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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

> I won't comment on PoS. I am not familiar with it, but it seems like it bypasses this need simply because it is more of a compromise based on classical consensus.

Proof of Work and Proof of Stake round to the same thing.

In PoW you input cash to buy miners and power to obtain coins. Cash > ??? > Coins.

In PoS you input cash to buy coins to obtain coins. Cash > ??? > Coins.

In both PoS and PoS those with the most money get to control the system. PoW adds a layer of indirection by wasting mountains of components and a country worth of power but at the end of the day there's no real difference.

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In Proof-of-Work, a large fraction of the money you put into the system is destroyed. There are physicially meaningful economies (and dis-economies) of scale involved. You are generally incentivized to sell your cryptocurrency as fast as possible to cover your real-world costs (lowering the price of the cryptocurrency).

In Proof-of-Stake, you are incentivized to keep your money into the system so you can control more and more of it. It's like a ponzi scheme where you are incentivized to re-invest your winnings. This falls apart when everyone starts to cash out.

The use of bitcoin mining as indoor heating is one such example of a dis-economy of scale (but this is an oversimplification because it does not factor depreciation costs). Also, there are systems like RandomX which encourage CPU-based mining, which has economies of scale for home miners or botnets over larger mining operations.

Ethereum's PoS also pays only a tenth as much reward as Bitcoin, as a percentage of total supply.

According to whattomine.com, with an electricity cost of $0.03/kWh your cost is about 2/3 of the Bitcoin reward. Combined with a 10X higher reward, that means a Bitcoin miner with that electricity cost gets about three times as much return on investment, as a percentage basis, as an Ethereum staker. That's money they can reinvest in new mining equipment.

> you are incentivized to keep your money into the system so you can control more and more of it. It's like a ponzi scheme where you are incentivized to re-invest your winnings.

So you think the stock market is a ponzi scheme? Shares pay dividends, you are insentivised to keep putting money into the system

In the stock market, the money you invest into a company is used to pay for workers, equipment, etc that generates more dividends. Anything you invest in staking is competing in a zero-sum with other stakers.

> In the stock market, the money you invest into a company is used to pay for workers, equipment, etc that generates more dividends.

Only if you invest in the IPO or later stock offerings directly from a company. Otherwise you're just buying in the secondary market and no part of the price you pay goes to the company.

Shares represent voting control in the companies decisions. Even the existence of non-voting shares is still a message about expectations of future profitability - i.e. a companies ability to issue additional stock profitably depends on expectations about the value and future value of presently held stock...which in turn is a signal about confidence in the company's direction, profitability etc.

When you get into non-voting shares, you move closer and closer to "corporate branded" crypto. We'll see when a major company with a lot of non-voting shares really struggles and gets acquired at a discount or moved private, how much value is given to the non-voting shareholders.

You're confusing funding and cash flow. Funding is invested in value generating assets. Just because the money is spent doesn't mean the asset (like a conveyor belt) evaporates. It's essentially the equity holders allowing the firm to use their stuff. Which is an ongoing thing.

Stocks are different because stocks derive intrinsic value from non-investor participants. When a customer buys something at a store, the profit from that is saved in a cash account, re-invested in the business or returned to investors via dividends. Yield through dividends is no different at the limit than that money accruing to intrinsic value in the business.

Crypto only has investor participants. You cannot ever get more money out of a Bitcoin than someone else puts in buying Bitcoin. Less, actually, because you have to pay miners to operate the network.

Stocks as a whole are positive-sum due to the contributions of non-investor participants.

Futures, options and PoS crypto are zero-sum.

PoW cryptos are negative-sum due to the contributions of miners.

> In PoW you input cash to buy miners and power to obtain coins. Cash > ??? > Coins.

In the long run yes but mining equipment is an asset which can be sold or used as collateral for a loan.

I’m not an accountant but I’m sure there are some tax benefits to depreciation. In a bull run the miners even appreciate in value too so I don’t know how that would work out.

A better way of thinking about mining is it’s a way to dollar cost average into Bitcoin if you have access to cheap power.

> In the long run yes but mining equipment is an asset which can be sold or used as collateral for a loan.

Staked coins in PoS can be withdrawn / used to the same effect.

> Staked coins in PoS can be withdrawn / used to the same effect.

AFAIK it's not possible to simultaneously stake a coin and use it as collateral for a loan without giving up custody.

It’s your opinion that what PoW produces is “waste”

The markets disagree with your opinion

It's a fact that PoW involves quite a bit of waste, just like it's a fact that e.g. a coffee shop will waste quite a bit of coffee (by discarding it at close or when it gets too old). That the market dynamics all but require the coffee shop to do this doesn't somehow stop it from being waste.

The market can't disagree with definitions of words. What it can do, is encourage the waste.

Famously, markets can remain irrational longer than (investors) can remain solvent.

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