Bitcoin Forum

Proof of Stake coins have many issues here are some:

PoS is not backed by anything other than the belief there are worth anything and there will be an endless supply of PoS coins because one created today does not have a significant advantage over on created tomorrow, next week, next month.......
What currently is happening is new coins are created with PoW, mined for a week until a fixed number is reached and then change to PoS and then you can claim your stake at buying xyz coin. The only advantage a coin released today has over on made sometime in the future is; somebody already bought into it. The advantage quickly disappears if the new coin has a better catch phrase a flashier webpage or bigger marketing capital....
There is no end in sight for stake claimed coins and all promising x % return if you know a bit of programming you will have your very one coin too and everyone can buy into your claim based coin completely deluding the marked.
Its a barrel without bottom and once it clicks by the herd run for the hills if you own a stake.  
  
With a PoS the richer get richer. Nothing more to add to it that's just how it is.

To 51% PoS is dead easy:
You start aggressively buying until you have 51% of a PoS coin, and then sell off your coins so that you no longer have 51%, but your history of having once owned 51% makes it possible to attack the network at any time in the future at next to no cost only some computing resources (and thus electricity costs, etc.).
As you once had a 51% stake, you can build a better blockchain than the other 49% can, starting from the point where you owned 51%. You develop this blockchain in secret, after you have sold off your coins (and profiting from it); and then release your secret blockchain to the world, and nodes will pick it up because it carries more stake than the 49% blockchain.  Now not only do you have your profit from the original sales of the coin, you have your 51% back (to the extent that it's worth anything).  Not all coins need to be in one address, in fact, doing so would prevent the attack in most PoS implementations.

 
PoW is backed by energy. There is no better backing than energy because everyone needs it, wants it and i will never have any problem selling it. To create a PoW coin you need x amount of energy and you can not cheat. The best you can hope for is to have  a more efficient miner. Because the energy has been spent, the coin has a base value (many other things on top) and is a kind of a storage medium.

Proof of Stake coins have many issues here are some:

PoS is not backed by anything other than the belief there are worth anything and there will be an endless supply of PoS coins because one created today does not have a significant advantage over on created tomorrow, next week, next month.......

With a PoS the richer get richer. Nothing more to add to it that's just how it is.

PoW is backed by energy. There is no better backing than energy because everyone needs it, wants it and i will never have any problem selling it.

What energy you are talking about?

And.... why are POS coins gaining more and more market presence everyday and POW coins (except from Bitcoin obviously) are losing they market share progressively?   ??? ??? ???

Pls, OP, could you answer me? Is the market stupid? Should I sell all my nxts now only with a 200% of profit?   ??? ??? ???


This thread stinks like LTC old-bag-holders trying to save their unfortunate investments...

And.... why are POS coins gaining more and more market presence everyday and POW coins (except from Bitcoin obviously) are losing they market share progressively?   ??? ??? ???

Pls, OP, could you answer me? Is the market stupid? Should I sell all my nxts now only with a 200% of profit?   ??? ??? ???


This thread stinks like LTC old-bag-holders trying to save their unfortunate investments...

Proof of Stake coins have many issues here are some:

PoS is not backed by anything other than the belief there are worth anything and there will be an endless supply of PoS coins because one created today does not have a significant advantage over on created tomorrow, next week, next month.......
What currently is happening is new coins are created with PoW, mined for a week until a fixed number is reached and then change to PoS and then you can claim your stake at buying xyz coin. The only advantage a coin released today has over on made sometime in the future is; somebody already bought into it. The advantage quickly disappears if the new coin has a better catch phrase a flashier webpage or bigger marketing capital....
There is no end in sight for stake claimed coins and all promising x % return if you know a bit of programming you will have your very one coin too and everyone can buy into your claim based coin completely deluding the marked.
Its a barrel without bottom and once it clicks by the herd run for the hills if you own a stake.  

With a PoS the richer get richer. Nothing more to add to it that's just how it is.

To 51% PoS is dead easy:
You start aggressively buying until you have 51% of a PoS coin, and then sell off your coins so that you no longer have 51%, but your history of having once owned 51% makes it possible to attack the network at any time in the future at next to no cost only some computing resources (and thus electricity costs, etc.).
As you once had a 51% stake, you can build a better blockchain than the other 49% can, starting from the point where you owned 51%. You develop this blockchain in secret, after you have sold off your coins (and profiting from it); and then release your secret blockchain to the world, and nodes will pick it up because it carries more stake than the 49% blockchain.  Now not only do you have your profit from the original sales of the coin, you have your 51% back (to the extent that it's worth anything).  Not all coins need to be in one address, in fact, doing so would prevent the attack in most PoS implementations.

PoW is backed by energy. There is no better backing than energy because everyone needs it, wants it and i will never have any problem selling it. To create a PoW coin you need x amount of energy and you can not cheat. The best you can hope for is to have  a more efficient miner. Because the energy has been spent, the coin has a base value (many other things on top) and is a kind of a storage medium.

And.... why are POS coins gaining more and more market presence everyday and POW coins (except from Bitcoin obviously) are losing they market share progressively?   ??? ??? ???

Pls, OP, could you answer me? Is the market stupid? Should I sell all my nxts now only with a 200% of profit?   ??? ??? ???


This thread stinks like LTC old-bag-holders trying to save their unfortunate investments...

It's funny that people take him serious.

He doesn't even understand how PoW works and spreads FUD about PoS.

I double dare anyone on the planet who reads this to buy all the NXT that exists and then sell it all for 1$  ;D

Every 1% of all available NXTs he buys - the price goes up 25% in geometric progression, it will take all the money in the world and then some to buy 51%. Meanwhile other people will be competing with him to get their share driving the price even higher. It's MUCH cheaper to just build your own factories manufacturing ASICs all over China, and get 51% of Bitcoin hashrate than buy up 51% of a PoS crypto.

PoS is a broken model

Thank you for your competent opinion. Unfortunately Bitcoin's PoW comes closer to a "broken model" right now given its centralised mining network.

But there is one problem with pure PoS coins:

Rich get richer JUST by sitting on their stake.

which (in my opinion) inevitably leads to centralisation of stake (just getting all fees until you get all the currency).
It will take definitely much longer time than centralisation of mining power did, but it probably will happen some time.
And wide adoption of such currency is only speeding the process (more transactions → more fees)

Am I wrong?

That is the only thing that i dont like about NXT and
that is where NEM with their Proof of Importance algorithm can succeed.

I am not worried about that.

evident that the electricity  ;)

the same is for pos then you need your cpu usage for running a pos coin, yeah is very little compared to regular mining, but it is always mining, just energy efficient....

You should worry about that.

pow game over.....

not yet, another 1-2 years.

The real deal of this thread is:

1) How can a Hero member be so ignorant about crypto technology?

2) Is possible that, actually he is not so ignorant, and just want to spread FUD about POS?

3) Is he so utterly butthurt that needs to create this kind of trash threads full of lies?

He must have his basement full of mining rigs
I can not explain it else  :D

Lol, the only thing i ever mined for about 2 weeks where some Ripples, not because i wanted to support the scam but i wanted to provide some computing power for cancer research.

Agreed - PoS is dead, the economic model is crap as people who got in early will just stake and sell at a constant rate while their mean wealth does not change. Not to mention exchanges who likely stake their coins and drive the prices further down as they sell. For the people that have huge farms, a coin that goes PoW --> PoS is even worse. Most coins that are PoS usually have very bad distribution ratio's because of this.

I would say in the next 2-3 months most PoS coins will start to die off.

Wow, very very good points raised there...and to think I was semi interested in NXT. Now that interest is out the window...PoS coins are indeed crap.

You must be on drugs if you believe that PoW is better than PoS...

The whole point of bitcoin and altcoins is to create better payment protocols, faster transactions, no need for intermediaries and banks to process your transactions during weekdays, create smart contracts, transfer your funds and assets world wide instantly through the net with the maximum security.

And most importantly...wait for it...to create private money and security from any governmental manipulation...

Those are the fundamentals. Once you realise that you will all realise that the solution is Bitshares X (fast transactions and no way any government can ever take control of your assets) and I3 DACS. The sooner you realise that the better you will be in the future...

Stop wasting your time with theoretical conversations and welcome to the future of Bitshares!

Your post begins so well!!  Smiley

But it ends so bad!!  Sad

Lol, the only thing i ever mined for about 2 weeks where some Ripples, not because i wanted to support the scam but i wanted to provide some computing power for cancer research.

