Will BTC converge to ETH?

[ltcltcltc]

BTC works because of PoW. Satoshi realized that consensus in a network could be achieved if the nodes committed computationallly to their version of the story. Using computational means to show how confident you are that you're speaking the truth prevents malicious nodes to influence the network with untruthful facts. But "computational" is too theoretical of a term. In reality, miners care, not about how many operations their calculations are taking, nor how long they're taking, but about how expensive the next block will be to mine. Really, miners use financial means to back up their version of the story. If their block is accepted by the network then the financial goods spent in the mining process are collected back with a profit; otherwise they're lost. Miners stake their financial goods to "prove their point".

Now, I guess many miners use traditional currency to buy all those nasty plastic high-tech gadgets that speed up their calculations. My two questions.

• Does this economically "link" in some way BTC to physical currencies?
• And more importantly. If the time comes that the traditional currencies are replaced by BTC, miners will spend BTC to buy their graphic cards and everything they need, so they'll actually stake BTC in order to prove their point. So in a fully bitcoinized economy, won't PoW be identical to proof-of-stake? Let's just obviate the immense pile of e-trash and the huge electricity consumption gap that separates both protocols in reality.

The title of this post should be "Will PoW converge to PoS?" but I liked a catchier version.

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[Faisal2202]

Does this economically "link" in some way BTC to physical currencies?

I think this economically is link BTC to Physical currencies but link in a way of dependency, for example, miners who don't have fiat and making earning via mining, what they will do is, use those BTC to buy components, and go face energy expenses etc. But they might have to convert those BTC to fiat currency when the seller of those energy and components don't accept BTC as payment method.

I would say, physical currency fiat or banks will always remain a part of our lives.

And more importantly. If the time comes that the traditional currencies are replaced by BTC, miners will spend BTC to buy their graphic cards and everything they need, so they'll actually stake BTC in order to prove their point. So in a fully bitcoinized economy, won't PoW be identical to proof-of-stake? Let's just obviate the immense pile of e-trash and the huge electricity consumption gap that separates both protocols in reality.

You have asked a good question and it is really a good one and if we conclude things on the basis of your statements then I can say yes it do resembles with POS but if technically speaking you don't really need BTC to start mining, as you can start mining with fiat directly while in POS you must need ETH to stake.

And in POS you basically your experience for specific time period but you don't lock your components which you have bought using your Bitcoin as you can sell your components like your mining machines etc. anytime.

[pooya87]

The title of this post should be "Will PoW converge to PoS?" but I liked a catchier version.

No because PoS is a flawed protocol by design.

Using computational means to show how confident you are that you're speaking the truth prevents malicious nodes to influence the network with untruthful facts.

That's not exactly how things work. In PoW it is all about cost of the "work" required to become the "longest chain". A malicious actor needs to compete with the majority to create the longest chain, since the cost to do that (a 51% attack) is too high, it becomes impossible.

Miners stake their financial goods to "prove their point".

Well, miners do have a "stake" in the game but it is not the same as "proof of stake" because in the later you virtually perform no actual work and are only rewarded for having money!!! Meanwhile a miner in a PoW algorithm is performing actual work and is being paid for that work.

Does this economically "link" in some way BTC to physical currencies?

No.

Let's just obviate the immense pile of e-trash and the huge electricity consumption gap that separates both protocols in reality.

There is a lot more than separates the two specially if we go beyond just the mining algorithm and compare bitcoin with ethereum. The later is a useless centralized shitcoin with unlimited supply and a massive premine and to top it all it has a mutable blockchain while the former is a unique decentralized payment system with no premine and with an immutable blockchain.

[Bialke]

There is no difference, if you stake cash or if you stake hash.

[criptoevangelista]

POW will never end, I think it's incredible because it has the power to do social scalability, which makes bitcoin fair and reliable. Social scalability means that all people, regardless of what they believe in or even enemies, do common work.

[davis196]

Does this economically "link" in some way BTC to physical currencies?
And more importantly. If the time comes that the traditional currencies are replaced by BTC, miners will spend BTC to buy their graphic cards and everything they need, so they'll actually stake BTC in order to prove their point. So in a fully bitcoinized economy, won't PoW be identical to proof-of-stake? Let's just obviate the immense pile of e-trash and the huge electricity consumption gap that separates both protocols in reality.

