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Comment by corv | Hacker News Reader

You're so close to an ad hominem that I can hardly be persuaded to reply but your confusion has taken the better of me.

Proof of stake blockchains operate on the basis of more dollars = more votes, for this to be true for proof of work blockchains one would first need to spend that capital for mining equipment.

It is very egalitarian since everyone can participate on an equal footing, everyone can run a node and get a complete copy of all transactions and verify correctness. It is challenging and expensive to get the same kind of insight into the stock market.

The European Central Bank has arguably failed its mandate of keeping price stability within the eurozone when some countries have more than 20% inflation.

Currency debasement is more commonly known related to coins but I'll leave the term as is

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Unless someone’s willing to give me and a lot of other folks a server farm full of GPU’s then no- it’s not participation on equal footing when the whole ecosystem has been partially bootstrapped by money stollen or gained through criminal enterprise.

Even putting that aside, it’s not equal footing because the wealthy people who are wealthy based on the traditional economy make crypto a defacto plutocracy because they can afford to buy their way into it one way or another.

> It is very egalitarian since everyone can participate on an equal footing

Errr, no. One dollar one vote is not equal footing. If you have more dollars you can buy more votes. That's the opposite of egalitarian.

> Proof of stake blockchains operate on the basis of more dollars = more votes, for this to be true for proof of work blockchains one would first need to spend that capital for mining equipment.

Just to clarify - this really depends on which chains you are talking about. Some proof of stake chains implement direct on chain governance, in which stake does directly translate into explicit voting power to implement policy changes. Polkadot in particular does this. But Ethereum, does not have anything resembling on-chain governance. Ethereum validators have no more say in what makes for valid ethereum blocks then what proof of work miners had to say. The folks that really matter is everyone running non-validating nodes and the people who choose to interact with those nodes for their transactions or inspecting the chain history.

> The European Central Bank has arguably failed its mandate of keeping price stability within the eurozone when some countries have more than 20% inflation.

It's not that simple. They could rise interest rates more but Italy and Greece would probably default on its debt, which would make euro a lot more unstable than keeping 20% inflation rate in three very small eastern european countries which corresponds to 3.6% of the whole EU population. Current inflation in euro zone is ~10%.

> The European Central Bank has arguably failed its mandate of keeping price stability within the eurozone when some countries have more than 20% inflation.

Yeah, Bitcoin has really held up great in value in comparison to euros or dollar… it’s only down 70 % on top of those currencies‘ inflation.

While AMZN is down 50% this year and much of the tech sector with it

It is still one of the best performing assets in history

Stop parroting this nonsense. Crypto isn't one of the best performing assets by any stretch of the imagination. You can't measure the return over an arbitrary period and call that the asset's performance. That's not how it works. An asset's performance needs to be considered in terms of expected return, i.e. the average return over a time period (typically, a day or week) and some measure of risk (such as the standard deviation of returns).

> It is very egalitarian since everyone can participate on an equal footing, everyone can run a node and get a complete copy of all transactions and verify correctness

I have friends that can pay rent but don’t have much left over. There are people in my city that live hand to mouth. I know plenty of people who are well off enough, but aren’t ever going to (or have the technical inclination, or sore cash to) run a node.

> get a complete copy of all transactions and verify correctness

I’m sure this is a real benefit for all the single parents struggling to feed and cloth their kid.

The reality is, most people don’t have the resources (time, technical or monetary) to participate in “egalitarian” crypto currencies. Moreover, even if they all did, it still wouldn’t be egalitarian, because they’d still be out-purchased by those with capital. So we’re back to where we started, except with more e-waste, energy bills and more exaggerated hyper-capitalism.

Well exactly, had these single parents bought Bitcoin or Ethereum years ago they wouldn't be struggling now.

One doesn't need to run a node to use the system but it is accessible to everyone, just as the code is there to be scrutinized publicly.

The entire point was to reform currency where economic policy is more predictable and the currency less susceptible to kleptocracy.

Interestingly enough the inflation rate of both Bitcoin and Ethereum is now lower than that of major world currencies. So while volatility still needs to trend lower for day to day usage, the case for a store of value has already been established in the past decade and anyone can see the price history and number of wallets increasing exponentially.

> had [they] bought Bitcoin or Ethereum years ago they wouldn't be struggling now.

I'm curious how you think people "make money" on crypto. Wouldn't those people getting rich be doing it at the expense of people losing money investing in crypto?

No, the market isn't a zero-sum game. "A rising tide lifts all boats"

Of course everyone cashing out at the same time would be akin to a bank-run. In practice this doesn't happen since people bought in at different times and have a different cost basis.

Ok, but where does the actual money come from?

If I bought 10k of ethereum at one point in time and sold if for 100k, I put 10k into a pot which I took 100k out of.

Basic math tells me there won't be a "rising tide" for the boats that are left when anyone else pulls out.

A rising tide also makes some vessels capsize, though.

I do not see how crypto is not a zero sum game, actually its a negative sum game if we deduct the mining costs, lost coins and the exchanges fees. Wasnt this supposed to work without whaleish, centralised exchanges?

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