Quote from: ChuckOne on April 15, 2014, 05:37:49 PM

Quote from: bytemaster on April 12, 2014, 05:53:12 PM

If you follow the work I have been doing you will see that I have gone so far beyond 'questionable real-world advantages' and instead have identified the core of what Bitcoin is. For starters if you use the analogy of a company Bitcoin has a meager revenue from transaction fees and large expenses by issuing new shares to pay for security. Thus, the company is in the red to the tune of $500M per year. It has 2 classes of stock (voting (hashpower) and capital (coins)) and thus separates the interest of these two parties, and it is slow.

I fix these problems by actually making crypto-companies that are profitable (they produce more value than they consume) and thus can pay dividends to the shareholders. I return power to the shareholders and the result is that the we have transactions that are as fast as Ripple, irreversibly secured by 51% shareholder vote before Bitcoin can produce 2 blocks. You see the analogy is critical to understand the benefits. These are tangible, real-world, advantages.

Nothing says Bitcoin cannot upgrade to Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS) http://bitshares.org/security/delegated-proof-of-stake.php and become profitable however. It seems to me that this should be a higher priority than side-chains.

Upgrade Bitcoin to DPoS and you get Nxt.

Nxt is very close but has the following downsides:

1) more missed blocks
2) no dividends to share holders
3) slower block production
4) random individuals can manipulate the transactions with ease... nothing on the line when their turn comes up.
5) more centralized, only those who choose to participate can exercise their shareholder influence
- you must risk your public keys by having your wallet unlocked
- gaining 51% of the active stake is much easier with Nxt because so much is inactive.