Proof of Stake coins have many issues here are some:

PoS is not backed by anything other than the belief there are worth anything and there will be an endless supply of PoS coins because one created today does not have a significant advantage over on created tomorrow, next week, next month.......
What currently is happening is new coins are created with PoW, mined for a week until a fixed number is reached and then change to PoS and then you can claim your stake at buying xyz coin. The only advantage a coin released today has over on made sometime in the future is; somebody already bought into it. The advantage quickly disappears if the new coin has a better catch phrase a flashier webpage or bigger marketing capital....
There is no end in sight for stake claimed coins and all promising x % return if you know a bit of programming you will have your very one coin too and everyone can buy into your claim based coin completely deluding the marked.
Its a barrel without bottom and once it clicks by the herd run for the hills if you own a stake.  
  
With a PoS the richer get richer. Nothing more to add to it that's just how it is.

PoS is a technological dead end. Once the coin is released the only thing to do is "claim your stake" no research, no new capital outside the buy in, no evolving industry...

To 51% PoS is dead easy:
You start aggressively buying until you have 51% of a PoS coin, and then sell off your coins so that you no longer have 51%, but your history of having once owned 51% makes it possible to attack the network at any time in the future at next to no cost only some computing resources (and thus electricity costs, etc.).
As you once had a 51% stake, you can build a better blockchain than the other 49% can, starting from the point where you owned 51%. You develop this blockchain in secret, after you have sold off your coins (and profiting from it); and then release your secret blockchain to the world, and nodes will pick it up because it carries more stake than the 49% blockchain.  Now not only do you have your profit from the original sales of the coin, you have your 51% back (to the extent that it's worth anything).  Not all coins need to be in one address, in fact, doing so would prevent the attack in most PoS implementations.
There is no way of knowing if any PoS chain is already "dead", as it could have been done at any-time in the past.

  
PoW is backed by energy. There is no better backing than energy because everyone needs it, wants it and i will never have any problem selling it. To create a PoW coin you need x amount of energy and you can not cheat. The best you can hope for is to have  a more efficient miner. Because the energy has been spent, the coin has a base value (many other things on top) and is a kind of a storage medium.

I'd like to see how someone can agressively buy 51% of the coins ;D
It'll be much cheaper to buy 500m of equipment to get 51% of the Bitcoin hashrate.

I see from the posts that a number of people haven't cottoned on to the core issue.

Step one: with borrowed money, buy 40% of the coins.
Step two: sell all the coins, pay back the loan, banking any profits or covering any loss.
Step three: mount continuous, free, penalty-less attacks for evermore.

51% is the minimum for a statistically-guaranteed success. At 40% success isn't guaranteed but those are terrific odds when you can mount a permanent attack basically for free. The odds get more forbidding at 20%, obviously --- but when paired with infinite free attacks, that's still quite tempting.

That's my understanding of the vulnerability anyway.

Cheers,

Graham

Dreams

Graham

I'd like to see how someone can agressively buy 51% of the coins ;D
It'll be much cheaper to buy 500m of equipment to get 51% of the Bitcoin hashrate.

What are the costs of performing a 51%-attack in
1) PoW?
2) PoS?

Anyone?

I'd love to see someone attempt a 51% attack.  Nxt's price would go sooo high, I'd be rich.

So, 51% is not a problem. Great.
Let us build PoS coins because they are greener.

Proof of Stake coins have many issues here are some:

PoS is not backed by anything other than the belief there are worth anything and there will be an endless supply of PoS coins because one created today does not have a significant advantage over on created tomorrow, next week, next month.......

What currently is happening is new coins are created with PoW, mined for a week until a fixed number is reached and then change to PoS and then you can claim your stake at buying xyz coin. The only advantage a coin released today has over on made sometime in the future is; somebody already bought into it. The advantage quickly disappears if the new coin has a better catch phrase a flashier webpage or bigger marketing capital....

There is no end in sight for stake claimed coins and all promising x % return if you know a bit of programming you will have your very one coin too and everyone can buy into your claim based coin completely deluding the marked.

Its a barrel without bottom and once it clicks by the herd run for the hills if you own a stake.  

With a PoS the richer get richer. Nothing more to add to it that's just how it is.

PoS is a technological dead end. Once the coin is released the only thing to do is "claim your stake" no research, no new capital outside the buy in, no evolving industry...

To 51% PoS is dead easy:
You start buying aggressively or "willy" style until you have 51% of a PoS coin, and then sell off your coins so that you no longer have 51%, but your history of having once owned 51% makes it possible to attack the network at any time in the future at next to no cost only some computing resources (and thus electricity costs, etc.).
As you once had a 51% stake, you can build a better blockchain than the other 49% can, starting from the point where you owned 51%. You develop this blockchain in secret, after you have sold off your coins (and profiting from it); and then release your secret blockchain to the world, and nodes will pick it up because it carries more stake than the 49% blockchain.  Now not only do you have your profit from the original sales of the coin, you have your 51% back (to the extent that it's worth anything).  Not all coins need to be in one address, in fact, doing so would prevent the attack in most PoS implementations.

Unlike bitcoin where everyone can see if anyone comes dangerously close to 51, in PoS its all hidden an attack can happen incognito.
There is no way of knowing if any PoS chain is already "dead", as it could have been done at any-time in the past.

 
PoW is backed by energy. There is no better backing than energy because everyone needs it, wants it and i will never have any problem selling it. To create a PoW coin you need x amount of energy and you can not cheat. The best you can hope for is to have  a more efficient miner. Because the energy has been spent, the coin has a base value (many other things on top) and is a kind of a storage medium.

yes i can confirm that for you if you like, PoS as a concept inside a crypto design is DOA, to all intents and purposes.

however "PoS" in the form of p2p lending is is probably the future of a new economic model, that same system and an evolution of crowd funding.

- Re "NXT" please take two things into account:

1. there will always be some suckers
2. you can't know how much is just the original holder sloshing it back and forth amongst themselves (because they IPO'd it to themselves) , i like to tell childlike and naive people that if it literally cost nothing and they own it all, what is the cost to trade it back and forth? - so you can't know how many people have been suckered by these systems and you can't know how much is just "Wall st" style volume trading.*

I mean thats one of the oldest Rat hole "Wall St " scams in the history of being taken for a ride, and people are (seemingly) ha ha ; ) lining up for it. (lots of new accounts support IPOs and PoS systems)

of course this could happen to a degree with ANY crypto, PoW installs a certain cost of course and also secures a certain amount of distribution.

so of course just like "Ripple" et al , and the rest you can ignore them or you can not ignore them it really doesn't matter, the result is going to be the same.

1) Hundreds of Millions.
2) Theoretically nothing, if you discount checkpoints. with checkpoints it's hard.

But then there's the social 51% attack where a tiny majority hold a massive percentage of the currency. When this occurs the market is open to extensive manipulation for the benefit of the few, as with real world economics (the 1%).

NXT is a good example of the social 51% attack, the top 33 accounts hold 51% between them. The top 50 accounts hold 61.2%. I'm quite sure the top 1% of accounts (400 ish) hold almost everything, with the other 99% playing with spare change. source (http://87.230.14.1/nxt/nxt.cgi?action=30&switch=1)

I think that's why you see so many NXT shills trying to ram it down everybodies throats on this forum.

In Bitcoin, 2 or 3 guys could gang up and take down Bitcoin or hold it hostage when it gets big enough..  imagine once Bitcoin grew to be US dollar sized and 3 guys could threaten to take down the network(or be hacked or a terrorist organization threatens them by saying they'll kill their kids, or whatever) in Nxt, you'd need 33 accounts to do so?  And even then, you'd knock out some of Nxt's cooler features but the main network features could still continue to run even against that attack. And not only that but it is getting better distributed with time, I think the constant downward pressure on the price is proof of that as those with big accounts are continuing to cash out over time.

Pure PoS was never good idea, but in combination with other Proofs it can be good to enchance security.

Do you have actual reasons for saying this ?

Yea, NXT shows how stupid pure POS is. 3 people get 100% of a coin..that's what happened to NXT, making those 3 people instant multi millionaires and everyone else gets jack squat.

So some people got rich by taking a risk and making a good investment. I'm so sorry it wasn't you mate better luck nxt time.

POS is nothing more than a ponzi scheme piece of shit

PoS = Proof of Stupidity
Yes you are right its a fool finding bigger fool system and all of it can run on bitcoin side chains.

The only truly universally accepted wealth is energy (does not matter in which form as it can be converted), and Bitcoin is a store of it.  

Yea, NXT shows how stupid pure POS is. 3 people get 100% of a coin..that's what happened to NXT, making those 3 people instant multi millionaires and everyone else gets jack squat.

