I think the reasoning for spending 100grand is as follows:
- Developing this in-house is possible, however would require all dev resources to be spent on that switch. Meaning the API and other improvements have to wait.
- Developing this in-house also means running into bugs and unforeseen conflicts, delaying it.
- The transition from PoW to PoS has been made a couple of times. So there are people who are experienced with this.

The problem is that it's a handful (max) of people who have done it and can do it. So applying supply and demand logic, this skillset is _very_ valuable.

So what to do then?
Do it yourself, and delay the development / core business, do nothing - or hire a golden keyboard?

5.000.000 CRW said hire the golden keyboard.