Brangdon, what SlipperySlope is proposing is an alt-coin. The only way to turn bitcoin into a proof-of-stake network is to create a spin-off or fork (i.e., an "alt-coin") and try to legitimize it with your influence and economic power.
Yes. And I think that's going to be immensely difficult. The spin-off idea helps, but (in my view) not enough. I doubt Bitcoin will ever be superseded by an altcoin unless some disaster happens to Bitcoin (like a massive, sustained 51% attack).
It is interesting to analyze how SlipperySlope's experiment (bit
shares) will play out.
If SlipperySlope succeeds in releasing his PoS spin-off with pre-mine proportional to the bitcoin unspent outputs, and if he has agreements in place with various crypto-exchanges prior to launch, and if the launch is well-advertised, what will happen?
All bitcoin users will instantly be awarded an equal number of bit
shares. On the exchanges, bit
shares will trade directly against bitcoins. If you have 10 BTC in your Cryptsy account, Cryptsy could credit you
instantly with 10 BTS
for free. That's what PoS is: shares created without any work requirement. The next question is will these shares retain any value?
Some bitcoin holders might think that the idea is stupid and will immediately dump their "free shares" at say a 1 : 100,000 discount. Users who believe in PoS would be wise to purchase these, for if bit
shares supersedes bitcoin, then they've 100,000X their money. Maybe I'll buy thousands of these shares if they are cheap enough. Most users will remain impartial (not do anything) and retain
x BTC and
x BTS. PoS supporters will keep trading out of BTC and into the "discounted" BTS ledger until the market cap of BTS is near the market cap of the other PoS alt coins (0.1 - 1% of the bitcoin market cap).
Now it gets interesting. It will probably be "worth it" to me to start selling my "free" BTS at perhaps a 1 : 100 discount. Maybe I'll slowly sell half of them should the price of BTS continue to gain on BTC. I feel a lot of others will do the same. Meanwhile, PoS supporters can continue to sell out of BTC to purchase these PoS coins as they are still "discounted." Eventually, I think it will be obvious whether bit
shares has any hope of superseding bit
coin.
And the last question is : what would Satoshi do? If BTS ever trades near 1 : 1 with BTC (or higher) Satoshi could always "dump" his estimated 1,000,000 BTS shares and crash the entire PoS experiment.