Re: PoS is far inferior to PoW - why are so many people advocating switching to PoS

If Bitcoin remains PoW, they can still buy that vast majority of coins, but everybody will have a trump card.

You know perfectly well, that the overwhelming majority of people will never mine any bitcoins and will never be able to compete with professional miners, just like majority of people don't compete with professional miners of natural resources. What matters for the majority of people is unique use cases. How the crypto currency came into existence doesn't matter for them if they have to buy it anyway, as long as it's a decentralized blockchain, distributed consensus and secure network - that's all that matters.

The overwhelming majority might never feel the need to mine, but knowing that they can if they want to without permission, makes all the difference between PoW and PoS.

There is no difference, who would prohibit them from forging in NXT PoS and get a profit from fees? Do they somehow get mining equipment for free to mine Bitcoin? I'd like to get me a few free ASICs then, oh and free electricity too Wink

This is how I would conquer the world with Nxt, you might wanna take notes Wink

I would identify major stakeholders and find the way to contact them.
I would establish a secret inner circle of stakeholders, which cumulatively maintain the majority vote.
I would make sure that public doesn't get spooked about the action by keeping a percentage of stake available for free trading on the exchanges to create an illusion of choice.
Now, because technological breakthrough and innovation cannot challenge the possession of stake within the circle to maintain control over transactions, I can now consider the first phase of my plan as stable and concentrate on the rest.

Not getting newer ASICs for free is exactly the point of PoW, because somebody someplace might be developing on-chip photonics that will make existing hardware obsolete. This happened with CPUs, happened with GPUs, will happen with ASICs. Keeping all the innovation within the established inner circle of control is so much harder, because you might never know what a nerdy prodigy kid is working on in his mom's basement.