What is Proof Of Work Vs. Proof Of Stake | How Does It Work? If you spend enough time in the crypto-community and you’ll witness debates over Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS). Fans of PoW will argue that it’s the transaction system Satoshi Nakamoto had in mind for cryptocurrencies. Those in favor of PoS, on the other hand, will argue that mining is outdated, inefficient, and insecure compared to staking.
So you might be wondering, what’s the difference, is one actually better than the other, and why is it better? Well like most things here at Bitcoin Lockup, I am not here to give you my unsolicited opinions, but we are here to give you some objective information that might help you determine for yourself which proof has best proven its worth.
Proof Of Work Vs. Proof Of Stake | How Does It Work?
PROOF OF WORK
When Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin in 2008, he envisioned a currency that would rely on a trustless and distributed consensus system. This would allow Bitcoin to be decentralized both in technological and financial terms. For instance, when you transact money through a trusted system, a third-party (think banks, credit/debit cards, PayPal) handles these transactions in terms of debit and credit. If Mark sends Sally $100 dollars, the institution will debit Mark’s account $100 dollars and credit Sally with $100. All of the money is handled by and within the third party, so none of the transacted funds belong to either Mark nor Sally until they are withdrawn from the system.
Bitcoin differs from traditional financial hubs by being trustless. This is not to say you can’t trust Bitcoin and blockchain with your money. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Bitcoin’s trustless nature allows for a peer-to-peer exchange without the need for a third-party mediator.
The traditional mediators are replaced with miners, and these miners work on behalf of Bitcoin holders to see that transaction are successfully processed. In order to see that these transactions are approved, miners commit their computer’s processing power to solve the encrypted algorithms within each transaction. This is what we mean by Proof of Work.
Under a Proof of Work system, miners compete to verify that all the transactions within the candidate block (the block currently being built) are legitimate. To do this, they must solve the encrypted puzzles that verify the integrity of the transacted coins. The first miner to solve these puzzles receives an amount of the transacted currency, also known as a block reward. Once the problem is solved, the transactions create a block that is stored as a public ledger on the blockchain, and the miner announces the solution to the entire network.
As you can see, PoW is dictated by competition and computational output. Imagine an international math competition wherein a previously unsolved proof (the block) is given to the competitors (the miners). Whoever solves this proof first is awarded a prize (block reward), and the solved proof is then posted on the internet for all to see (the block being established in the blockchain).
PROOF OF STAKE
Proof of Stake differs entirely from Proof of Work. Instead of building blocks through work output, the creator of a block is determined by their share, or stake, in a currency.
Under this system, forgers (the PoS equivalent of a miner) are chosen to build blocks based on their stake in a currency and the age of that stake within the blockchain’s network. For instance, let’s say you hold 500,000 Cardano. First of all, allow me to hypothetically congratulate you on your fat stacks. Getting back to the example, under the Proof of Stake system, you’d be more likely to create the candidate block than someone with 100,000 ADA.
To go even further, if you had been holding your 500,000 ADA in the same address for a year, you’d be more likely to generate the next block than someone who also has 500,000 ADA but who has been holding it in a network address for half a year.
To give you another analogy, imagine if your odds to win the lottery increased based on a) how much money you put into it and b) how long you had been buying tickets. Now, you won’t make millions of dollars by staking your favorite PoS currency, but you can make some nice passive income on top of your investment gains.
It’s important to note that, for a stake to be chosen, it must be held on an address within the coin’s network. So if you were holding Cardano like in the above example, you would need to store it in Cardano’s core wallet. There are also no block rewards in the PoS system. Seeing as there’s no work-centric incentive to outcompete other miners, forgers are only awarded transaction fees.
There’s also a marked difference between Delegated Proof of Stake and regular Proof of Stake, but that’s for another article at another date.
Proponents of PoW will tell you it allows crypto to more effectively function as a currency. The PoS model, they argue, incentivizes users to stake their coins for extended periods of time, thereby making them inactive.
PoS fans, however, will defend their system’s overall superiority. For starters, it solves the problem of energy consumption that Bitcoin has created. As more transactions and users are added to Bitcoin’s network, more computing power will be needed to accommodate growth. The more computing power that is added to the network, the more the hashrate increases in difficulty. With more difficulty comes an increase in the amount of work a computer must generate to generate blocks, and this increased output leads to greater energy consumption.
Bitcoin’s growth and mining difficulty are exponentially tied to energy consumption, and critics see this as an unsolvable issue under the PoW model. It’s the reason that Bitcoin’s network alone consumes more energy than 159 countries.
