter dim. Consider that non-miner market has a huge distain for miners and are willing to pay premium on new cards just to stick to the miners. I don't think resale value is going to be spectacular.
- latchkey 4y ago
  No, the most ROI efficient cards are 4-5 year old cards (like the RX480). ETH's algo, ethash, is memory hard, which means that it is a false narrative that buying the latest card is necessary. The bottle neck isn't the speed of the card, but the speed of the memory controller.
  - MrPatan 4y ago
    Nobody cares about Eth's old mining algo anymore, it better be good at something else
  - friendzis 4y ago
    This does not contradict my comment that resale value of those cards is going to be nowhere close original purchase price, though
    - latchkey 4y ago
      How would you tell that a GPU has been used for mining? Other than any vbios changes, which can be reverted easily, it would be impossible. ALL gpus are going to go down in price, just because the market is saturated, it has nothing to do with what workloads they happened to be used for.
- leroman 4y ago
  I suppose they made some money by running these cards.. They stand to get SOME of the initial investment back, unlike BTC ASICs, they are basically worthless outside of BTC mining..

andruby 4y ago

Is there a real proposal to turn BTC into PoS?

leroman 4y ago
If this works for ETH, I don't believe there's a real reason why this couldn't work for BTC ** ** big asterisk here as I have spent no time trying to understand how they made it work for ETH and how/if this actually applies to BTC..
- valzam 4y ago
  There are huge concerns over centralization. As it stands 2-3 entities (e.g. Lido, binance and Coinbase) over 50% of all validators. This is due to a mix of issues (no withdrawal making liquid staking very attractive, 32Eth limit leading to hugely inflates numbers of validators and no stake delegation creating the need for off chain pools). I would say there is about a 1-2% chance that BTC adopts PoS on a good day. Based on what Ethereum has delivered it's very close to 0.
- survirtual 4y ago
  This is laughable. I support bitcoin because it is a pattern that allows value transfer absent intermediaries, binds value directly to energy and computational capacity (work), and has clear mechanisms for any new party to enter into consensus. In other words, if PoW is attacked by say a governmental entity, a massive mining op or central mining shuts down, it does not fail. The hash rate just gets distributed. I don’t support bitcoin to get rich. I support it for freedom from tyranny. I support it for independence from oligarchs, banking authoritarians, and a corrupted monetary system. PoS is a carry over of aristocracy and oligarchs. The oligarchs are just called “stakers” now. And with a name behind the stakers, governments can enter and control the mechanisms. With a massive stake locked in an asset you become vulnerable to control from external forces. There are so many problems with this pattern one could write, at the very least, a very long article on it. But it would seem reason and freedom is as a fart in the wind these days. Tldr: Bitcoin will never move to PoS because it is inferior.
  - kinakomochidayo 4y ago
    > I support it for freedom from tyranny. I support it for independence from oligarchs, banking authoritarians, and a corrupted monetary system. This is the main reason why many big brains either moved to Bitcoin Cash or Ethereum in 2017. Bitcoin basically got taken over by Blockstream and other L2 VC-backed companies, holding it hostage with small blocks just so these intermediaries can skim profits off of transactions with their half baked federated solutions. Rationale is pretty much “if Bitcoin has been taken over by toxic lead developers who are in it for the money, then I might as well look for the next best thing (even if it’s less decentralized) with good developers, and many discovered Ethereum fits the bill.
tremarley 4y ago
Infinitely unlikely. Bitcoin is the representation of Decentralised Proof of Work. I couldn't imagine any Bitcoin loving person to ever consider a POS BTC reality.
unboxingelf 4y ago
No. PoW enables real decentralization. No party/company/govt can control a PoW network like BTC. This is why it’s considered a commodity by many. PoS is almost the opposite. A small group with stake control the network. This is why it’s considered a security by many. For Bitcoin, PoW is a feature not a bug.
- unboxingelf 4y ago
  I’d love a rebuttal to backup the downvotes.
zionic 4y ago
Not yet, but when the combined effects of the merge + EIP 1559 drive ETH to flip BTC _and_ the ever-increasing "BTC wastes X countries worth of power per day" it will eventually happen. No chance at all while BTC remains top dog (in market cap)

friendzis 4y ago

One, they are going to sasturate the market which will drive the prices down significantly. They cannot not saturate the market, because GPUs age due to new developments by manufacturers. This already makes the prospect of recouping initial investments rahter dim. Consider that non-miner market has a huge distain for miners and are willing to pay premium on new cards just to stick to the miners. I don't think resale value is going to be spectacular.

latchkey 4y ago
No, the most ROI efficient cards are 4-5 year old cards (like the RX480). ETH's algo, ethash, is memory hard, which means that it is a false narrative that buying the latest card is necessary. The bottle neck isn't the speed of the card, but the speed of the memory controller.
- MrPatan 4y ago
  Nobody cares about Eth's old mining algo anymore, it better be good at something else
- friendzis 4y ago
  This does not contradict my comment that resale value of those cards is going to be nowhere close original purchase price, though
  - latchkey 4y ago
    How would you tell that a GPU has been used for mining? Other than any vbios changes, which can be reverted easily, it would be impossible. ALL gpus are going to go down in price, just because the market is saturated, it has nothing to do with what workloads they happened to be used for.
leroman 4y ago
I suppose they made some money by running these cards.. They stand to get SOME of the initial investment back, unlike BTC ASICs, they are basically worthless outside of BTC mining..