Proof-of-Work (PoW) is not secure, has no future, electricity use of continents

[adaptivedev]

Guys, thoughts? We need to change Bitcoin to proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS), right?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Crypto_ICO_Investing/comments/72btqm/proof_of_work_is_not_secure_has_no_future_and_is/?ref=share&ref_source=link

"Bitcoin needs to change to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) if it’s to survive in the long run. Otherwise, it’s competing crypto-assets would do the world a favor by burying it.

Why? Firstly, PoW is not secure: As of August, you’d need only $400–800 million (*1) to attack the $44 billion Bitcoin chain (and in PoW too, you can even get some or even all of the attack-infrastructure investment back by short selling in the right moment).

This makes PoW seem way less secure than PoS, where you’d need at least 15% of the stake (*1), or over $6B, and to buy all that, you’d drive the price to the moon, while everyone else cashes out, and the attacker is holding a worthless bag. But in PoW, even if the network forks away, the attacker didn’t spend money buying any coins, but rather the transferable power to attack any similar forked coin as well.

Secondly, PoW is also a huge pointless electricity drain on the world, already using more electricity than Iceland, the country.

PoW served it’s purpose. It was good for getting economic incentives for miners to jump aboard.

However, if prices go 1000x higher as we like, it’ll be 1000 Icelands, or entire continents of power just for PoW (*2).

PoW therefor has no future. It’s not at all secure, and it’d use entire continents of power usage to power it.

Bitcoin better change to Proof-of-Shares (PoS), if not delegated dPoS, or it’s hard to imagine how it’ll survive, by even modest govt attacks or otherwise.

For the time being, only PoS and dPoS systems such as NEO, QTUM, LISK, Bitshare, Steem and others coming to d/PoS like Ethereum, Tezos and EOS, seem like viable."

(*1) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2050869.msg20571959#msg20571959

(*2) It's a common misconception that the transactions volume would need to go up 10x for electricity usage to go up 10x. It doesn't. The electricity usage is much more correlated to bitcoin price than usage. If price goes up 10x, then miners are incentivized to invest 10x more on hardware and thereby increase the computational competition and "difficulty" of mining by 10x, and therefor electricity, by 10x.

[Ucy]

Am not that technically sound in cryptocurrency but this:   "PoW is also a huge pointless electricity drain on the world, already using more electricity than Iceland, the country."    Wow!

Could really pose a serious challenge in the future. Imagine if half the total amount of  available Bitcoin is mined,the total energy will probably be that of United States.
A big advancement in renewable energy is needed to save the situation.

[crazyivan]

I agree 100% This is why I love proof of stake, similar to PoW mining, just you do not need hardware, electricity, cooling or anything similar to that.

DMD Diamond s my preferable PoS coin, it has brought me nothing but profits for over 4 years. Yap, I ve been around that long. )

[NeuroticFish]

Guys, thoughts? We need to change Bitcoin to proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS), right?

From what I know, right now it costs over 1000$ to mine one BTC.
From what I remember - it may not be very accurate - the PoS coins value keeps degrading over time (whales just sell the coins they get for free).
All in all, while I agree that the global cost of energy for BTC is huge, if we change this we may end up with a very very cheap Bitcoin.

[adaptivedev]

Guys, thoughts? We need to change Bitcoin to proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS), right?

From what I know, right now it costs over 1000$ to mine one BTC.
From what I remember - it may not be very accurate - the PoS coins value keeps degrading over time (whales just sell the coins they get for free).
All in all, while I agree that the global cost of energy for BTC is huge, if we change this we may end up with a very very cheap Bitcoin.

This is a huge common misconception. Ether for example now with PoW has 14% inflation, but when it moves to PoS with Casper it'll have just 1% inflation, lower than bitcoins 4% currently.

It all depends on the parameters set. PoS, if anything, is more deflationary than PoW if it wants to be, because in PoS you don't have to reward as much to miners for all that useless mining computation.

[jekjekman]

I understand where are you coming from but both POW and POS has its own advantage and disadvantage when it comes to bitcoin. We all know that a large portion of well invested miners in the world are already mining bitcoins so technically they spent a fortune in making it and when the time comes that the bitcoin developers want to change it to POS I think there will be a big debate and many stoppage protest will happen to this group of miners.

And when it comes to POS I think the most people that will benefit here is the very rich investors as they can play the price of bitcoin at their own command whenever they want as they have the money to buy each stake instantly with no work needed, correct me if I am wrong but this is only my own understandings to what is happening right now between POW and POS.

[AGD]

There are a lot of other coins that provide a PoS. If you prefer these ... go ahead.
You can also create your own Bitcoin PoS coin if you want. If you have a lot of support, your coin might even skyrocket.

[tomericco]

You can also create your own Bitcoin PoS coin if you want. If you have a lot of support, your coin might even skyrocket.

I don't see any chance for a new coin to rise above the Bitcoin, only for being based on PoS. If there will be such a coin, it'll probably be a Bitcoin fork.

[Yuhee]

I understand where are you coming from but both POW and POS has its own advantage and disadvantage when it comes to bitcoin. We all know that a large portion of well invested miners in the world are already mining bitcoins so technically they spent a fortune in making it and when the time comes that the bitcoin developers want to change it to POS I think there will be a big debate and many stoppage protest will happen to this group of miners.

And when it comes to POS I think the most people that will benefit here is the very rich investors as they can play the price of bitcoin at their own command whenever they want as they have the money to buy each stake instantly with no work needed, correct me if I am wrong but this is only my own understandings to what is happening right now between POW and POS.

I guess you could say that this changes would be based from the China issue. China is one of the main miners of btc along with the transactions so there would really be need in turning to PoS. From my perspective the target would be prolonging the btc if ever things go south. Even though rich investors will benefit, they could also be the main contributor for btc. As long small trader we would really be in no position to change this kind of issue.

[w5pn73]

I think we would see a lower price if we go pos, without all the asics.
But wouldn't be surprised if the high power consumption would be officially used as argument against bitcoin

[Lord of the Lies]

there are lots of pos coins out there, in more than 1 way

pow won't go away though. there are good reasons to use it.

[Lipe490]

POW is only worth when there are just a few people mining, but the problem with few people mining is that nobody is interested in the coin. When there are too much people mining that means more hashpower and more eletricity cost but the coin should be very worth it. Maybe we'll never find a break-even point which is good to mine and receive a good amount of coins paying less energy. I think POW isnt dead and still have a great future because Bitcoin uses this system and there are a lot of people mining it and everyday the number of miners rises considerably. POS system came to balancing things for those who can not buy high power mining but in the other way you must have tons of coins to be worth mining throught the POS system and the strategy is chosing one in early stage like ICO and buy when is cheap.