1.Nope. BTC has no "economical link" to physical currencies.
2.Nope. Bitcoin will never replace the traditional currencies. You wanna know why? Several days ago, a had to pay 70 USD transaction fee to move a small amount of BTC to my wallet. That's why. The Bitcoin blockchain can't handle big quantities of transactions and it gets easily congested. Bitcoin will always remain in the form of "digital gold" and I'm OK with that, but I don't expect BTC to become a normal currency.
This is yet another "PoW vs. PoS" forum post. This discussion has ended months or even years ago. There's no point starting it again.
If you like Proof-of-Stake just move to a PoS altcoin. You have multiple choices.

[STT]

Some people really despise Proof of stake but in any case its entirely a different protocol.   They should not be merged, thats a risk thats offering no real benefit really.   If POS has flaws then let them play out on that separate blockchain, its not the business of BTC to be directly connected with something entirely different to its intended path.    I like the idea of POS in theory but even I would say you cannot confuse the two ideas except by comparison innovatively, thats as close as they get; the exchange rate between them will always be varying.  
  I regard this idea like I regard the EURO, terrible idea to collide separate countries and economies with varying dynamics.  Invariably it will fail, for political reasons some love the idea but its going to end badly imo.  

[TheUltraElite]

Eh, this has been discussed at length previously.

Bitcoin is good with its Proof of Work system. You try to change that and you are going to question the sanctity of the blockchain here and lead to a apocalyptic mess. Not something I want to think of at all and neither does any of the stakeholders of bitcoin want to.

Thing I hate about Ethereum is its premine and its unlimited supply. Whats the point of holding a stash of ETH when it keeps on supplying more coins to the market every year? Your value will deprecate just like with fiat currency.

[WillyAp]

Not to forget the gas fees.

[beerlover]

Eh, this has been discussed at length previously.

Bitcoin is good with its Proof of Work system. You try to change that and you are going to question the sanctity of the blockchain here and lead to a apocalyptic mess. Not something I want to think of at all and neither does any of the stakeholders of bitcoin want to.

Thing I hate about Ethereum is its premine and its unlimited supply. Whats the point of holding a stash of ETH when it keeps on supplying more coins to the market every year? Your value will deprecate just like with fiat currency.

That's the problem to be fair, nobody is against "POS" as a system, it is not that people do not want that, hell I would be quite glad to get rid of the miners considering how much they are charging, a system where we all benefit and we all profit is great.

But, the risk is that we are talking about something that would not be all that secure, it is quite secure right now, there are no problems, are we certain that it would be secure there too? Look at ETH, it took them 4-5 years to build something they are comfortable about, could we really do something like that for bitcoin which has even more transactions? I think that would be risky and we are not supporting that idea because of security reasons, not because of the system reasons.

[TheUltraElite]

But, the risk is that we are talking about something that would not be all that secure, it is quite secure right now, there are no problems, are we certain that it would be secure there too? Look at ETH, it took them 4-5 years to build something they are comfortable about, could we really do something like that for bitcoin which has even more transactions? I think that would be risky and we are not supporting that idea because of security reasons, not because of the system reasons.

Security reasons make shift to POS less likely to happen. The community does not like to play around with the blockchain's sanctity here. With a huge number of bitcoin users and sleeping happily on their coins to grow, you dont want the developers to make a decision that distrubs them, the aftermath will be devastating there.

We holders have our own saying for miners, but that does not mean that PoS is better or PoW is better. Each has their own pros and cons. But bitcoin is secure on the PoW. Let ETH run it on PoS and see how it goes.

[AprilioMP]

The currency used for shopping for daily needs that is recognized by each country will continue to operate as usual and will not change as long as each country in the world still does not want to become like the country that legalized Bitcoin as legal tender (El Salvador).

If the time comes when traditional currencies are replaced by BTC, ^{I understand it as imagination} people will use BTC like they use fiat currency to shop for needed necessities. (I'm not sure they will replace traditional currency with BTC)

Making it like what is implemented in El Salvador, BTC and fiat currency can be used as desired, if you want to transact with BTC you can and if you want to transact with fiat currency you can also do it, in my opinion, it is still difficult for stakeholders in each country to agree.

