Quote from: r0ach on March 27, 2016, 11:34:25 PM

Quote from: smooth on March 27, 2016, 10:47:03 PM

Quote from: r0ach on March 27, 2016, 08:48:59 PM

it is not a permissionless system because I cannot acquire native tokens in a permissionless manner...just like proof of stake

Agree.

Bitcoin is dangerously close to that as well. The pricing of SHA2 ASICs is basically an extortion scheme.

Yea, but it's just like any real market in that there's no guarantee other's won't find a competitive advantage over you, survival of the fittest. Whether that advantage is building a factory with Chinese peasant slave labor, or operating an unlicensed nuclear reactor on the bottom of the ocean floor. As long as you can perform the hash function on a CPU that existed before Bitcoin was even releaesd, the fact remains that it is a permissionless ledger.

In theory yes. In practice it closer to permissioned. You remember USB dongles for copy protection? Much the same as Bitcoin ASICs. They're not an absolute barrier to copying of course (which if possible would make use only by permission), but they put up a wall. In theory you could hack a stakeholder and steal their stake, making it permissionless. But the wall is there.