From a simplified, possible world, business case such as this example, it is clear to me that a very large opportunity exists to disrupt the disrupter. The challenge is to create an invulnerable Bitcoin Core Proof-of-Stake.
I agree with you completely. With all due respect to the PoS innovators like Peercoin and Nxt, seamlessly converting the Bitcoin brand and blockchain to PoS would be far superior to adopting an altcoin.
I find it ironic that Peter is arguing so strongly in favor of the seemingly inferior PoW system, when he is the one who recently proposed the perfect solution for shifting from one blockchain to another. I should make my position clear:
1. I believe that blockchain "spin-offs" are an excellent tool to facilitate experimentation with new cryptocurrency features. They award all current bitcoin users with a percentage of any pre-mine equal to the their holdings of the unspent outputs in the blockchain at a pre-defined point in time. Current users can "claim" their pre-mine in a decentralized and trustless manner using their bitcoin ECDSA private keys.
SlipperySlope's proposal to create a proof-of-stake spin-off is an example of the general spin-off methodology. I would like to see the process of creating spin-offs made as easy and transparent as possible, and I intend to assist SlipperySlope by working towards this goal.
Here is the "spin-off" thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=563972.0 . And here is a complimentary proposal for a Turing-complete spin-off:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=563925.0 .
2. I am saddened that some of the posters that I follow and respect believe that it would be superior if money was created without work or cost. In my opinion, the issuance of money is too important to trust to humans, even ourselves. I hope readers will go back and read Risto's and Adrian's posts in this thread, as they both explain using different words why
coins must come into existence through work, and why this is preferable to
shares issued freely based on the consent of stake holders.
Once again, I support SlipperySlope's PoS spin-off experiment, for I've been promoting spin-offs since April 9. It will put the fear of god into PoS alt-coins with less-efficient initial coin-distributions, and then it will succeed or fail based on its own merits while piggybacking bitcoin users by default.
Question for SlipperySlope: Will the initial distribution of wealth in Bitcoin-PoS be
exactly as per the unspent outputs in the bitcoin blockchain at a certain point in time in the future, or will you consider redistribution of wealth if you find popular support for it?