But what is stopping Chinese Ether miners from taking over half the world's processing power, all over again? They have access to cheaper raw materials, cheaper power to mine Ether.
The fact that they cant do that due to PoS. With PoS, only stakeholders can participate in the staking process and earn fees on the network. ETH stakeholders are spread throughout the world as it should be.
ETH is proof of work today, not proof of stake. But the fact is most coins are distributed from initial IPO sale - terrible distribution and even before going to proof of stake, not much % of coins is going to be distributed from much fairer proof of work - most coins simply ends distributed from initial IPO sale to dump to naive today buyers or dominate proof of stake era.