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Comment by JulianMorrison | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin needs to get mapped across 1:1 to something that doesn't require vast number crunching energy use, and the old blockchain abandoned

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It's already happening! There's approx 150,000 BTC locked in the Ethereum network as ERC20 tokens like WBTC and RENBTC

https://wbtc.network/dashboard/order-book

Ethereum is moving to proof of stake shortly. I imagine a lot more BTC will transfer over to take advantage of this & other benefits like defi interest

I've heard some skepticism regarding the PoS of eth, so I'm in "let's see it when it's there" mode, but I'm somewhat optimistic here. Can't go fast enough for my taste, I'm really curious if it'll turn out to be what it's supposed to! Hopefully this will also mean people start to move over to this better tech.

It's been running perfectly in production since Dec. 1, with over $5 billion in ETH staked so far.

Migrating the legacy stake and EVM to it still needs to be done, but that's irrelevant to the consensus algorithm. It's just changing the data it reaches consensus about.

Interesting, I should look into this again and update my knowledge. Thanks for the reply!

For the migration to be complete, there would need to be a coordination between the btc network and an eth contract to move the issuing of the remainder of the supply over to the contract. And an agreement of how the new units would be allocated; it seems doubtful that this could ever take place.

I don't think there's any reason for a 100% migration. It would be impossible to get consensus for that, like you said.

Anybody who wants to move their coins over can. There are plenty of economic, technical, and moral (climate change) reasons to do so.

Besides, when it's voluntary, people can choose to lock their coins into whichever network they like Ethereum, Cardano, Polkadot. (note: ETH is the only network that has currently has contracts able to lock BTC)

The reason for a 100% migration is that Bitcoin ought to be switched off in its entirety. Which you can't do while it's being used.

I've very skeptical for cryptos, specially about their regulatory survival, but I've been studying it a bit, and aside some obscure cryptos that are propably genius, I found nano worth mentioning as currency, and Cardano seems on track for a blank sheet replacement of Ethereum.

I am speculating on Algorand after doing some research and listening to a talk by Biden's SEC chair Gary Gensler where he spoke positively about it. It is a cool project in the Proof of Stake space. Although there are several "Eth killers", Algo included, that could go nowhere.

Cardano doesn't have smart contracts yet. How many years has it been? How can they still be top ranked?

It’s like gen 3 crypto, incepted in 2017. I’m a believer in their platform and governance models, and enjoy their fast, cheap transactions today. IOHK is delivering something with vast consequence, generally on schedule. They will lag until dev adoption takes off, but then I have high hopes for the network and protocol to deliver on early crypto promises.

Yeah, but every blockchain that isn't used much has fast transactions. And even with smart contracts they will be missing layer 2. It's a long time to wait.

Genuinely curious, why Cardano? There are dozens of reputable, high profile “eth killers”, such as Cosmos, NEAR, Polkadot, Solana, Avalanche, Tezos and many more. All of these have a proof of stake consensus, and smart contracts which are supposed to have some special sauce that makes them better than Solidity, be it functional programming, formal proofs, rust, or what have you.

Cardano seems to have accomplished the least of the bunch, (not even fully operational yet) but somehow it has spiked in the last few months to have the highest market cap. Not trying to offend you if you have invested in it or anything, but do you have any idea why?

A database?

Who's database?

It’s ironic the premise is we trust nuclear weapons to the government but not our pithy accounts of bitcoin - which in the event of a trust-less government is worthless (because of the arsenal)

Odd framing. No one "trusts" nuclear weapons to the government as opposed to having control themselves. "Pithy accounts" (money) represent to a fairly large degree an individual's autonomy / freedom / independence. Is it so bad to find it appealing that one may wish to assert more control over this given the choice?

I say this as someone who finds crypto to look like almost a complete scam but I can't dispute the appeal of the concept.

We all get databases. They're a commodity. e.g. AWS will sell you a DynamoDB table for $cheap.

We should migrate Bitcoin to someone's DynamoDB table? Or did you not read the root comment?

Yeah. If you only want to handle around 7 transactions a second, you can buy an of the shelf Db such as a DynamoDB table for that, and it will cost you next to nothing.

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