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Comment by spenvo | Hacker News Reader

Just wait a few months, when millions(?) who "own" ethereum on Robinhood realize not only do they not really own ETH, they actually "own" a security that tracks the price of Ethereum 1.x, and therefore can't upgrade to ethereum 2.0 or earn "staking" rewards. Proof of Stake is genuinely neat, but the transition to Ethereum 2.0 is going to be rocky because it will involve another hard fork that will create severe confusion for millions of Robinhood users. Furthermore, there are other cryptocurrencies, such as Tezos, which currently offer proof of stake, with staking rewards, etc. I don't get how Ethereum is better set up as a store of value at this point.

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Legacy ETH gets rolled over to ETH to, without the owner having to do anything [1]. It's an automatic process. However, if you want to stake your ETH2 you either need to set up your own validator infrastructure or use a custodial or non-custodial staking provider.

Robinhood will not stake your ETH without your consent. That's absurd.

[1] https://launchpad.ethereum.org/en/

Eth 1.x ownership doesn’t get rolled into Eth 2? (I’m firmly an outsider observer here)

Remember the mantra, not your keys not your coins. Robinhood will own the ETH2 tokens on their behalf. But unless you own them, you can't stake them and earn rewards for doing so. I really doubt the RH crowd cares though, and RH could easily return the staking rewards to them as 'interest.'

Some exchanges do allow staking. That's actually the easiest way to stake for an individual who doesn't own 32 ETH or doesn't wants to set up their own node.

But it's still not your coins.

Yep, agreed. Hopefully what I said didn't come across as any kind of criticism, I was hoping to explain the situation to the parent. RH could absolutely allow staking on behalf of coin owners, and frankly, it seems much easier than doing it yourself from what I've read and heard.

I just found that out earlier today on my exchange of choice. It was quite the relief, as before I was like "How the hell am I going to get to 32 ETH? That's a lot of cash I have to drop to get there."

Maybe eventually I'll have that much ETH, but I'm nowhere near that today. If I ever get to that point I might set up my own node.

I think "the RH crowd" does care, but they don't have the time or resources to learn. A bit surprised I'm saying this but, people generally care about their money. If they knew for example how easy it is to transfer out of RH and also that RH could liquidate your holdings to save their asses (which they can do), I don't think they would use Robinhood. Just because people don't have access to some information that informs your value judgments doesn't mean they don't care (or for that matter that all of our value judgments have to line up with one another).

RH will get into deep trouble if they stake users' ETH without their consent. It's not gonna happen.

It does. OP gets it wrong. Ethereum holders will not have to do anything. The legacy chain will get rolled into the execution layer (ETH2) automatically.

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