Bitcoin

Today, a majority of BTC is traded and custodied on CEXs. With the advent of ETFs, in the long term BTC will effectively be controlled by a few regulated CEXs. Might as well cancel PoW and go PoA - it'll actually be more decentralized than 2 mining pools & a handful of profit-maxi centralized mining corporations.

wouldn’t we be back at square one, except with BTC as the currency in use?

Yes, will most likely play out that way. Effectively being PoA.

Kill the chain, live on ETH/ CEXs, raffle the block rewards until 2100.

But they said it was ‘a peer-to-peer electronic cash system’!

Surely the lightning notwork will save Bitcoin.

Good thought but would you like to use Motorola's DynaTAC 8000X (1984)?
Here's my solution for Blockchain 3.0:
https://medium.com/@derekzhou/what-is-proof-of-value-8c0a356361e8
The development started at 2019. And it's been published on Sepolia test net:

Good thought but would you like to use Motorola's DynaTAC 8000X (1984)?
Here's my solution for Blockchain 3.0:
https://medium.com/@derekzhou/what-is-proof-of-value-8c0a356361e8
The development started at 2019. And it's been published on Sepolia test net:
https://daism.io