Bitcoin Forum

the cryptocurrency is not only extremely expensive in terms of its mining costs, but also inefficient in its long-run design. However, the efficiency of the Bitcoin system can be significantly improved by optimizing the rate of coin creation and minimizing transaction fees. Another potential improvement is to eliminate inefficient mining activities by changing the consensus protocol altogether. So there is the possibility of replacing PoW by a proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol which can strictly dominate
PoW and even support immediate and final settlement. There are many fundamental issues of a PoS protocol still need to be sorted out and remains much to be learned about the economic potential and the efficient, economic design of blockchain technology.

I doubt that Bitcoin will ever switch to PoS.

I'm sure that everyone will love dumping their POS-fork coins for more BTC.  But yeah, this just isn't happening.  The best you could ever hope for is a POS sidechain. 

Mining cost you say, remember when it would cost you nothing to mine bitcoin? Now it costs so much, what does that tell you, that's indeed growth, development, improvement, it shows you it's no longer some valueless shitcoin you simply mine with your ordinary computer.

Bitcoin is more than efficient in the long run, if you trace it's growth from 2009 till now, you may then want to edit that part of your post.

I appreciate your opinion, but I think Bitcoin has to wait until we see the outcome of Ethereum 2.0 when it becomes POS in the next few months.

That's a wrong calculation, just because ethereum is having its transition to POS we can't say it to be more efficient than bitcoin. Maybe there will be some features lacking with bitcoin, but it has got the better things to stay strong in the market. Even without any changes bitcoin stands high above $8500 what about ethereum?

Bitcoin doesn't care what is going on with Ethereum so it doesn't have to wait on anything.

And no one has figured out a way to make PoS work without turning a cryptocurrency into a PoS so until that changes the discussion is pointless.

That statement of OP makes me feel a little bit discouraged with Bitcoin but then again, the cost of mining the coins is one of the very reasons why the price of Bitcoin has been growing for the past 10 years and this can continue for a long time until 2140. I consider Bitcoin to be a living organism that is constantly looking for acceptable and effective ways in dealing with the many issues affecting it. Unlike many centralized platforms, with Bitcoin changes could not happen without the acceptance of the community hence no one has the power to dictate what can be in here and that's good but it could also mean that we have to wait with patience for developments to take place.

Three words that show clearly you have no clue what you're talking about.
Transaction fees are determined only by one aspect if the number of transactions made by the users is more than the network capacity in that interval. PoS or PoW with 10 million people wanting to make on-chain transactions we will still see fees over 50$ for a tx.


No, it's not.
The cost of mining or the cost of the entire network hashrate follows the block reward.
You won't see growth in the hashrate if there is no room for profit made by mining.



Look at the title, welfare, it's obvious what the OP is thinking.
PoS for him is a solution for making money while doing nothing other than keeping coins in a wallet. :P
Too bad for him that free money turns out to be worthless money in the long run.

I thought it seemed like a peculiar choice of wording.  My initial impression was to take them at their word that they were concerned about mining costs, but your take does seem to make more sense, heh.



All of my "This".  

Bitcoin lives in the moment.  Algorithms in other altcoins come and go, but Bitcoin pays no notice and just churns out another block in ~10 minutes.  Give it all the time in the world if you want, PoS just isn't happening.  Every alt fan thinks their preferred method of securing the chain is better.  But roughly every 10 minutes, they're proven wrong.   :D

Rather than changing bitcoin, what will happen is a change in the source of electricity.

At present a lot of bitcoin mining happens in China where they have surplus hydroelectric power (especially in winter in the mountains where they get a lot of rain). Mining also takes place in Quebec for the same reason (hydro-electric power), If some states adopt cheap solar power, mining will migrate there instead. Coal power is being phased out everywhere.

Yeah, no. The system is technically designed to reward those who exert hashing power in order to facilitate the processing of transactions and ensure that the network is safe. If we were to switch over to a "cleaner" and "greener" algorithm which is PoS, those capitalists and whales would benefit from everything while the rest of us would probably eat dust and get dumped into every single time. I must admit that we are nowhere near being an energy-efficient network due to the amount of power--a significant portion of which are still from fossil fuels--that we use as a whole, but the mere fact that greener alternatives are already being introduced and utilized by some of the mining farms is already a good sign towards the right way.

Perhaps a fork of PoS bitcoin might happen, but the main chain will stay on where it is currently and  there's no changing the minds of  the miners nor the majority of the community, that's for sure.

your approach is highly important about Bitcoin adopting POS for more scaling but the issue here is how to convince what you have described Bitcoin fanatics or maximalists to change their mind and become more flexible towards the development of bitcoin.

