[jwildeboer]

Thank you for pointing out that the users of bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) have effectively no say in the design of the system they have to trust. This will ultimately limit the very trust needed to keep it alive IMHO.

[serg_chernata]

I would say that this is exactly why Proof of Stake seems to be in higher regard than Proof of Work for new currencies as well as Ether's eventual transition later this year. Among other reasons, of course.

[gjem97]

Is it generally accepted that this is inevitable? Or is it going to be a SegWit/Unlimited sort of situation?

[zeven7]

It won't be like SegWit/Unlimited. The politics are very different and the technology is very different.

1. Politics. Ethereum has a leadership team which functions very differently from Bitcoin Core. For one, the creator of Ethereum is well known and outspoken. He and the other members of the Ethereum Foundation made it clear that their intention was always to move to Proof of Stake. Though there are some who may not support this move, the general community bought into the project knowing that this was the plan from the beginning. And there's a lot of trust of Vitalik.

2. Technology. Ethereum adapts much more quickly to mining difficulty than Bitcoin. Bitcoin can't survive with 90% of the hash power on one chain and 10% of the hash power on another chain. The smaller chain would take 10 hours to mine a single block and months to readjust the difficulty. It would be unusable. Ethereum has already shown its resiliency to a split during the DAO hard fork. The smaller chain adjusted quickly and survived. What this might mean is that with the change to PoS, there could be a dissenting faction that remains on PoW, and both chains will survive. This will allow the PoS chain to go ahead and push through with a split easily even without 100% support.

[serg_chernata]

PoS seems to be definitely happening for Ether.

[gjem97]

Could you expand on that any? What's your basis for that belief?

[Jenya_]

Ethereum has a difficulty bomb (mining becomes more difficult with time). This is a form of control from developers over blockchain. If miners refuse to cooperate, they are left with the blockchain which is more difficult to mine with time (and eventually unusable).

https://themerkle.com/what-is-the-ethereum-difficulty-bomb/

[serg_chernata]

Sorry, that was my conclusion from seeing tweets and commends made by Vitalik and his team.

Besides the other response you received, there also seems to be a shift to PoS simply because PoW mining wastes a lot of electricity.

[chii]

> users of bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) have effectively no say in the design of the system they have to trust.

how is that any different to the existing currency system like credit cards and banking?

And users _do_ have a say in bitcoins. Namely, they can vote with their wallet (literally and figuratively).

[dragonwriter]

> how is that any different to the existing currency system

Fiat currency is governed by central banks, which are arms of government, and are accountable to the public in the same way as the issuing government. Obviously, the degree of accountability varies from government to government.

[devrandomguy]

That is a pretty loose definition of accountability. If your bank screws around, are you going fix it by voting for a different candidate in the next election? I would say that my ability to purchase and run mining hardware, at a loss if necessary, gives me more control over my altcoins than my citizenship gives me over my bank.

[dragonwriter]

> I would say that my ability to purchase and run mining hardware, at a loss if necessary, gives me more control over my altcoins than my citizenship gives me over my bank.

It's roughly similar to buying shares in a publicly-traded bank, which you can do as well as electing candidates for public office to whom the central bank, which is the entity making monetary policy decisions, is accountable.

So it gives you more relative power with altcoins only to the extent that those with more wealth are relatively uninterested in the altcoins in question compared to traditional banking; were a digital currency to succeed beyond a small niche, that would change and you would find yourself as drowned out by moneyed interests as you are in traditional banking on that avenue of leverage, and without the other avenues of accountability that exist with the governance of fiat currencies.

[chii]

> It's roughly similar to buying shares in a publicly-traded bank

i dont believe that even owning a bank could you directly control monetary policy or procedures that the gov't legislates. You'd have to own either the majority of all banks, or own the gov't yourself (i.e., dictatorship), and even then, it's a hardsell.

[arethuza]

Except for the Eurozone where the ECB doesn't appear to really act as an arm of anyone's government.

[dragonwriter]

ECB is an arm of the EU (a government, but not a nation-state) accountable, as I understand it, through the European Parliament primarily and secondarily through the Council; and it is also accountable to the people of Eurozone countries through the accountability processes of their individual central banks, since the national central bank chiefs are governors of the ECB.

[ceejayoz]

Brexit demonstrates an available route to expressing disapproval of the ECB's actions.

[arethuza]

The UK wasn't in the Eurozone - and I've been reading Yanis Varoufakis's books about his time as the finance minister of Greece and I've been fairly shocked at how fundamentally undemocratic (not to say unreasonable) a lot of EU institutions and the likes of the IMF are.

And I say that as someone who voted Remain in the Brexit referendum (note that Varoufakis actually campaigned on the Remain side in the UK).

[ceejayoz]

The Eurozone nations have EU exits available to them, too.

[marxidad]

Banks are regulated by democratic governments.

[golergka]

Depends on how you define 'users'. Miners don't just make money out of thin air; they actually help maintain the ledger and provide value to the 'users'. Nobody is stopping you from start doing it yourself, too.