Asked whether Ethereum could replace Bitcoin as the future society's store of value, my opinion is as follows:

Ethereum can certainly store value, but I am against POS currency as the standard store of value currency for political reasons.

POS provides a risk-free interest-earning mechanism, and depositors can continue to earn interest. Even legal tender is not so bad, and depositing money in a bank carries the risk of bank failure.

Of all the ETH in the world, part of it is interest-bearing, and the other part is non-interest-bearing. The former part keeps increasing, while the latter does not increase and is even constantly decreasing due to wear and tear.

ETH holders also have two parts, one is the rich and the other is the poor.

It is obvious then that a larger proportion of ETH held by the rich is in an interest-bearing state, while a larger proportion of ETH held by the poor is not interest-bearing.

The result is that the rich tend to get richer and the poor tend to get poorer.

Of course, you can say that some rich people are extravagant and some poor people are prosperous, and that social classes can flow. But if we only consider the inherent tendency of the currency itself, we must admit that POS is to maintain the rich getting richer at the underlying mechanism.

Many people only consider the overall situation when calculating the so-called inflation or deflation rate of POS, without considering the problem of wealth imbalance. In fact, assuming that the overall inflation rate of Ethereum is x%, the interest rate of the stored value currency in the hands of the rich is y%, and the interest rate of the currency in the hands of the poor is z%, then no matter whether x is positive or negative, more or less, we can foresee that: y is greater than x and greater than z.

In the traditional world, the government may also provide various benefits to the poor by levying higher proportions of property taxes, financial taxes, real estate taxes, inheritance taxes, etc. to balance the gap between the rich and the poor. Although it is often useless in practice, it is theoretically possible to be useful. However, in the crypto world, this is impossible because the crypto world has a default way of playing: identity is not determined by a centralized real-world institution, but by a "private key-address" that is independently generated and fully controlled to determine "identity".

"Identity" must be defined independently, which is the premise of the creation of blockchain technology. Otherwise, there is no point in arguing between PoW and PoS. It is enough to just use the number of people. Isn't it more democratic to let more than 50% of the people decide the ledger? Why should we argue whether 50% of the computing power (proof of work) or 50% of the deposits (proof of equity) determine the ledger? To bypass the authoritative identification of the real "people" is the starting point of blockchain technology (by the way, the worldcoin and other things that require people to line up one by one to get their irises approved by country are completely contrary to the spirit of blockchain).

When a rich person stores his wealth in N small wallets and refuses to have his identity verified by an authoritative agency, the rights and interests in each small wallet should be consistent with those in any other similar small wallet.

Therefore, it is impossible for the poor to earn more interest than the rich. The reason is simple: the poor can do what the rich can do, but not vice versa. A large wallet can be split into 10,000 poor wallets. Each wallet should enjoy the same rights and interests, so the maximum interest that can be obtained is the same. The rich can keep liquid funds in one wallet, and the other 9,999 wallets can earn full interest, and the interest can be compounded. The poor only have one wallet to spend, so it is difficult for them to earn full interest.

On the surface, some additional ways of playing can allow the poor to earn more interest, but this is only possible if the poor are more willing to take risks. If the risks are the same, the rich still have an advantage, especially since the rich have a strong ability to resist risks. This is like a poor person buying a lottery ticket, which is generally robbing the poor to help the rich.

Then, for example, a super-rich person owns 10% of the total ETH. As long as he spends money from (y-x)% every year, he can earn interest forever and ever, and his total currency will always be 10% of the world's total.

This is impossible in a world based on Bitcoin. It is useless to own 20% of Bitcoins now. If you spend one, you will have one less, and your holdings will definitely decrease. There is no safe and automatic way to earn interest. It is even more difficult for whales to earn interest than ordinary people.

Bitcoin encourages storage of value, but not interest-earning. This is the right way to go. POS guarantees the possibility of not running out of money from the underlying mechanism, which is something that the legal currency financial system dare not do. The legal currency system at least guarantees that risk-free interest-earning cannot outperform inflation.

Vitalik is seeking immortality. Of course, I don’t believe that Ethereum can become the standard currency, nor do I believe that Vitalik can be immortal. But if these two things are achieved at the same time, Vitalik will really be the eternal god.

I don’t think this is a good thing. Cryptocurrency was meant to oppose legal tender from the beginning. The evil of legal tender is nothing more than the problem of the rich getting richer. Then after the revolution, we found that the power that maintains the gap between the rich and the poor is stronger than legal tender. We have revolutionized in vain.

Some people say that there are risks for the rich to earn interest, for example, Ethereum has fallen overall. I have repeatedly reiterated: my discussion is based on Ethereum becoming the world's leading "standard currency". It is naturally possible to avoid this situation by not letting Ethereum dominate. So my conclusion is that Bitcoin and Ethereum are not necessarily in an either-or relationship, just like legal currency still coexists with gold. Bitcoin is a better store of value currency, while Ethereum is more suitable for speculation and securities. This may be a division of labor. Of course, it is not ruled out that newer currencies will rise.

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Just a personal excerpt