I wish you the best of luck in your endeavours, but maximalism has nothing to do with it.  It's more like empiricism.  We see on a daily basis what works and what doesn't.  And what definitely doesn't work is the people who believe they can just turn up here out the blue and announce what would be "better" and assume that everyone will just go along with it.  We're gonna need a little more than that to get over our well-founded skepticism of your "novel idea" that's been proposed and rebuked more times than I care to count.  Why should I be flexible when it comes to inviting terrible ideas that would weaken the protocol?  That's kind of a red line for me.  

There already is bitmessage, an instant messaging protocol and app whose creator was inspired by BTC. However, the competition for privacy-respecting messaging alternatives is fierce believe it or not. But really, solutions provided by any certain party aren't satisfactory. Trust and centralization shouldn't be part of the equation if we're following bitcoin's principles. On that logic, with proper encryption, secure communication can happen through any platform.

I don't get what you're trying to say?

Sure, Bitcoin does have a tremendous energy cost because of its mining network, but this isn't an indicator of inefficiency in the slightest.

The Bitcoin network can singlehandedly replace every central bank, payment provider and money transmitter in the world. Do you think these have a lower energy cost than Bitcoin's POW-system when combined?

Think again.

This is false, it is efficient and secure enough the way it is. Bitcoin is never switching to PoS as your concerns comes from a false premise. Bitcoin mining will become unprofitable, and there will be less and less miners due to its economic development, which is as intended: to slowdown mining overtime.

Coin creation is set in code, regardless of network hashrate. Bitcoin doesn't really care if you spend too much or too little energy to mine it, or if there are millions or a few hundred, it will work fine just the same.

Bitcoin's PoW is proven to work and is here to stay. Furthermore, it is yet to be challenged by any altcoin, PoS or not.

The energy is being spent on securing one of the most secure networks in the world, so it's not necessarily being wasted. I think we can all agree that we should always be pushing for improvements, but who's to say that proof of stake is an actual improvement? It certainly has its merits, but also comes with just as many, if not more problems. Switching problems with other problems isn't a solution.

I do agree that we should look into replacing proof of work, but only when we have something that is clearly better. In the meantime, if it's not broken, then don't fix it; proof of work is in place to protect the network, and it has done that perfectly well thus far.

Their "waste" of electricity still collectively help secure the network. They obviously don't see it as a waste (or a problem, even) either, otherwise they'd just be turning their miners off.


Bitcoin is a work in progress, and the "reliable service for global finance" is planned to be provided by layer two solutions. It sucks that those solutions aren't ready for prime time yet, but I could understand not wanting to take unnecessary risks with bandaid solutions -- I don't even want to place proof of stake under that umbrella, because again, it has its own set of problems, and implementing it will be yet another catalyst in splitting the community.

What solution? Ditching it for PoS? Lol.


That's because they've been rehashed endlessly and most are a Google search away. But sure, for the sake of the topic (and despite you being someone who is adamantly against Bitcoin), I'll enumerate a few:

The nothing at stake problem:


Vulnerability to long range attacks:


The rich get richer at no expense - Whereas rich whales under PoW will actually need to spend and risk their money for the opportunity to earn more money, PoS allows whales to get richer faster passively, making it more prone to centralization

Adopting PoS will inevitably split the userbase - because it's not a fix as much as it's an alternative, some people will choose to stay on the PoW chain, making Bitcoin weaker in the end.

As for your so-called problems:


Energy will keep on being consumed, but with the developments in renewables (https://www.vox.com/2019/6/18/18642645/bitcoin-energy-price-renewable-china), it's going to be much less of an issue going forward.


No signs of collapse at all, and fees will get better as more improvements are made.


No basis in reality yet.


No different from whales centralizing PoS.

As I've said earlier, trading problems for other problems is not a solution. PoS has its merits, but if something as large as Bitcoin is going to change something as crucial as its consensus algorithm, it'll have to be for much bigger gains.

Why would the fee decrease if we change to PoS?
Do blocks get bigger or the time between decrease with PoS and the same can't be done with PoW?


Quite the collection of coins you have there...
Only successful coins it seems.
Actually, can you name a coin that is using PoS and is not one hell of a shitcoin?


Pos is supported just by the ones that are angry they are not able to get coins just by holding some coins, this is why so many are rushing to buy master nodes, people are hunting for $ without investment or work.
F the environment, no PoS fanatic gives a damn about it, it's just used as a propaganda tool.
If you care that much about the environment there are thousands of ways to do something about it, far more effective than switching a coin from PoW so PoS. Besides, why are you so passionate about it, you're already convinced bitcoin is going to fail, so?

So this is where it is really going?
Trying to mimic Ethereum 2.0 for bitcoin.
What now? The bitcoin is the clone or the copy machine?  ;D
Why not BCH? That is a perfect clone of bitcoin.

I guess we will just see it in the future.
Somehow it also came from you into why it should not.

You seem to be under the impression that anyone cares how much glitter you pour on a turd.

