Proof of stake and basic income

The worlds of cryptocurrency and socialism collide?

Socialism. It's a scary word to many people. We tend to over-simplify it in our minds and envision propaganda imagery of a communist revolt or a government "big brother" seizing our hard-earned property.

But socialism is really a much broader term. Building and maintaining roads for everyone to use is a socialist concept. Schooling for all children is a socialist concept. Rushing to aid citizens with ambulances and firefighters is a socialist concept. Of course, socialism can turn ugly and become problematic, but in reality, all economies have some socialist elements to them, even the most capitalistic societies. We all live in mixed economies with varying degrees of socialism and capitalism.

I've been contemplating the future implications of a world where the economy is run via cryptocurrency. Most cryptocurrency now runs as "proof-of-work" - that is, in a nutshell, a miner proves the work of "solving" a puzzle of sorts, and proves the work through the solution. "Proof-of-stake", however, is being implemented in a number of cryptos and might be soon implemented, for example, in Ethereum, as well. It's essentially the idea that the "stake" - the ownership of the coin, entitles one to a share of the mining in proportion to one's stake.

I wondered, what would happen if, say, in the future, a government were to purchase a sum of a cryptocurrency and distribute it to its citizens? At this point, it would be evenly distributed, enabling each citizen a stake. A basic income - enough to live on, theoretically, could be generated by this stake.

That's not to say a person could not do more to make a greater income. It would simply be a minimal income - a starting point - enough to cover basic needs. Beyond this, it would be up to the individual to improve their economic standing through their own endeavours.

The plus side of this would be a much lower cost to social programs. Many social programs are borne out of the problems created by poverty. By reducing poverty, the need for such programs would diminish. Take a simple example. How much does it cost to run the food stamps program (SNAP) in the United States? Estimates from this source say around $70 billion was spent on just the food stamps program in a single year in the United States in 2016. Additionally, housing and cash for social assistance cost about $700 billion in a year. This is not including the costs of social security and Medicare, which are more than a trillion dollars annually!

What if, instead, governments of the future bought "stakes" in a cryptocurrency that used proof of stake, and then issued a proportionate amount to citizens in these programs? Say they purchased a trillion dollars worth of a particular proof of stake currency, for example. Each citizen in the program would then receive their portion of this stake in income. Even after a single year, this would be cheaper than the current system. Not only that, a tremendous amount of money could be saved that wouldn't be wasted on the massive bureaucracy of the social welfare system.

Now, I'm no genius when it comes to how proof of stake would work, I'm just trying to think of a creative solution to a big problem here. Is this theoretically possible? Please, educate me and share your opinions in the replies!