Proof of Stake also defends against 51% attacks on the blockchain. As we’ve seen with the recent Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin civil war, disproportionate mining power can lead to de facto centralization of a blockchain’s network. In order to control a majority of a PoS blockchain, a validator would have to own 51% or more of that crypto’s overall supply. So in order for someone to attack Cardano’s blockchain, for instance, they would have to $609,286,157.643 worth of Cardano to do so. I really don’t see that happening.
Both PoS and PoW have their ups and downs, and I’ll be excited to see how the market responds to coins that utilize either system or a hybrid of both. One last thing to keep in mind for PoW, however, is that once all a currency’s coins are minted and circulated, block rewards will cease to exist. This may incentivize PoW coins to update to a PoS model, but only time will tell.
Still don’t have cold storage for your private keys? click HERE for the Ledger Nano S to hold all of the PoW and PoS coins discussed above!
What do you think? Do you think PoS will overtake PoW in popularity? Sound off below!
Cheers,
The Crypto Renegade
NOTE: This post may contain affiliate links. This adds no cost to you but it helps me focus on giving as much value as possible in every single post by being compensated for recommending products that help people succeed.
QuadrigaCX fails, the troubled Canadian cryptocurrency exchange, has failed to locate millions in customers’ missing cryptocurrency assets since the company’s owner died suddenly in December of 2018. On Monday, Nova Scotia Supreme Court Judge Michael Wood ruled that Quadriga Fintech Solutions Corp, the holding company, can begin bankruptcy proceedings.
Approximately 115,000 customers are owed $195 million USD in cash and cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, following the death of Quadriga’s founder Gerald Cotten. The exchange says Cotton did not reveal to anyone in his organization the private keys that access the cryptocurrencies on his private wallet. To those who did not know the details of the founders death, he died in India following complications from Crohn’s disease.
Quadriga’s court-appointed auditor Ernst & Young issued an April 1 report, asserting that creditors may benefit from the bankruptcy proceedings with the potential sale of the company’s assets, including but not limited to Quadriga’s operating platform.
In March, Michael Wood granted the Canadian crypto exchange a 45-day extension to find more than $100 million in lost Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin Gold.
The court also approved a freeze on accounts held by Cotten’s widow, Jennifer Robertson, and the Cotten estate, including Robertson’s trusts and businesses.
Robertson says that her husband’s death was “sudden and unexpected”, refuting conspiracy theories that Cotten is still alive and that his death was a ruse to escape financial troubles.
QuadrigaCX was believed to be Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, but following the death of Cotten, Ernst & Young says the company’s cold storage wallets are empty.
The next hearing is scheduled for April 18 to address issues involving credit protection and third-party payments processors.
This just goes to show that leaving your private keys on an exchange is very risky business. Do yourself a favor and store them on a trusted hardware wallet that is under YOUR control. Click here to see the latest offers directly from Ledger for an entry level hardware wallet.
What is the best cryptocurrency to invest in right now? Yes, this may seem like a loaded question, but it ultimately comes down to preference. I have long been a believer that there will at some point come a cryptocurrency that provides more value that the current king itself (Bitcoin), but I still feel as though that day is still far off in the distance. Bitcoin has been the staple and foundation that started this revolution over a decade ago with the one crazy idea that the world could have a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that was governed by the people, and not an “authority”.
So far, the network effect is the strongest factor that keeps bitcoin in the minds of most people that are aware of it, because it’s not just a coin, its also a technology; a protocol. Decentralization and a VERY large distributed network gives bitcoin a superior power than all other altcoins listed on CoinMarketCap.com. However, that is not to say that other altcoins offer no value, in fact, a good few of them are innovating a way to new technologies and governance standards that let it stand apart from the rest. I will name a two of them that I have invested in below that are not Bitcoin, because they offer a unique selling proposition (USP).
ZCASH
Zcash has a proprietary privacy protocol attached to it. This is extremely attractive, as one of the key selling points of cryptocurrency to begin with was anonymous, uncensorable transactions. This is money as it was intended to be. I should be able to transact with anyone in the world, and not only NOT have it tracked, but keep it between me and the other consenting party. They use a method called zk-SNARKs.
This is an acronym for “Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument Of Knowledge”. What does this actually mean? It essentially means that “Zero-Knowledge” proofs allow one party (prover) to prove to another (verifier) that a statement is true. It allows you to verify a transaction is relevant and true without knowing its origin.
Some people view this as potentially scary, because it allows money launderers or criminals to transact in a more private way. Well, my theory is this, criminals will always find a way to do what they want and transact privately. Valuable tools should not be banned or discredited because there is a potentially negative outcome.
There is an equally positive outcome. Privacy is an unalienable right to all humans and we should all expect it and understand our rights to it. To me, that makes this coin very very powerful and very much worth exploring, especially as it is considered an “Original”. Some similar example coins that came after are Monero and Zcoin.
