This post was censored at r/Bitcoin. I have heard r/btc is open to free speech/ideas. So please hear me out if you have 10 minutes to waste.
I'm pretty near a Bitcoin maxi. About 88% of my crypto is in Bitcoin atm, 11% in a high cap alt I believe in long term (not ETH), and 1% in a low cap alt (lottery ticket/hobby). The alts are both proof of stake (POS), and I have those coins staked on their native onchain platforms for residual income. I own the private keys, and trust only the smart contracts, no person or country/province can KYC my ass and seize my coins. OTOH, my Bitcoin (vast majority of my crypto) sits in cold storage earning nothing because there is no decentralized staking option. Yes I could lend the Bitcoin via Celsius or crypto.com or Nexo etc. which I see many here are doing. However, that is antithetical to the main idea of Bitcoin (unseizable, uncensorable, unprintable). You know those guys are running fractional reserves, and it takes just one bad bear market for a Ponzi to implode. Ask Bernie Madoff investors in 2008, or QuadrigaCX in 2018, or Bitconnect, etc. I will not risk my precious Bitcoin in the hands of some reckless CEO lending it on to day traders and hoping withdrawals don't exceed deposits, while paying themselves and investors unsustainable paper returns. Play stupid games long enough and it becomes statistically more certain you will win stupid prizes.
What is the solution then to allow me to stake 88% of my crypto holdings (Bitcoin) for residual income while owning my private keys? Seems to me that POS is worth considering. For those about to say I am no Bitcoin maxi to even consider this, are you a Bitcoin maxi to lend your Bitcoin out to some Ponzi or CEX for a paper receipt? At least POS lets you own your private keys. Remember this line from Bitcoin rap battle in 2018: “You don’t need to trust the people you just need to trust the code.” Change can happen, and it is not always bad. Segwit was an improvement in block structure made in response to high fees / low throughput. It was great for Bitcoin. Today, plenty of Bitcoin "hodlers" are not actually hodling shit other than a Celsius network login/password. Not only does this risk their own Bitcoin, but it contributes to the devaluation of Bitcoin by helping create paper Bitcoin. POS can help solve both because your coins are locked in open source smart contracts, not in the SQL database of some CEX that might point to no real coins (ask QuadrigaCX bagholders), or be seized because KYC/AML or you might be a Russian (even if you live in Canada and do not support their war) or someone else the USA decides they dislike next week.
Can POS be done with a fixed supply? YES. Both my alts are fixed-supply coins (unlike ETH). You stake for fees + remaining block rewards, same as Bitcoin miners get right now. I would NEVER advocate changing the 21m supply cap and nor would that be necessary, it is a red herring to suggest otherwise.
Caveats? Sure. This is a huge programming task with the associated risks of bugs/exploits during the transition. Maybe even long term POS has some weakness that POW does not. Centralization might be one, though over time this would likely be less of an issue especially as people take their coins off exchanges to stake them onchain, and wider adoption continues.
Anyway, maybe a BIPxxx one day will be put forth. I’m an analyst and a coder of many years in myriad languages, but not a Bitcoin coder, so it would probably not be me, but just throwing this out there. I’m pretty sure it’s been discussed and shot down many times, but I haven’t seen any discussion of it lately other than how pissed people got when a speaker at the recent Bitcoin conference mentioned the idea. But with all the recent Bitcoin “hodlers” here casually mentioning giving up their private keys for a little side income from Celsius or crypto.com, I thought this might be worth a fresh look.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/ul8mj6/some_fresh_thoughts_on_proof_of_stake_for_bitcoin/
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