Quote from: ObscureBean on December 31, 2014, 07:57:52 AM

Quote from: username18333 on December 31, 2014, 06:48:56 AM

Quote from: ObscureBean on December 31, 2014, 06:39:22 AM

Quote from: ndnhc on December 22, 2014, 05:39:29 AM

Quote from: hazenyc on December 19, 2014, 02:34:11 PM

My whole problem with proof-of-stake is that it's supposed to be analogous to putting money in say a 3- or 6-month CD where it sits tied up and earns interest.
The reason a CD earns interest is that while it sits tied up, the bank issues loans and extends credit to businesses (very few 3- or 6- month personal loans). These businesses take the loans in order to continue day to day operations and repay it with a portion of future sales proceeds. The reason the businesses need the loans is that it's cheaper for them to borrow than to sit on excess cash that could put to work doing productive things.
Meanwhile, the bank promises you x% on your CD while it charges x + y% to the business, and makes the incremental profit of y%.

With a POS wallet, where does the interest come from? If it's just coming from the POS hashing creating a flow of coins by generating new money supply, well this is doomed to fail. Imagine if instead of the mechanics of the CD above, you put the money into the CD and get promised x%, and instead of loaning that money out to earn a spread on the interest received they ask the Fed to print x% more dollars for you. Nothing has changed. There has been no value added. The result is just more money, which will ultimately reduce the *real* value of that money in terms of buying power:

Say $100 buys all the groceries you need for the month.
You put $100 in a 3-month CD that pays a 3-month rate of 2%. And assume the second scenario where money is just created for you and not put to work. You receive $102 back after 3 months, but now it costs you $102 to buy all the same groceries for the month that used to cost $100.

Yeah, this is exactly one of the reason why I like PoW more than PoS.
Paying interest like that is like not paying anything at all. In face it is worse. It will just create the impression that you get something, while actually you don't.

Yes, I know pow is not that energy efficient or anything, but it is more likely to succeed. It is (one of the 1 million reasons ) why I am bullish on Bitcoin.

Yes but the threat of 51% attack on the Bitcoin network (PoW networks) is very real and I believe is one of the main reasons why big companies have not gone 'all in' with BTC.
PoS while not perfect adds another layer of protection against such attacks. An attacker would need to own a considerable amount of coins and the attack would definitely damage the value of the coin, so it's against their interests.

[Large] companies have not gone all in with [Bitcoin] because they were not sufficiently incentivized (i.e., positively motivated) to do so.

Well it's kinda hard to be positively motivated to invest millions into Bitcoin when all that's protecting your investment is your trust that everyone else will be playing fair. There are no laws to prevent someone from acquiring 51% of the network's hashrate allowing them to double spend and gain control over which transactions they wanna ignore. Do you think any incentive could motivate a company like Microsoft to pump millions into Bitcoin without any guarantee of security?

Yes, it would merely have to overwhelm their qualms.