I don't see how thats a problem you can still instamine POW coins and if you speak about a fair distribution then were can i get a  200MH/s Scrypt asci right now ?
http://minerdesk.com/vaultbreaker-the-worlds-first-500mhs-scrypt-miner/

PoW is dead

never bought a pos coin, and never will, its only made to make 1% ppl rich

Satoshi's Proof-of-Work is the only known solution to the Byzantine General's Problem (was a known unsolved problem since at least the 1970s).

The only truly universally accepted wealth is energy (does not matter in which form as it can be converted), and Bitcoin is a store of it.  

PoS was never alive.

Two Generals' Problem still is an issue


This.

Yeah.. until Cunicula came up with Proof of Stake..

Do you understand the Byzantine General's Problem?  The blockchain is what solves the problem, not the Proof of Work.. he just implemented Proof of Work because he hadn't thought up Proof of Stake and it wasn't until this was released to thousands and thousands of people that someone else realized there was a better way to do it.. Proof of Stake.

In PoS there is nothing at stake, so any holder can "bet on" multiple chains and benefit whichever one succeeds. There is no incentive stopping a miner from assigning there stake to competing chains. Consensus isn't formed. So PoS doesn't solve the consensus problem which PoW was created to solve.

Neither PoW or PoS is perfect. But as a miner I do know this:

* Most of the investment in PoW coins ends up in the pockets of chip manufacturers and electricity companies.

* Nearly all of the investment in PoS coins stays in the coin ecosystem and benefits all holders.

Means the dev (owns all coins in the beginning) can do this after e.g one year? So we have to trust the dev as long as we use this coin?

No, centralized checkpointing prevents against history rewrites, for instance no rewrites older than a month. That isn't consensus though and the attack could be done before checkpointing.

You have to trust the dev or whoever holds a large amount of the coin anyway (not 51%) as they can dump or manipulate the market as they please, a social 51% attack. Most PoS coins are susceptible to this with only a few holding the vast majority of coins.

No, centralized checkpointing prevents against history rewrites, for instance no rewrites older than a month. That isn't consensus though and the attack could be done before checkpointing.

You have to trust the dev or whoever holds a large amount of the coin anyway (not 51%) as they can dump or manipulate the market as they please, a social 51% attack. Most PoS coins are susceptible to this with only a few holding the vast majority of coins.

POS is actually more secure than POW.

It's false.


It is a widely spread belief that crypto-currencies implementing a proof of stake transaction validation system are less vulnerable to a 51% attack than crypto-currencies implementing a proof of work transaction validation system. In this article, we show that it is not the case and that, in fact, if the attacker’s motivation is large enough (and this is common knowledge), he will succeed in his attack at no cost.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2393940

Proof of Stake coins have many issues here are some:

PoS is not backed by anything other than the belief there are worth anything and there will be an endless supply of PoS coins because one created today does not have a significant advantage over on created tomorrow, next week, next month.......
What currently is happening is new coins are created with PoW, mined for a week until a fixed number is reached and then change to PoS and then you can claim your stake at buying xyz coin. The only advantage a coin released today has over on made sometime in the future is; somebody already bought into it. The advantage quickly disappears if the new coin has a better catch phrase a flashier webpage or bigger marketing capital....
There is no end in sight for stake claimed coins and all promising x % return if you know a bit of programming you will have your very one coin too and everyone can buy into your claim based coin completely deluding the marked.
Its a barrel without bottom and once it clicks by the herd run for the hills if you own a stake.  
  
With a PoS the richer get richer. The most significant flaw of any proof-of-stake system and any system that diminishes coin rewards, is it can't distribute currency from the hoarders to the users of the currency, thus it will end up with the hoarders (the banksters) accumulating all the coin and the currency usage dying.
This is because the wealthy spend a much lower % of their net worth than the masses do.


PoS is a technological dead end. Once the coin is released the only thing to do is "claim your stake" no research, no new capital outside the buy in, no evolving industry...

PoS can NEVER remain decentralized. Satoshi's Proof-of-Work is the only known solution to the Byzantine General's Problem (was a known unsolved problem since at least the 1970s).

To 51% PoS is dead easy:
You start buying aggressively or "willy" style until you have 51% of a PoS coin, and then sell off your coins so that you no longer have 51%, but your history of having once owned 51% makes it possible to attack the network at any time in the future at next to no cost only some computing resources (and thus electricity costs, etc.).
As you once had a 51% stake, you can build a better blockchain than the other 49% can, starting from the point where you owned 51%. You develop this blockchain in secret, after you have sold off your coins (and profiting from it); and then release your secret blockchain to the world, and nodes will pick it up because it carries more stake than the 49% blockchain.  Now not only do you have your profit from the original sales of the coin, you have your 51% back (to the extent that it's worth anything).  Not all coins need to be in one address, in fact, doing so would prevent the attack in most PoS implementations.
Unlike bitcoin where everyone can see if anyone comes dangerously close to 51, in PoS its all hidden an attack can happen incognito.
There is no way of knowing if any PoS chain is already "dead", as it could have been done at any-time in the past.
And then there's is also the possible social 51% attack

you really don't get it.

ok firstly pos coins are no more "infinite" than pow coins. It all depends on the parameters you chose. Eg at them moment the number of peercoins being produced is less than LTC and BTC.

secondly the parameters that you choose are all important for any coin, it like the boundary conditions for the navier stokes equations. Eg nothing has the boudary condition of Peercoin, ulike multiple coins that are near exactly BTC.

there is no difference to buying into a mining early or pos coin early how you spend your effort is up to you.

Accordinlgy your arguments do not stand up to logic or the material facts.

As long as a POS coin can function as a distributed ledger then that all it has to do.

POW coins are backed by exactly same belief you decry POS for.

Also wealth is energy when that energy can produce useful work, so has a low entropy. Eg guel can spin an axle to do something for you, farm, drive, move, etc.

Low enthalpy energy like the exhaust heat from and asic is near worthless.

Further you can easily squander energy on projects that have no value. So low entropy energy can be easily squandered on high entropy projects. The possession of low entropy energy is no assurance it will create wealth.


go and do at least thermodynamics 1 and 2 before you make statements about energy use and wealth.

PoS has Nothing at Stake. There's nothing backing it...

POS will be here for some more time.

But its becoming old fashioned now a days after so many coins adopting it.

Re: Is PoS dead?
« Reply #7 on: Today at 11:06:40 AM »
There is the same tread in BTCTalk, which basically is full of nxt trolls. NXT is a ticking time bomb. NXT will always be at the mercy of alias "BCNext". And the original 71 buy-in aliases just got some nxt depending on the proportion of bitcoins they sent.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=303898.msg3253189#msg3253189
As you can see here he received a total of 22 btc. Since it was capped to 1 bitcoin and the biggest amount of nxt received from the buy in is 50 000 000 nxt  (top to accounts) it can easy be worked out how much the others got.
http://87.230.14.1/nxt/nxt.cgi?action=30&switch=1
What will never be know how many alias out of the original 71 accounts "BCNext" did create and sent to himself and his mates. You have to strongly assume that he and his friends have the majority of the coins.

The second post is already about police and  the 3rd post got a quote where the original post is missing, hmm oozes confidence . It seems some posts have been deleted.
96% percent of the market it seems is in china (bter) https://coinmarketcap.com/volume.html#nxt

Crypto is all about trust, any bank is  a 1000 times more trusting than "BCNext" and his friends, but greed is a bitch.

Please, take a look at the lies that our hero friend Manfred is spreading over LTC forum:


Look like he is more comfortable there, where his lies are not so rapidly counterattacked.

In one word: Shameless.

BlackCoin dev has released a white paper where he describes improvements to PoS: http://www.blackcoin.co/blackcoin-pos-protocol-v2-whitepaper.pdf

Apparently the v2 protocol will be implemented to BlackCoin as well.

Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum and winner of the Peter Thiel fellowship award ($100k) has an interesting blogpost where he discusses the merits of PoW versus PoS.

Check it out here, https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/05/stake/

He points out Daniel Larimer's TaPos as a promising alternative to PoW.
Daniel Larimer recently improved the idea and developed DPOS, illustrated above.

This is a kludge. He's trying to solve a complex problem with an even more complex solution. These issues can be done with layers on top of Bitcoin. We don't need to solve all the world's problems today, even if an engineer thinks he can do so. I would really prefer if our best theoreticians and programmers were working on Bitcoin and Colored Coin.

Now, having said that, I think it's a great idea to try. There is plenty of room for many more cryptocurrencies.

Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.

Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately.  Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other.  BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either.

The networks need to have separate fates.  BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices.

That's a good attitude. What do you think about this quote that it might be a good thing to have different chains having separate fates?

Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum and winner of the Peter Thiel fellowship award ($100k) has an interesting blogpost where he discusses the merits of PoW versus PoS.