TEZOS
In my opinion, Tezos is the new and improved evolution of Ethereum. It is a new platform for decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts. Here are a few key points that make it different:
1.) On-Chain Governance – The Tezos protocol offers a formal process through which stakeholders can efficiently govern the protocol and implement future innovations. This is democracy at it’s finest. It also helps avoid controversial “Hard Forks” as we’ve seen in the past with Bitcoin (BTC) to Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and then Bitcoin Cash (BCH) into Bitcoin SV (BSV). This has a detrimental effect on the network and causes a lot of confusion, contention, and tribalism.
2.) Security – This blockchain was designed to facilitate formal verification, which helps secure smart contracts and avoid buggy code. This has been a HUGE problem with Ethereum over the years as noted in the infamous “DAO Hack“, which again proved that their protocol was not immutable and caused yet another hard fork that brought forth Ethereum Classic into existence.
3.) Liquid Proof of Stake – This is a unique consensus proof-of-stake algorithm which gives every stakeholder the opportunity to participate in the validation of transactions on the network and be rewarded for doing so. Whether you are big or small, you have a vote. This is unlike the current mining pools that we have in place where the person with the most hashing power and hardware wins the block reward, and essentially dictate the rules of the network.
I tend to think that the tech behind each blockchain is what brings it’s value. Whether or not the price is currently up or down on these coins, I believe as the masses start to see the value these innovators bring to the table, the money will follow.
If you don’t recall, it took over a year of price discovery before Ethereum finally found it’s place in the market. All this to summarize that I am very interested to see where these both end up in terms of price and user adoption over the course of this year.
CONCLUSION
So what is the best cryptocurrency to invest in right now? My final thought comes down to diversification. No matter what cryptocurrency you own or believe in, it is always a good idea to NOT put all of your eggs in one basket. Diversification allows you to spread out your wealth and provide you a bit more piece of mind and stability as we all partake in our own personal crypto journey.
If you are new to this space and are unsure what to invest in, there is an up-and-coming site that allows you to follow a strong community of cryptocurrency investors and see what allocations are in their portfolio to give you a baseline. This is a desktop and mobile app known as “eToro“. It also provides you some guides and information on each coin so you can learn what the differences of each coin are and what the full scope of their previous price, current price, and the expected future price over time. I will leave the link here for anyone that’s interested.
Please sound off below! What do you think the best cryptocurrency to invest in at this point in the game? Do you think my top two altcoin picks are unfounded? Let me know in the comments.
NOTE: This post may contain affiliate links. This adds no cost to you but it helps me focus on giving as much value as possible in every single post by being compensated for recommending products that help people succeed.
In this post, I am going to cover how to spend bitcoin online and the five best places to do so in 2019. Not only am I going to show you how to spend bitcoin online, but more importantly, WHERE to spend bitcoin online. If you have never made a bitcoin transaction before, please review my earlier post that explains how to do this. As mass adoption starts snowballing, and we’ve already seen evidence of this by way of Whole Foods, and other major retailers coming on board to to accept cryptocurrency as payment, people are starting to look at where they can send their bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
I believe a fundamental component of making this global adoption happen quicker is letting people see how useful and easy it is to actually SPEND it as a currency. This is a life changing tool and is very easy to obtain for free, if you’re already shopping at these places and more using the Free Life Info App, and you can accumulate bitcoin AND get a discount at these retailers we will discuss below, but also thousands more. I will leave the in-depth review of this free bitcoin tool, HERE. Let’s get right into it!
#1 HOW TO SPEND BITCOIN ONLINE AT PURSE.IO (AMAZON ON TOP OF BITCOIN)
People always ask me, “Does Amazon accept bitcoin?” The short answer is yes and no. Amazon does not accept it directly, but there are a few chrome extensions where you can earn bitcoin and spend bitcoin in very small amounts by doing this via the Lightning Network, but that is still in it’s infancy. There is a much better way to get what you want on Amazon, AND you can also save up to 33% off the price.
How do you do this? It’s called Purse.io. This website I have used personally during the holiday season 2018 for several items, and it works great! How it works is when you visit the site, it looks very similar to amazon and it’s built on top of Amazon’s platform, but it has one key difference. You can pay in bitcoin!
This means that it IS Amazon, but it just looks different, as it’s a platform built on top of Amazon. The point of this is so that you can spend bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies for payment, and it pairs you up with an individual who has amazon store credit or gift cards, and wants to order these things on your behalf, and send them directly to you.