The title of this post should be "Will PoW converge to PoS?" but I liked a catchier version.

I think PoW and PoS will not be combined because the processes for achieving goals are different even though they still involve algorithms.[1] That's all I know about what PoW and PoS are.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/proof-stake-pos.asp

[dansus021]

I actually have thought of this idea but I don't believe Bitcoin is going to switch to Proof of Stake if bitcoin goes to PoS or adds more block size there will be a hard fork and the PoW seems really well with bitcoin.

There is no chain is perfect there is always the thing that called the blockchain trilemma

TL;DR

Blockchains can only handle a limited number of transactions per second. If blockchain technology is to be adopted globally, it should be able to handle much more data, and at faster speeds, so that more people can use the network without it becoming too slow or expensive to use. However, the fundamental design of many decentralized networks means that increasing scalability tends to weaken decentralization or security. This is what’s known as the blockchain trilemma. Developers looking to solve this problem are experimenting with different consensus mechanisms and scalability solutions, such as sharding, sidechains, and state channels. - https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/what-is-the-blockchain-trilemma

[pooya87]

There is no difference, if you stake cash or if you stake hash.

There is a big difference.
When you stake a PoS shitcoin, you can exit it at any time and in a blinking of an eye. All it takes is to dump it for another coin or convert back to fiat or bitcoin. However, when you have mining equipment, you can't just sell those equipment any time or quickly. It is also difficult to switch to another coin specially since mining algorithms are different for a lot of coins.

That's not to mention that in PoS you are only rewarded for having money while not doing anything at all. In PoW you have to actually work to get paid. Now with the fact that shitcoins such as ETH have a massive premine, you can see who PoS benefits the most

[sana54210]

But, the risk is that we are talking about something that would not be all that secure, it is quite secure right now, there are no problems, are we certain that it would be secure there too? Look at ETH, it took them 4-5 years to build something they are comfortable about, could we really do something like that for bitcoin which has even more transactions? I think that would be risky and we are not supporting that idea because of security reasons, not because of the system reasons.

Security reasons make shift to POS less likely to happen. The community does not like to play around with the blockchain's sanctity here. With a huge number of bitcoin users and sleeping happily on their coins to grow, you dont want the developers to make a decision that distrubs them, the aftermath will be devastating there.

We holders have our own saying for miners, but that does not mean that PoS is better or PoW is better. Each has their own pros and cons. But bitcoin is secure on the PoW. Let ETH run it on PoS and see how it goes.

We have done it before, obviously not something as big as this, but when we moved to segwit that was moving blockchain and that was some playing around with fire situation and nothing bad happened about it as far as I am aware. That means, we have changed some stuff before and we have all done it together. You get to see wallet addresses that start with 3 nowadays, not with 1 that commonly anymore do you?

I mean it's still possible that you could do that, legacy is still there if you want to use it, but it's not all that common at all. This is why I can say that if we really want to move to PoS then I do not think that it's that impossible, I think it's quite possible and it may actually happen on the long run as well. We just need to make sure that the security on it is tight and we all know that it's going to be a tough deal so we all need to be patient about it, if we keep on doing something that's dangerous then we are not going to be quite good at it.

[el kaka22]

This topic has been talked about enough and I think we are all on the same page with it. People are not excited about the possibility of it because the amount of transactions on bitcoin is literally the biggest stress test anything could ever have and it's only the natural part of it, if there was also a test, we do not know if a new blockchain would be able to handle it.

Like who is going to build a blockchain for bitcoin that would be PoS and also make sure that it works perfectly not only for all the transactions that we have right now, but also for all the things that may happen in the future and make it used even more? That's not going to happen so nobody really questions the situation at all, doesn't feel like it's possible.

[WillyAp]

That's not going to happen so nobody really questions the situation at all, doesn't feel like it's possible.

Well get a group of bright people, some 50 to 150 well connected and like minded and off you go.
The issue is that many people still believe they can create a venue just by themselves.