Check it out here, https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/05/stake/

He points out Daniel Larimer's TaPos as a promising alternative to PoW.
Daniel Larimer recently improved the idea and developed DPOS, illustrated above.

pos/pow hybrid could be best.

I see this as a sociological issue "getting increasingly tyrannical" and such. This is why I see Bitcoin itself becoming the de facto reserve currency, and not so much a local one. The blockchain will be constrained by miners by simply making the fees exorbitant for local users. My father used to say "Price, Quality, Service. Pick any two if you want to stay in business."

Bitcoin is the DNA building blocks that can be fashioned into things that are wondrous and monstrous. I suspect the nations and states will choose an alternate cryptocurrency or derivative coin that best serves its political ideologies, but if they want to play the global economics game, they will use bitcoins.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=584719.140 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=584719.140)

Here someone is trying to solve the attack vectors of proof of stake.

If we can just make it more decentralized then it will be better than proof of work hands down, in my opinion. The dev can't have checkpoint control, and there needs to be a requirement similar to PoW where 51% of the nodes must accept a new fork for a fork to happen. Once PoS is equal to PoW in that regard then the system can become decentralized and autonomous.

PoS has problems but it is far from dead. In fact, in may be the future of decentralized currencies.

The problem with proof of stake is that stake in the coin does not equal exposure to the coin if a derivatives market in the coin exists. I explained this attack in this post and the subsequent discussion. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=694436.msg7946409#msg7946409 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=694436.msg7946409#msg7946409) Basically one hedges one's stake in the coin by taking an equivalent short position in the derivatives market to create zero net exposure to the coin in order to launch the attack.

You don't even need a derivative market (although that is another way to leverage the nothing at stake problem).  You have some coins in block x, you sell the coins, you now have nothing however you can re-org the chain back from block x.  Why?  Although you have nothing "now" in the past back at block x you did have something.  You are attacking with the "memory" or history of coins.

The problem with proof of stake is that stake in the coin does not equal exposure to the coin if a derivatives market in the coin exists. I explained this attack in this post and the subsequent discussion. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=694436.msg7946409#msg7946409 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=694436.msg7946409#msg7946409) Basically one hedges one's stake in the coin by taking an equivalent short position in the derivatives market to create zero net exposure to the coin in order to launch the attack.

You don't even need a derivative market (although that is another way to leverage the nothing at stake problem).  You have some coins in block x, you sell the coins, you now have nothing however you can re-org the chain back from block x.  Why?  Although you have nothing "now" in the past back at block x you did have something.  You are attacking with the "memory" or history of coins.

Updadet tread is here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=674029.0;topicseen (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=674029.0;topicseen)



Proof of Stake coins have many issues here are some:

PoS is not backed by anything other than the belief there are worth anything and there will be an endless supply of PoS coins because one created today does not have a significant advantage over on created tomorrow, next week, next month.......
What currently is happening is new coins are created with PoW, mined for a week until a fixed number is reached and then change to PoS and then you can claim your stake at buying xyz coin. The only advantage a coin released today has over on made sometime in the future is; somebody already bought into it. The advantage quickly disappears if the new coin has a better catch phrase a flashier webpage or bigger marketing capital....
There is no end in sight for stake claimed coins and all promising x % return if you know a bit of programming you will have your very one coin too and everyone can buy into your claim based coin completely deluding the marked.
Its a barrel without bottom and once it clicks by the herd run for the hills if you own a stake.  
  
With a PoS the richer get richer. The most significant flaw of any proof-of-stake system and any system that diminishes coin rewards, is it can't distribute currency from the hoarders to the users of the currency, thus it will end up with the hoarders (the banksters) accumulating all the coin and the currency usage dying.
This is because the wealthy spend a much lower % of their net worth than the masses do.


PoS is a technological dead end. Once the coin is released the only thing to do is "claim your stake" no research, no new capital outside the buy in, no evolving industry...

PoS can NEVER remain decentralized. Satoshi's Proof-of-Work is the only known solution to the Byzantine General's Problem (was a known unsolved problem since at least the 1970s).

PoS is forbidden under Sharia law as it is interest paying

To 51% PoS is dead easy:
You start buying aggressively or "willy" style until you have 51% of a PoS coin, and then sell off your coins so that you no longer have 51%, but your history of having once owned 51% makes it possible to attack the network at any time in the future at next to no cost only some computing resources (and thus electricity costs, etc.).
As you once had a 51% stake, you can build a better blockchain than the other 49% can, starting from the point where you owned 51%. You develop this blockchain in secret, after you have sold off your coins (and profiting from it); and then release your secret blockchain to the world, and nodes will pick it up because it carries more stake than the 49% blockchain.  Now not only do you have your profit from the original sales of the coin, you have your 51% back (to the extent that it's worth anything).  Not all coins need to be in one address, in fact, doing so would prevent the attack in most PoS implementations.
Unlike bitcoin where everyone can see if anyone comes dangerously close to 51, in PoS its all hidden an attack can happen incognito.
There is no way of knowing if any PoS chain is already "dead", as it could have been attacked any-time in the past.
And then there's is also the possible social 51% attack
 
PoW is a promise x amount of energy has been used is backed by energy. There is no better backing than energy because everyone needs it, wants it and i will never have any problem selling it. To create a PoW coin you need x amount of energy and you can not cheat. The best you can hope for is to have  a more efficient miner. Because the energy has been spent, the coin has a base value (many other things on top) and is a kind of a storage medium of it which you can exchange. Sending a bitcoin is like sending a proof-en  work done.
(The same apply's for gold digging it up, storing.....  difference is it is awkward to exchange)



Edit:
The past 2 days i had a look at nxt and came to the conclusion that:
NXT is a ticking time bomb. NXT will always be at the mercy of the btctalk alias "BCNext" and his friends. The original 71 buy-in aliases just got some nxt depending on the proportion of bitcoins they sent.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=303898.msg3253189#msg3253189
As you can see he received a total of 22 btc. Since it was capped to 1 bitcoin and the biggest amount of nxt received from the buy in is 50 000 000 nxt  (top two accounts) it can easy be worked out how much the others got.
http://87.230.14.1/nxt/nxt.cgi?action=30&switch=1
What will never be know how many alias out of the 71 accounts "BCNext" did create and then sent to himself and his mates. You have to strongly assume that he and his friends have the majority of the coins.

The second post is already talking about police and the 3rd post is quoting a post which is missing, hmm oozes confidence . It seems some posts have been deleted.
96% percent of the market it seems is in china (bter) https://coinmarketcap.com/volume.html#nxt

Crypto is all about trust, any bank is 1000 times more trusting than  "BCNext" and his friends all with hidden alias on btctalk
Greed is a bitch.[/i]

First you must secure $50 bln. (as in $50 000 000 000) funding to buy enough stake. Then you can try.

apparently it only costs 200BTC, or approx $100,000, to buy 45M NXT. 

not quite the same maths.

Apparently yes, if you're a hacked exchange and the hacker is willing to sell, which is two big 'IFs'.

of course it's quite possible if Bter didn't do it, the price of all NXT on the market would be 0.

It would stay depressed at 4-5k satoshi for 2-3 months if he chose to sell in equal portions (1m each day), that's how long it would take for the market to absorb 50M volume. If he chose to sell all in one go, it would go to 100-200 satoshi for a few hours, buying 50m NXTs at 500 satoshi takes only 250 Bitcoins, that's about daily volume of NXT trading. So all the 50m would be quickly bought within 1 day, that's rough calculations, give or take a few hours. Gradual selling over 2-3 months would hurt more because it'd be more prolonged bleeding, but not dramatic either.

It would stay depressed at 4-5k satoshi for 2-3 months if he chose to sell in equal portions (1m each day), that's how long it would take for the market to absorb 50M volume. If he chose to sell all in one go, it would go to 100-200 satoshi for a few hours, buying 50m NXTs at 500 satoshi takes only 250 Bitcoins, that's about daily volume of NXT trading. So all the 50m would be quickly bought within 1 day, that's rough calculations, give or take a few hours. Gradual selling over 2-3 months would hurt more because it'd be more prolonged bleeding, but not dramatic either.

Actually the hacker admitted himself that he was a hold.  Ironically, if the hacker kept his 51 million coins, it probably would had caused NXT to go up through deflation.  Just like Satoshi never spending his BTC is very deflationary on the available supply.


Reality is that NXT's up and downs is largely due to whales engaging in pump and dumps and one or two whales lost their funds at BTer.  If the hacker had kept his fund there may actually be *gasp* stability to NXT.

Actually the hacker admitted himself that he was a hold.  Ironically, if the hacker kept his 51 million coins, it probably would had caused NXT to go up through deflation.  Just like Satoshi never spending his BTC is very deflationary on the available supply.