Feel free to offer up as many of the selling points as you like, it doesn't offset the compromises you would have to make to implement it in Bitcoin.  It just wasn't designed to function that way.  It doesn't conform to the principles Bitcoin was founded upon.  If you like PoS, then go ahead and use a PoS coin that was designed to work that way and enjoy your glitterpoop.

Bitcoin can co-exist with any number of other currencies, there is no need to try and tear it down like that.


These arguments against bitcoin are the FUD we've heard of a million times before and then topping it off with offering an unproven alternative.

Bitcoin uses electricity for power, not gasoline or coal, or whale oil. Electricity can come from many sources and bitcoin mining can in fact can provide an incentive to produce more solar and wind, as the extra energy that would once have been wasted, can be turned into bitcoin instead.

Since proof of stake coins don't do that, they aren't as good for the environment as bitcoin.

You're all welcome to try and argue against my point, but investment in renewables is more important than simply not using energy, and that's how we close down coal power plants.

POS does NOTHING for that.

And by the way, bitcoin doesn't have a failure to improve problem, a lot of technologies take their time to mature. It's not like the Internet was invented and then we had Netflix and Hulu, and 4K YouTube just a couple of years after that.

Damn, use quote properly is a pain in the ** to reply


You have really no idea how PoW works, do you?
What were the costs of mining when bitcoin was at 7$?
Did the network had almost the same capacity (segwit changed that) as when it hit 3000$ when we had 100x more miners?

And before you dare even try to bring in the fact that a PoS coin is secure even at low prices, no it's not, it suffers from the same problem, anyone with full pockets can gain control over it.


Miners don't set fees! Miners are not charging you a fee!
Get the basics right before starting a debate.


Yeah, comrade, we should always continue our fight against the rich elite, because...in a billion years we will get socialism right!


You're missing one thing in this comparison. Before the time I was driving toward a cliff, you were driving correctly, taking all precautions, doing things your way and you still crashed and died.
And now, angry and turned into a poltergeist you want me to do the same as your failed shitcoins so you won't suffer alone:P

Bitcoin is unchangeable, it is a fact. If Satoshi will ever change something in Bitcoin, the coin will lose the confidence of people

This will be a great device soon. If that will improve or more efficient than PoS then let it be. We all need technology that will cater our current demands. Specially today that almost everything is online, gadgets, etc. People seem to be more educated and needs faster and efficient services. That time would really make bitcoin more productive and everyone can appreciate its good purpose.

You assumed wrong...how could you do otherwise.
Again, the mining are not charging you anything, the miners collect the fees when they mine a block.
A miner can't charge you for a service he may never provide!

But in your quest to be absolutely right on everything you made a little mistake, that of understanding plain simple English!
If we use twisted logic paying a fee is also forcing the miner to include your transaction, right?  ;D

The miners can raise the minim fee they accept to 20BTC/b, they can mine empty blocks, they can even...stop mining, shave their cats and even go hang themselves. This doesn't change anything in your virtual war between PoS and Pow, the same things you claim are the weakness of the PoW system are applicable to PoS.



Bitcoin is at half that price and I'm sending transactions confirmed in 2 blocks with 2sat/b
And your point is....?

Khaos77

You quoted my post yet you dodged my point completely.

Proof of work can provide a financial incentive for renewable energy.
Proof of stake can't do that.

Proof of work can help with reducing the cost of renewables. You did not refute my argument at all.

I don't think it will ever be, because many Altcoins with POS systems don't last long and even the prices are not good in the long run they can discard their POS results at cheap prices, bitcoin by way of POW is already much better

Actually, the system is not that bad in the long run. It's us, humans, spending more and more efforts to mine BTC. If some just left the mining business, it would be easier. But it's good that Bitcoin will not be mined forever, you know. So all this electricity consumption will come more or less to an end, there's no need for PoS here. I got to say that PoS does not seem like a terrible model, but there is one bad thing it encourages: hodling, hodling even more than nowadays. If Bitcoin is money, it should be actively used, and if you're getting paid for not spending it, you are putting the market in a stalled position, so to speak.

The problem is not Bitcoin. The problem is Australia. They seem to be ok with burning more coal despite the environmental effects. They don't have to burn coal yet they choose to.

Bitcoin has stopped it's development already as the founder or the creator abandoned it without revealing their identities so it's pretty difficult to say that bitcoin can still be upgraded to what you are pointing out.

Bitcoin will remain to what it is right now if no one from the development team will show even if it is extremely expensive in terms of it's mining costs. We cannot do a thing about it anymore.

This is completely false, satoshi left the project long time ago but there are many developers working really hard to keep improving bitcoin and how it performs and since he left they have made many upgrades to bitcoin that will help us to achieve worldwide adoption, and while many complain about the mining costs and resources that are spent in a process that they believe to be useless that is the only way to secure the network from attacks.