Of course, you have to verify and approve everything arrives and is acceptable to you first. At this point, you can release the bitcoin payment once you are satisfied with your order. It’s a really elegant solution that matches up people who want to convert their amazon credit to receive bitcoin in return and you get a discount for doing this. Pretty slick, and highly recommended.
Cheapair.com is a discounted airline affiliate site that helps you find the cheapest flights from all the top airlines and is built on top of major search engines like Trivago and Expedia. The difference is, this finds the cheapest flights and let’s you pay in bitcoin directly to book your flight. This is really exciting and allows you to check out using a QR code you can scan with your phone, or you can just simply copy and paste your bitcoin address in the dropdown menu at checkout. You can also sign up for fare trackers and it will notify you when your flight lands in your price zone if you’re not ready to book now.
Overall, I’ve only booked 2 flights myself here, but it was a good experience. I have been living off bitcoin for over 2 years now and it’s required creative ways to find how to get to where you need to go without trying to pay any exchange fees, and this was brought to my attention. I highly recommend if you are the type of person that likes to shop for the cheapest price and bargain hunt when looking for trips and flights.
#3 HOW TO SPEND BITCOIN AT OVERSTOCK.COM
Overstock.com is a large online retailer, similar to Amazon, but specializes in mainly home goods like furniture, decor, and larger items for very cheap. I believe they also offer a 2% additional discount when checking out with bitcoin.
You probably have heard of this website and perhaps even ordered something from here, but you probably didn’t know they accepted bitcoin for payment. They do this directly and it’s very easy to scan the QR code at checkout with your smartphone or with your bitcoin wallet address directly copying and pasting as well.
They frequently have holiday sales and other coupons and promotions you can use on top of the discounts of using bitcoin as well. I actually bought a rug a few years back from them using bitcoin and it was very simple to use and I had no issues.
This was one of the first major retailers to start accepting crypto, as the company’s founder Patrick Byrne has been a long time supporter of bitcoin. I personally like to support companies that allow you to pay in bitcoin as opposed to the ones that don’t, but that’s just me. I like to support the cause and businesses that do as well.
This is KEY when dealing with bitcoin. When spending bitcoin online and also trading or investing bitcoin online, it is imperative that you are not tracked and using a VPN is key in doing this. I use Express VPN when dealing with any online bitcoin transaction, especially when doing trading on exchanges, like Binance or Coinbase. Luckily, you can also buy Express VPN with bitcoin as well and it’s crucial to protect your anonymity when doing this. VPN’s are also useful when doing typical web browsing and not wanting to be tracked with what and where you spend your time online.
Additionally, you will be able to use this to access other popular streamers and websites that put limits on your IP address, such as Amazon and Netflix, without having to pay them more. You may not know but some major websites track your information from your IP address and sell that information to advertisers.
Have you ever been talking about something privately, and then when you look at your Facebook feed or Instagram feed and you see an ad for what you were just talking about? Very creepy, but very real. The ExpressVPN not only allows you to use this on your iPhone and Android, but it works on multiple devices at the same time, for each device in your home.
My favorite part of course (not to beat a dead horse) is the fact that you can get a free 30 day trial and test it out and the use BITCOIN to pay for it. Super cool.
This one is probably my second favorite source as almost everyone has heard of Expedia.com for travel. At some point in our lives, we probably have researched vacations or even bought flights and hotel packages from this site, and for good reason. This site has a wealth of information and provides tons of value, including tons of reviews from people that have already taken a specific vacation and they incentivize people to do this.
For me, I like the fact that they take bitcoin. I always check Cheapair.com and this site before I book any trip, because I want to support the bitcoin ecosystem by contributing to the network and transactions.
Needless to say, Expedia is very much considered a trusted authority site and the fact that they are one of the only travels sites accepting bitcoin for payment. I don’t have to do much selling here, but you can also receive a discount by using the Life Info App link above and make sure to check out the article that gives an in-depth of that review on how to start earning your own bitcoin, for free.
CONCLUSION
All in all, these are the top 5 places I spend my bitcoin online, there are tons of other sites you can spend your bitcoin at, and I will leave a link with a MAP right here. It is my belief that the more we start seeing everyday stores that people use on a regular basis, and that includes gas stations and grocery stores, the more we will not only see the price and value of bitcoin go up, but it will be a free and sovereign way to manage your finances. The above video outlines what we covered here, and I will link other related videos to that as well for more crypto knowledge and value for you.
What are you favorite places to spend bitcoin online? Are there more retailers that I missed above? Let me know in the comments!
Cheers,
The Crypto Renegade
NOTE: This post may contain affiliate links. This adds no cost to you but it helps me focus on giving as much value as possible in every single post by being compensated for recommending products that help people succeed.