Reality is that NXT's up and downs is largely due to whales engaging in pump and dumps and one or two whales lost their funds at BTer.  If the hacker had kept his fund there may actually be *gasp* stability to NXT.

i seriously doubt this.

if a known thief and hacker had been allowed to keep 5% of the NXT stake, he would have destroyed confidence in the entire system causing a plunge in the price.

you're using hard #'s as if there is no such thing as confidence, panic, or public perception. 

Bter knows it. which is why they negotiated with the terrorist hacker. 

with POW, we took the Gox hit but it didn't kill Bitcoin b/c of the resource investment of miners who can't and won't just quit.  not to mention the network effect in place.

I tried to give enough room for all those factors and posted a worst case scenario. The fact is NXT community is still pretty condensed compared to Bitcoin and there is simply no public perception and not much public to dump coins in case of panic, which is both a blessing and a curse. There's been a few serious bugs in the past few months that were quite serious and would probably make Bitcoin users dump if they were to happen in Bitcoin network, however, NXTers are not that dispersed yet. Another factor is, the price is already so low that it doesn't take much capital to absorb dumped coins. That's why even in the worst case scenario it wouldn't have much effect.

5% of the stake doesn't let the hacker control anything except the price for a while, 51% is required now to control the network and 90% in a few months when Transparent Forging is enabled.

But I agree that centralized exchanges are no good, that's why NXT is implementing decentralized tools - multigateway is one of them, it is not 100% decentralized, but it would require hacker to break into 3 servers controlled by 3 different people, instead of just 1 server as is the case with a centralized exchange.

this condensed nature is precisely the problem with POS.  as i understand it looking back in this thread, NXT is highly concentrated amongst it's early adopters which is the opposite of what you want.  i fail to see how this improves with time; in fact, it should only get worse the way that forging works.

the worse scenario can get much worse; as in going to zero.

Anything can go to zero, there is no insurance against that, only taxes can't ;D

The argument of distribution in NXT is beaten to death already. You can think of NXT distribution as having 2 stages: Stage 1 - initial distribution to 73 people. Stage 2 - is ongoing and will take years to unfold. Original stakeholders have been selling for almost 9 months, otherwise where would all the coins on the market come from? :) They need to cash out, they won't hold forever, just like in Bitcoin early adopters cash out.

In the end, all currencies tend to follow Pareto Principle, where 80% of the coins end up in the hands of 20% people. That works in real life, there is no reason it will be different with crypto currencies.

any exchange can have too much of the current supply and then do what they please with it or get hacked.

The main problem I have with POS coins is that they release all coins basically in short space of time if there is even a POW start off. This inflates the marketcap a lot as 100% of the initial supply is on the market straight up. Then slowly increases with given interest rate.

NXT has a high marketcap but try dumping even 0.01% of the coins on the market and see what happens with the price, now if NXT was 2nd GEN PoW(If such a thing could exist) would it even be in top 50 right now?

I believe PoS is broken as any exchange can have too much of the current supply and then do what they please with it or get hacked.

That is the equivalent of all Bitcoin miners sending their gear to hash with to an exchange for them to store. Essentially handing the keys of security of the network to a single exchange and possibly a single person.

Very very flawed.

Anything can go to zero, there is no insurance against that, only taxes can't ;D

The argument of distribution in NXT is beaten to death already. You can think of NXT distribution as having 2 stages: Stage 1 - initial distribution to 73 people. Stage 2 - is ongoing and will take years to unfold. Original stakeholders have been selling for almost 9 months, otherwise where would all the coins on the market come from? :) They need to cash out, they won't hold forever, just like in Bitcoin early adopters cash out.

In the end, all currencies tend to follow Pareto Principle, where 80% of the coins end up in the hands of 20% people. That works in real life, there is no reason it will be different with crypto currencies.

This will be done by sending a small amount of BTC to my own address.  I bet most of you have just thought “I got the catch!”  Hold on, I don’t ask you to send thousand USD worth coins, a few satoshis is enough

"The price of any commodity tends to gravitate toward the production cost" -Satoshi

I think PoS works conceptually, but the way it's designed has some flaws. A PoS v2 that could address those problems would be very interesting.

Will it die? yes

Would you care to expand?

PoS is dead???

try PoW is dead.. or atleast it will be lol

even etherum is changing to DPOS.. bitshares and nxt dont use the flawed version of proof of stake that the likes of peer coin use.. vitalik buterin even had a discussion with devs on the nxt forum and came to agreement that nxt does not suffer from the flaws that other proof of stake does.. he also agreed the same thing about bitshares.. is it so hard to believe that PoS technology can evolve? ::)

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=6990

i find the hubris in all of your comments to be astounding and quite naive.  Satoshi solved a fundamental problem in computer science, that of the Byzantine Generals Problem, which for the first time in the history of the internet allows for a decentralized network of computers (many of whom may be malicious) to come to a consensus agreement on what the true reality of a distributed ledger is. we have the smartest ppl in the world and many academicians at major universities acknowledging this feat. here we are 5.5 yrs into a heretofore successful implementation of the project and yet you continually diss his whole accomplishment as if you are somebody worth listening to.  how old are you btw and what credibility do you bring to the table except for "Vitalik said it, therefore it must be true"?

According to Coinmarketcap.com, 8 of the top 20 coins by market cap cannot be mined. I would say that Proof-of-Work has substantial competition from other proven mechanisms to secure the shared transaction ledger.

vitalik buterin even had a discussion with devs on the nxt forum and came to agreement that nxt does not suffer from the flaws that other proof of stake does.. he also agreed the same thing about bitshares.. is it so hard to believe that PoS technology can evolve? ::)

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=6990

Vericoin was an important lesson to all PoS coins in that they should be more careful, as to not storing a large percentage of the total money supply with one exchange or service. I think the recent Nxt scare will only reinforce that. Through community awareness campaigns the issues that got them into those messes in the first place can be avoided. Vericoin is also not Nxt and has never been as big as Nxt, comparing the two is akin to saying if Doge were to fork then Litecoin is vulnerable. There are only 26 million Vericoins and there are almost 1 billion Nxt coins, meaning that statistically it is much more unlikely for 30% of Nxt coins to be hacked or stolen. Simple mathematics..

Furthermore, judging a coin on a failed fork or roll back attempt is a bit prejudiced. Both Bitcoin and Litecoin have had somewhat close calls when it comes to forks. Litecoin had the anti ASIC fork movement and Bitcoin had the anti seized Silk Road coins movement. Both of these movements failed, but they still caused a lot of debate and garnered a lot of support for both sides. Judging Nxt for its failed roll back attempt is akin to judging Litecoin/Bitcoin for these failed forks.

Failed Bitcoin rollback: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=412041.0
Failed Litecoin fork: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=549572.0

None of them happened because community support wasn't there for any of them, believe it or not PoS consensus works much the same as PoW consensus. Except there is one big difference as with PoW consensus is determined by miners (which are becoming more centralized as ASICs proliferate), and with PoS consensus is determined by the owners of the coins. It is debatable which system is best, me saying PoS is better is only MY opinion. The way people act as if PoS is inferior to PoW is only THEIR opinion, however most people try to pass it off as fact which really annoys me. Sure, there are some drawbacks to allowing the coin holders to call the shots (as in PoS), but as PoW mining becomes more centralized there are also drawbacks to having a small conglomerate of industrial miners call the shots. For instance they could decide they aren't making enough on transaction fees and jack the costs up for transactions. That's only one example.

There are pros and cons to each consensus system, but I think it is unfair to say one is definitely better than the other and it is a fact. Especially when both systems are so new the potential drawbacks have yet to all surface. I guarantee there will be some issues with PoW as well as it becomes more centralized. I agree it is a good method for initial distribution, and lately I have been encouraging all PoS coins to distribute coins using PoW before switching to pure PoS, but we have yet to see PoW fully mature. ASICs have only been in existence for a year and a half, I would venture to say a lot is going to change in the next few years as mining goes from a hobby to more of an industrial undertaking that requires deep pockets or good connections to people in power within manufacturers.

they gave the option to do one.. they didnt just try and force it on people.. they allowed the community as a whole to come to a decision rather than the core devs just saying "this is whats going to happen". they handed over the choice to the community, which is how it should have been handled.. and by doing this they have proved that the integrity of the network is far more important to everyone involved than leaving 50m nxt in the hands of a malicious entity..

an entity who could very easily have used that 50m to complete fuck with every asset on the AE until no one dare touch any assets. he could have used it to entirely screw up the nxt <> btc market.. he could have dumped the crap out of the price or made it do loops so that no trader would buy nxt.. and with all this risk.. the consensus was to leave the network untouched and leave the 50m nxt in the hands of this malicious entity regardless of the risk that is involved with leaving such a large amount with someone who is obviously not trying to do any favors for nxt or its community...

how can this be seen as a bad thing??? the fact that the price has hardly even flinched shows how strong nxt really is.. the highest volume exchange for trading nxt is now multigateway.. the hack has made nxt even stronger by removing the majority of trade from a centralised solution to a decentralised one with out a single point of failure..

nxt did not just survive the hack.. it made nxt stronger, more resilient from hacks and showed the true integrity of the network and the integrity of the devs, they knew it was not their place to dictate what forgers should do and therefore handed the choice over to the community.

