Quote from: monsterer on March 01, 2016, 04:30:26 PM

Quote from: jl777 on March 01, 2016, 04:23:54 PM

So now they are low intelligence large stakeholders?

The point is the danger of doing something like this is completely non-obvious. Why should anyone think twice about selling something which has 0 value for >0? That sounds like a win to me.

Quote from: jl777 on March 01, 2016, 04:23:54 PM

What use are empty private keys other than history attack?

Might as well postulate that miners will just let you use their facilities for a small fee, since you promise not to push any buttons.

Pick a PoS coin, any PoS. Prove this attack is possible in a cash positive way. I am sure you can get many privkeys for a dead coin, but maybe a bit of a problem short selling a dead coin.

I believe I have proved that already. I have no intention of actually carrying this attack out because I have no desire to defraud anyone. However, I think it's very important that people know what they are investing in, and the associated risks, which you have to admit are entirely opaque.

Quote from: jl777 on March 01, 2016, 04:23:54 PM

Getting the genesis key seems to not be of any use, so maybe you need to update the OP as being impractical and not having a single documented case of it ever working and its expected return is negative cashflow

The OP describes an attack unrelated to the genesis key.

My estimate is that the danger to a PoS with a relatively short max reorg depth has less to worry about from a history attack than BTC has to worry from miner centralization

You have proven nothing. There is no market for formerly large stakeholding keys. But you claim by declaration that they are easy to get and at significantly below market price. And that the current mainchain will just magically switch to the attackers chain.

Making a wrong statement is not quite the usual standard that comes with the word "proof"

James

If these old keys can indeed be used for easy attacks (I have no confidence they can), then they are not useless and have value. And if it does have value, the people who have them will quickly find out about it