Mar 25 2020 101 mins 19
Guests: Kevin Sekniqi (@kevinsekniqi) - debating FOR the motion Tarun Chitra (@tarunchitra) - debating AGAINST the motion Host: Richard Yan (@gentso09) Today’s motion is “POS will overtake POW.” This is an important topic for a few reasons. First, from an investor’s perspective, this is another angle of evaluating BTC vs its challengers, which by and large are POS, or moving to POS. Second, this provides guidance to architects of new protocols in making design decisions. If we were to measure the dominance of POW via market cap, of the top 20 coins on CMC, coins with a POW mechanism (with no serious plans to migrate to something else), take up 74% of the share of market cap. The two guests we have for this episode are: a builder of a highly anticipated POS-based protocol; and a creator of an extremely interesting business that simulates protocol behavior, to help protocol designers make more sound decisions. I want to note that, about 70 minutes into the debate, the discussion shifted to a general conversation about money characteristics of bitcoin, and this goes on for about 25 minutes. This was not directly relevant to the motion, but I kept it in nonetheless, for the insights it shed. Make sure to check out our previous episodes too, on Bitcoin’s store of value status, tokenization and smart contracts, DeFi, bitcoin halvening, and China’s future in blockchain. If you would like to debate or want to nominate someone, please DM me at @blockdebate. Please note that nothing in our podcast should be construed as financial advice. Source of select items discussed in the debate: Paul Sztorc article "Nothing is Cheaper than Proof of Work": http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/ Hash rate derivatives: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currencies-derivatives/with-hashes-and-hedges-power-hungry-crypto-miners-court-investors-idUSKBN1YE0KA Digital currency as a Veblen good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