They surely created that option for people pretty quickly.

They should have done nothing and just stayed on the sidelines.

Stage 1 initial distribution of 73 people is wrong. It is 73 anonymous accounts on bitcointalk forum and the entity
"BCNext" (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=303898.0)  (whoever that is could be the FED for all we know) controls 50 or more of those accounts and sent more than 90% of all the initial money to himself (they actively discouraged to sent large amounts).
He sent himself high amounts (max was 1BTC) to himself with the accounts created at the forum. As the initial distribution is according to satoshis sent, the guy sending a few satoshis still got millions of nxt.
Next stage is to buy heavy from the reaming early adaptors and get another couple% of coins, site effect price rise.  Now having full control of the price current "investors" ponzie participants jump when he says jump and duck when he says duck.
Its a scam it its purest form and fails miserable as money you can not stake and spend at the same time.
2 types of Nxt shills are either part of the scam or completely clueless.



Bitcoin is a intangible good, a commodity
http://crypt.la/2014/01/06/satoshi-nakamoto-quotes/ (http://crypt.la/2014/01/06/satoshi-nakamoto-quotes/)
.

Why?

Options are a good thing for sure, right?

It does not matter what Pos system is used for a Pos coin, they all are vulnerable to a social 51% attack.


In the case of nxt no attack is needed as its game set match from the start. Those Lithuanian guys who created nxt always had full control.

...........

It doesn't matter what PoW algorithm is used for PoW coins, they are all vulnerable to 51% attacks.

In the case of Bitcoin and Litecoin, no attack is needed as it was game set match from the start. Those ASIC manufacturers, governments, or banksters with very deep pockets always had full control.

......................

It is getting hard to tell FUD from honest opinion. So many PoS FUDsters...

that's funny.  i don't see any pool even close to 51% currently.  ghash is at 29%.  it appears the community has worked it out and w/o nary an attack.  who's spreading FUD?:

https://i.imgur.com/gfKFF6A.png

The point was that these entities could gain control easily if they wanted to.

My statement was just as credible as manfreds. The only reason why the early investors in Nxt don't attack the network is because they don't want to. The on.y reason why ASIC manufacturers, governments, or banksters don't attack Bitcoin/Litecoin is because so far they don't want to. You are smoking crack if you don't believe they have the money and ability to get 51% of the Bitcoin/Litecoin network of they really wanted it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi2thGzzNSs

Looks vulnerable to me.  ;)

Give me the budget (or ability to get loans) of the USA government or a national bank and I could kill Bitcoin... money back guaranteed.

Due to the economies of scale ASICs bring to the table, although the Bitcoin/Litecoin network is less vulnerable than it has been in the past, it is still rather vulnerable if someone were to throw a lot of money at attacking it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi2thGzzNSs

Exactly.. The first link provided in the video gives a number of under 1 billion to 51% Bitcoin.

http://www.coinometrics.com/bitcoin/brix

If you think government's whose budgets exceed trillions of dollars couldn't attack Bitcoin then you are smoking crack.

A Billion dollars is chump change to them.

yeah, i didn't even have to look at that link to know you'd put up that crap analysis.

James, as good as he is, thinks that for every action, there is no reaction.  that's ridiculous.  in other words, the community and the market will find out about such plans and react.  mostly by driving up the costs to do such a thing and by out-maneuvering any gubmint intervention.  you just have to look at bittorrent and understand what the internet represents and how it works to understand such a concept.

I think you severely underestimate your foe. And that is the fall of many a good man.

no.  that's mighty talk from you there.

first off, gubmints don't have unlimited resources for something like this.  sure, they print money to save banks; but not all banks and not with unlimited funds.  this is an entirely different animal w/o a sure outcome for them.

a gubmint's mere entry into the asic market would set off not only alarms throughout the Bitcoin space but also jack the price of all asic components to the moon to the point where it would be prohibitively expensive for them to produce enough equipment to carry out such an attack, let alone get off the mark trying to do so.  and we would find out about it ahead of time.  wait times are a couple months at most high capacity chip makers.  any sudden delay in delivery would call for investigation.  it would be impossible for a gubmint to make such a huge asic order w/o ppl finding out and w/o chip makers jacking their prices to the moon.  the gubmint would be competing with the likes of Intel and IBM for chip runs.

then, there would be the political fallout, especially if they fail.  try pissing off a few billionaires, like Branson or Ka-Shing, whose investment you'd be messing around with. you and/or a gubmint would end up in court in a nasty legal battle for damages.  class action suits would be carried out by now wealthy early adopters.

then, there are the technical out-maneuvers that could be introduced into the protocol after finding out about such a plan and a brief pause to implement them.  a change could be made to SHA 516 as an example.

and so what of a 51% attack that could be shutdown relatively immediately?  there would be a temporary disruption of the network but then we would adapt and the gubmint would have wasted billions for nothing.

no, i think we are in a Pure Strategy Nash Equilibrium.

and that's a pretty negative attitude.

i think that Bitcoin has much to offer, to even gubmints.   i think they will see this.  once they understand this is a widespread grassroots movement that can't be stuffed back into the bag, they will embrace it.  yes, there may be a fight for a while but alot of fiat money problems can be solved by Bitcoin and everyone now knows we have a problem.

sound money will make the world a better place.

Pos and Pow both have many cons. A new system would do good.

You are talking out of your ass here....

1. Yes, they have plenty of money to attack Bitcoin
2. If they were to do so, they wouldn't alert the Bitcoin community about it and give them a warning. It would be top secret & confidential. ASIC chip foundries work under under strict confidentiality agreements... If you don't believe me, then go tell me the status of BFL's latest order and report back.

The government has the money and people smart enough to do all assembly and PCB work done themselves.

3. Bitcoin would not be able to respond quickly enough, as the government would already have 51%

4. Political fallout... Lawsuits... Governments pretty much do whatever they want. They always have and always will. If they see Bitcoin as a threat to national security, they can justify their actions.. Even if they don't truly believe this (see: weapons of mass description in Iraq). It wouldn't help that u would have to go through THEIR courts toro secure THEM... Tell me how that works out for you.

5. A 51% attack cannot be shut down 'relatively immediately' and all confidence in Bitcoin would be lost due to all the things the attackers could do.

6. It could be done for much cheaper than a billion dollars by rooting mining pools.

You are so convinced you are right there is no point in debating with you.

...

no, the right way to release a patch like that would be to first get a community consensus so that any which move they made would be accepted by the community in general.  assuming the consensus was no rollback, then the core devs would not have wasted time coding the patch and would've been perceived as being more sensitive to the entire community's wishes as opposed to being manipulable to political and economic interests of key members only like Bter.  now, i question the motives of the core devs and whether or not they truly understand the principles of a community and free market currency.  this also introduces confusion as to what the hell they will do the NXT-time an issue like this arises.  having a "vote" like this is not the same as gaining consensus.

Both pow and pos have serious flaws. Neither is immune.

The easiest path to attack bitcoin under the current PoW system is actually easier then building many asics or even getting a few swat teams to take over the pools.  It's simple.  Start two or three pools and pay slightly more then all the other pools.  Since government has the printing press they can subsidize the extra bitcoins in such pools essentially forever and in an unlimited fashion.  Most miners would have a clear economic incentive to join those pools and likely will.  And just like that they would control the majority of the hash rate.  They might already control that since no one knows who runs ghash.io and/or discuss fish?  That's tinfoil hat obviously and PoS would not be immune to that either since again with an unlimited printing press 51% of any PoS currency can simply be bought up.

As the recent hack has proven if the hacker would have been malicious nxt would be dead at next to no cost at all.

It would stay depressed at 4-5k satoshi for 2-3 months if he chose to sell in equal portions (1m each day), that's how long it would take for the market to absorb 50M volume. If he chose to sell all in one go, it would go to 100-200 satoshi for a few hours, buying 50m NXTs at 500 satoshi takes only 250 Bitcoins, that's about daily volume of NXT trading. So all the 50m would be quickly bought within 1 day, that's rough calculations, give or take a few hours. Gradual selling over 2-3 months would hurt more because it'd be more prolonged bleeding, but not dramatic either.

