To be clear, I'm not claiming that any particular implementation of PoS is vulnerable to this exact attack. It's an illustrative example of one class of attack that is a danger on PoS chains but not PoW chains, and might help people intuit why PoS implementations are more complex.
Coming back down to earth, this is why ETH requires checkpoints[1], but PoW chains do not[2].
PoW burns a lot of energy, but the algorithm has an elegant simplicity to it. Crucially, the _work_ is impossible to fake.
PoS (very roughly) means that the richest control the network... which seems reasonable. But suppose you decide to rewrite the blockchain to say you're the richest, do you then control the network? It's a circular loop, and defending against those kinds of attacks is dramatically more complex. I've been lightly following development and I get the sense they've been playing whack-a-mole with vulnerabilities and bugs since ~2016. It's hard to have confidence in the result.
You're also not allowed to have the best toothpaste in the world. Toothpaste with Novamin can't be sold in the US. Thankfully the internet makes it easy to get the good stuff anyhow.
My experience is based on visits to an Amish town in Ohio when I was growing up in the 2000s. I distinctly remember being surprised to see they used phones and rode in cars. But that was a long time ago and only one town of many. I didn't mean to generalize all Amish communities.
Re: Ukraine. My article was March 23, the second article is Apr 28. So suppose they got back online a month later, that doesn't mean they've always been online. Just like if GitHub is online right now, it doesn't mean they've never had any downtime.
> He noted that since “the national bank is not really operating, crypto is helping to perform fast transfers, to make it very quick and get results almost immediately.”
That quote is pretty unambiguous. At least for a time, Ukraine benefited from a financial system with no central point of failure.
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Pornhub probably offers different payment methods depending on your jurisdiction. I don't know much about that industry, I was just quoting a thread from the day before where a few people confirmed.
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You're right that in a first world country, with reliable infrastructure, paying for uncontroversial products (note uncontroversial != legal), BTC will have more friction. Even if BTC is wildly successful, I'll be happy never to buy socks with it. But there's lots of adoption in other countries, and for fringe products like the ones you listed plus VPNs, "water pipes", etc.
And why are you asking for use cases "besides" these? That's the problem with these threads. Someone says "no use cases", then I list some use cases and cite my sources, then the next reply is "actually those don't count, please give me even more use cases!" Posting in these threads is exhausting.
Sure, I could move to the woods and live off wild berries for the rest of my days. But if you want to be part of modern society, your bank will mail you your credit card, and your water company will text you a code to login and pay. Realistically, what choice do you have?
I'd give anything to get rid of my phone, but almost everyone you do business with (DMV, electric/gas/water company, etc) expects you to have one. Same thing with USPS and their paper spam. At this point they're little more than government-mandated spam delivery channels. Private companies are handling the spam situation infinitely better.
Parent specifically asked about the four-year market cycles and I answered that specific question.
To your more broad question, BTC demand outside speculation is driven by economic usage, despite HN's doubts. If it wasn't for that, I'd be asking the same question about its value. If you're open-minded and interested in learning, I've written up answers to that question several times. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31932743
> If it is just driven by speculation, then what makes for "normal market cycles" in speculation?
Miners are rewarded in BTC for keeping the network secure, and they sell these BTC to cover operating costs. Every four years, the mining rewards are cut in half (per the consensus protocol). Miners have less coins to sell, which results in a supply shock. The price floor between these supply shocks is ostensibly determined by economic activity outside of speculation. This has resulted in a repeating four-year market cycle. Of course this pattern will only continue until it doesn't. You can search "halving" or "halvening" for more info. https://www.investopedia.com/bitcoin-halving-4843769
I'm a fan of ElectroBoom, but I have to agree, some of them are pretty horrifying to watch. The Jacob's Ladder video sticks out in my mind - I still can't decide whether it was staged. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g1z47U_kZQ
I didn't know the damages were statutory - I guess I should look that up myself. In your case, was it a class action suit? If not, I wonder how they had standing to sue on behalf of thousands/millions of other users.