Quote from: jonald_fyookball on April 25, 2014, 02:15:11 AM

Quote from: Peter R on April 25, 2014, 02:06:49 AM

Quote from: clout on April 25, 2014, 01:16:32 AM

for the remainder of your life bitcoin will be inflationary, it is absurd for you to support it just because there is a fixed supply at a very arbitrary point in the future. would you support us inflation just because the government says, in 125 years we will stop printing more usd?

Sarc: Yes, you're right! The fact that people can do work and be rewarded with coins is inflationary! Why bother distributing them to just anyone who is able to find them when we could create a PoS spin-off and keep more for ourselves!!

I have the perfect solution! I am going to create my own coin called PeterCoins. I will own all of them and I will reward myself with 50% dividends each year just for being me!! Each time I write a post here, I'll give myself a raise because I deserve it.

It is absurd that I would support any distribution of these coins, since I can just keep them for myself. I'm not even going to sell any because they are going to be worth sooooooo much as soon as people realize the benefits.

I think we should all do this. We should all own 100% of our own personal PoS coins and since we have 100% stake, we get to make the rules. We can give ourselves as much money as we like! And if we never sell them, the supply is zero and the price is therefore infinite.

Yeah!!!!!

In case anyone missed that, I was being sarcastic. Mining is the technique we use to efficiently distribute bitcoins. The legitimacy of the entire distribution system fails if a coin does not use mining. The inflation from mining acts to drive the price down when it gets too far ahead of itself, and acts to keep the coin alive when people lose interest. Mining reduces volatility and acts to distribute coins efficiently to people who actually want them.

Think: would you really buy PeterCoins from me? PoS is the same idea except is it (Peter+Joe+Bob)Coins. The more I think about PoS the less legitimate the concept seems. You are basically trying to get people to buy into your special shares, but if your shares are so special why are you selling them?

I think you are sensing the psychological advantage of pow. New adopters value pow. That's part of what convinced me about bitcoin ...seeing it wasn't just some digital creating, but something was solved.

Sure, in fact I believe anything other than PoW would be perceived as illegitimate. Its funny: I remember last spring people were complaining there wasn't enough inflation. People argued that too many coins were mined in too short a time. But now we are talking about the opposite: creating a PoS spin-off to cut off the supply completely.

It will be interesting to watch the first PoS spin-offs from bitcoin. They might actually get a big pump due to the restricted supply. But I expect they will collapse in the end because (a) the PoS coin will need genuine adoption to grow, yet (b) why would I buy your coin if you need me more than I need you?

That being said, I am pleased that no one seems to agree on anything. I guess this means once again that things will just continue as they are (unless something actually breaks).