...
The problem with PoS coins is that they kill each other by endless diluting with the arrival of better next generation coins ....

Someone already said that, you guys keep repeating the same things over and over.


Hacker can't control NXT network with 5% of the coins. The only thing he could do is what is quoted above.

...just goes to show you how badly the hacker wanted BTC instead of NXT...

quoting your opinion proves nothing. 

we just saw 45M NXT bought for a measly 200BTC.  just goes to show you how badly the hacker wanted BTC instead of NXT.  yet he still hold 8M NXT to screw around the NXT network.  can one short NXT yet?

trying to physically buy up a crapload of asic mining equipment, build a secret datacenter equivalent to all the current mines out there, channel enough water and electricity to such a secret facility, hire the manpower and construction machinery to build out said center, hire the expertise to implement such hardware is NXT to impossible at this point.  we see asic chip makers pushing the 14nm chip frontier while Intel is still on 28nm.  and yet the boogeyman gubmint is supposed to be the bleeding edge?  no, i'll take the private, open source sector anytime.

there is major flaws with pow. It's like cars... We have cars that are majorly adopted but they are run on petrol which is a major flaw in the concept of cars due the inefficiency of the engines and fuel source for the engine. Everyone knows electric cars are more efficient and solve the major flaw previously mentioned how ever they are only a fraction of the total automotive industry and not very popular regardless of being superior technology because the infrastructure isn't in place to allow mass adoption.

Not only that but people  won't actually try the technology because they are complacent with what they already use because in their eyes it is "good enough" and will not realise the deficiencies in what they currently use until the later more advanced and efficient technology becomes further adopted at which point they are part of the mainstream adoption and missed the "early adopter" status of that technology.

There will always be people who deny that the more efficient and advanced technology is better and fight against it due to vested interest which is what we see today with those who have a vested interest in bitcoin and those who have a public persona in the btc space.

The same concept can be applied very well to 1st and second gen crypto..

Just because bitcoin is fully functional and gaining huge adoption, it doesn't mean it's the superior technology.. Eventually  infrastructure will be built for the superior tech and people will start to see the it is superior and it will gain adoption...

The question is... At what point will people see this and move from old inefficient tech to the New more efficient and advanced tech? And where in this adoption curve do you fit in?

quoting your opinion proves nothing.  we just saw 45M NXT bought for a measly 200BTC.  just goes to show you how badly the hacker wanted BTC instead of NXT.  yet he still hold 8M NXT to screw around the NXT network.  can one short NXT yet?

trying to physically buy up a crapload of asic mining equipment, build a secret datacenter equivalent to all the current mines out there, channel enough water and electricity to such a secret facility, hire the manpower and construction machinery to build out said center, hire the expertise to implement such hardware is NXT to impossible at this point.  we see asic chip makers pushing the 14nm chip frontier while Intel is still on 28nm.  and yet the boogeyman gubmint is supposed to be the bleeding edge?  no, i'll take the private, open source sector anytime.

I'd argue the exact opposite and that is POW is dead (except for Bitcoin) and POS is the future. Look at all the innovation with POS coins: NXT, NEM, Crypti. Where is the innovation with POW? Litecoin? Darkcoin? Titcoin?

Does anyone still believe that purchasing a machine for thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to mine POW coins is still profitable?

Furthermore, as energy costs and hashrates continue to rise, fewer and fewer people will get involved with POW mining.

Even stealing/buying old privatekeys that were filled with enough coins before a hardcoded and thus centralized checkpoint in a pos coin is suffiecient to rebuild a chain with a higher commulative difficulty and thus fork the network.

look at the escalating hashrate.  certainly someone does.

orders of mining equipment are still in high demand.  hashrate is still escalating.  when can we expect this participation to die off, please?

keep in mind that a checkpoint is not a secure form of the truth.  they are just lockdowns of history; and that history can be faulty.

there is major flaws with pow. It's like cars... We have cars that are majorly adopted but they are run on petrol which is a major flaw in the concept of cars due the inefficiency of the engines and fuel source for the engine. Everyone knows electric cars are more efficient and solve the major flaw previously mentioned how ever they are only a fraction of the total automotive industry and not very popular regardless of being superior technology because the infrastructure isn't in place to allow mass adoption.

Not only that but people  won't actually try the technology because they are complacent with what they already use because in their eyes it is "good enough" and will not realise the deficiencies in what they currently use until the later more advanced and efficient technology becomes further adopted at which point they are part of the mainstream adoption and missed the "early adopter" status of that technology.

There will always be people who deny that the more efficient and advanced technology is better and fight against it due to vested interest which is what we see today with those who have a vested interest in bitcoin and those who have a public persona in the btc space.

The same concept can be applied very well to 1st and second gen crypto..

Just because bitcoin is fully functional and gaining huge adoption, it doesn't mean it's the superior technology.. Eventually  infrastructure will be built for the superior tech and people will start to see the it is superior and it will gain adoption...

The question is... At what point will people see this and move from old inefficient tech to the New more efficient and advanced tech? And where in this adoption curve do you fit in?

Yes, it is a flaw when compared to something like Bitshare's delegated proof of stake, which has fixed the "nothing at stake" issue with other PoS coins.. among other things. Seeing as though DPoS uses a fraction of the energy to protect the BitsharesX block chain just as securely, this is a vast improvement in and of itself. Furthermore, using dPoS you can increase block speeds to 10 to 30 seconds without seeing the problems that you would see using PoW (stales, forks, etcetra.) http://bitshares.org/delegated-proof-of-stake/

You actually can get discounts on electricity if you use a lot of it from certain companies, but there are other ways they can gain advantage.

Obviously someone setting up a large farm such as this has pretty deep pockets. Someone with deep pockets can order many more mining rigs than joe blow, which reduces his percentage of the network, which reduces joe blow's profits. This could be done (as we are seeing) to an extent that joe blow will never break even (in BTC... that's all we care about). Do you think joe blow will continue buying mining rigs if he can't break even? They can push him out of the market. The fact that most mining manufacturers offer bulk pricing only exemplifies this.

Another way they could gain an advantage is by investing money in manufacturing their own ASIC mining chips, PCBs, and assembly lines. In that scenario they would be paying a fraction of the price for a mining rig that runs at the same speed as joe blow (even more so than bulk discounts). Which allows them to purchase more mining rigs, further reducing the cost of the mining rigs, and therefore further reduce joe blow's portion of the network.

That is true, but if they can achieve a certain percentage of the network they will easily operate at a profit. Especially when they are getting the mining rigs much cheaper than average consumers via bulk discounts or manufacturing their own. If it wasn't wildly profitable, why would large manufacturers like KNC, Avalon, Bitfury be making these massive farms in the first place? I know how much of a headache a large farm is to setup and run.. I find it hard to believe they would do it if it wasn't highly profitable. Due to economies of scale, it is very profitable.

Because of the reasons I've stated above. Sure, the little guys have access to the most recent hardware, but they are paying much more for that same hardware than the large farms and manufacturers are paying. They are at a disadvantage from the get go. To make things worse, a lot of the little guys are closing up shop and moving on. I mean.. if you bought mining hardware and you lost a lot of Bitcoins doing so (IE. did not break even), would you keep buying mining hardware? It is still profitable for large farms and manufacturers, but not so much for the little guys. In my ASIC investments, NONE of them have broken even, and I know I'm not alone. I will never buy a Bitcoin ASIC again in my life.

Yes, I would consider both of those processes wasteful of natural resources, and potentially the downfall of humanity living on planet earth at some unknown point of time in the future. If gasoline engines weren't such a bad thing for the environment and wasteful of natural resources, then why is there so much effort being made to move beyond gasoline with the use of alternative fuels? Do you not understand how many natural resources are wasted during the process of generating electricity, how the environment is negatively impacted while doing so, and why using less electricity is beneficial to that problem?


There haven't really been any good solutions to PoW until very recently. There have been different variants of PoS that all suffer from various flaws. Only until recently have most of those flaws been fixed. A change like this (from Bitcoin to something else) will take time. The use of gasoline is actually a great analogy, I am glad you brought it up.

There are issues with the use of Gasoline just like there are issues with Bitcoin, both are not perfect for a few similar reasons (harmful to the environment and waste of natural resources.) Yet, Gasoline and Bitcoin will be around for a long time because of the infrastructure that has been built by both of them. In gasoline's case there are billions of vehicles, power tools, planes, etcetra that use it... to switch to an alternative we would need to rebuild these or design and build new ones. In Bitcoin's case the exchanges, ATMs, payment processors, etcetra are already setup to work with Bitcoin... to work with another crypto currency would require reprogramming just about every core service involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Costs are another thing holding gasoline and Bitcoin alternatives.. it is expensive to develop alternative technologies.

The advancement in technology is still being improved upon, but better technological alternatives certainly already exist for both gasoline and Bitcoin. It will take time, how long is anyone's guess, but I am certain that both will be uprooted as the king of fuel (gasoline) and the king of crypto currencies (Bitcoin) at some point in the future. Gasoline is definitely not the only example, all technologies come and go as better technologies replace the less adequate technologies. The transitions from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray took a lot of time. Along with the transition from Records to Tapes to CDs to MP3s to FLACs took a lot of time. I could go on and on with these examples..

Notice the more technological advancements happen at a quicker pace.. I don't see why this couldn't be applicable to Bitcoin as well. It is after all much cheaper to reprogram something than to rebuild all the vehicles, power tools, etcetra in the world. Furthermore, gasoline has many other factors why it is probably the best option for the foreseeable future, but Bitcoin has less so.


I just assumed by your reply that you could think through the above reasoning yourself and understand it, yet still chose to call me out for being wrong because you own a lot of Bitcoins and want to protect your nest egg. Many people (individuals, companies, and corporations) are heavily invested in the current system (gasoline and Bitcoin), and profit from it. They are hesitant to allow change and will spend any amount of time, effort, and money that it takes to thwart the opposition because it is how they sustain their lifestyles and provide for their families. I apologize if my assumption was incorrect. If my reasoning is wrong, then please explain how I am wrong. Sometimes I do a horrible job of conveying exactly what I am trying to say, even though it makes perfect sense in my head. :)

I recently tried to lay to rest some concerns I have about the technical underpinnings of the PoS system as used in NXT. See this thread on the NXT forum:

https://nxtforum.org/general/forging-questions/

Needless to say, my concerns have not been laid to rest.

Furthermore, I have to say that the lack of technical expertise in the NXT community is somewhat worrying.

You'll just have to search Bitcointalk original NXT thread (the one that's over 1000 pages long) for answers, developers are busy coding new features like crazy, no time to answer everyone's questions :)

Did you read the NXT whitepaper draft (https://nxtforum.org/nxt-whitepaper/completely-revamped-nxt-whitepaper-draft/)?

Lol... You obviously haven't done much Bitcoin ASIC investing if you think you can still break even. Eventually people will learn this and Bitcoin mining will become centralized.

All you did was shill for Hash Fast, a scam Bitcoin ASIC company, and spew lies about them so more people would buy their hardware that never came.

That was probably profitable for you, but most people got screwed by them.

quoting your opinion proves nothing.  we just saw 45M NXT bought for a measly 200BTC.  just goes to show you how badly the hacker wanted BTC instead of NXT.  yet he still hold 8M NXT to screw around the NXT network.  can one short NXT yet?

trying to physically buy up a crapload of asic mining equipment, build a secret datacenter equivalent to all the current mines out there, channel enough water and electricity to such a secret facility, hire the manpower and construction machinery to build out said center, hire the expertise to implement such hardware is NXT to impossible at this point.  we see asic chip makers pushing the 14nm chip frontier while Intel is still on 28nm.  and yet the boogeyman gubmint is supposed to be the bleeding edge?  no, i'll take the private, open source sector anytime.

Lol... You obviously haven't done much Bitcoin ASIC investing if you think you can still break even. Eventually people will learn this and Bitcoin mining will become centralized.

All you did was shill for Hash Fast, a scam Bitcoin ASIC company, and spew lies about them so more people would buy their hardware that never came.

That was probably profitable for you, but most people got screwed by them.

You keep conveniently ignoring what I wrote before.  A bad actor does not need to buy or build asics in secret.  All the hash rate centralization is already concentrated and available in the form of pools.  Do you somehow believe that pool operators would turn down a buy out offer that's accompanied by the threat of government force?  Or do you somehow believe ghash.io or discuss fish servers are mysteriously unknown or so well hidden that governments can't find them?  This is one of the main problems of PoW in it's current winner take all form is that the economic laws of division of labor make small miners eventually obsolete.  That and the fact that block rewards are forever decreasing makes centralization through pools a guaranteed fact.  Even with p2p available it is not being used and majority still mines in pools with no known owners or operators.  Why?  Because it's simple.  Path of least resistance.  An average miner just wants to make a profit so he will go where the profit is greatest not some tilting at windmills I will mine alone because network needs protection BS.

yeah, i thought i recognized your scammer name, Coinhoarder:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=316370.0

yeah, i thought i recognized your scammer name, Coinhoarder:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=316370.0

and you know Coinhoarder, any reasonable person can see that HF was totally out of my control.  and the first sentence of my endorsement revealed to everyone that i was being paid.

you, otoh, have complete control of paying off your promises but haven't.  and after all the work those poor guys did designing those beautful logos for you to shit on them.  i actually took pity on one of them and bought one of their designs so all that work wouldn't be for naught.

Nice try bro, but I actually pay my debts in this community. Scammers don't repay their debts, therefore I am not a scammer. I have two debts which I am actively paying off. The first is a 30 Bitcoin loan that I owed 32 Bitcoins for, as of a few days ago I have paid 31.5 Bitcoin of the 32 Bitcoins owed. If you don't believe me, here is evidence on the block chain I am actively paying off that debt: https://blockchain.info/address/1MenQ9tJiGHaNwTiFJJu2g9F2qpseWzPMu

After I pay off that debt, I will be paying off the bounty debt next, and will be free and clear of all debt owed in the cryptocoin community. You see.. I am a man of my word and am in the process of paying my debts in the community. There are many people that can vouch for me that I am a trustworthy person, I have done a lot of honest business with happy customers and/or sellers.

Tell me, when will you be paying back Hash Fast customers that you duped into buying hardware from a scam company that never delivered? The only recourse you seem to be providing is an apology. I've provided both an apology AND I am paying people back... I've put in a lot more effort than you have to right my wrongs. ;) :P

Furthermore (more in line with the topic of conversation), tell me how your ASIC investments have gone for you thus far. Minus the free mining rigs you got from HashFast for sending customers to their scam?

Once again you fail at reading comprehension, go back and read my last post.

here's the problem.

your comprehension of what's fair and legal is ridiculous.  just like your claims about POW and POS.  what i did for HF was an endorsement at the beginning of their existence.  i was never part of their incompetence later on.  yes, i made a judgment error in the endorsement.  but that doesn't make me liable to pay back all their customers, both legally and morally.  how would that even be possible and even reasonable?  

your debt obligation, otoh, are your own.  made by you and personally guaranteed by you.  if you are so high and mighty like you claim, why are so many ppl pissed at you, creating a thread about you, and labelling you a scammer?  how about paying those poor guys interest for your late payments made on your own terms?  that was a year ago, btw.

Think of me what you will, but I am paying off the debt and could care less what people think of me because of it. I would love to pay off the debt that I owe RIGHT NOW, but unfortunately that isn't financially possible for me. I cant make money appear out of thin air. It was an honest mistake which was balooned by the Bitcoin price hike late last year when it went from $150 to $1200+, and I paid off a lot of my debt when Bitcoin was valued above $800... even $1000 plus dollars. If I would of waited until now for the value to crash, I would have all my debt paid off and some savings as well.

You can say what you want about your Hash Fast situation, but words are easier to come by than money, and I feel like what I am doing... paying people back means a lot more than offering an apology. Sure, you don't owe those people anything, but all you are doing is offering an apology.. it seems pretty weak considering you were the biggest cheer leader for one of the biggest ASIC scams thus far. People lost millions and millions of dollars with Hash Fast, whereas in my situation I only owe people about 5.5 Bitcoins since I have repaid most of the debt. Hash Fast went bankrupt and probably no one is getting paid back.. if they do it will be pennies on the dollar. I am paying people back in full. I think your apologies about the Hash Fast situation would mean a lot more if you actually tried to help any of the victims out a little bit- instead you do nothing but offer an apology and point fingers.

Anyways... thanks for reminding me I needed to update people about my debts and how I am coming along with them. I can assure you everyone will be paid back as soon as possible. You can say what you will about it, but I know that in my heart I meant no wrong, and I am paying everyone back as soon as I can. I stopped caring what people think about me a long time ago when Smoothie was constantly harassing me about this all over every forums on the internet.

by your logic:

1.  Roger Ver should pay back everyone's losses at mtgox
2.  Andreas Antonopoulos should pay back everyone's losses at Neo & Bee
3.  Tuur Demeester should pay back everyone's losses at Neo & Bee and Cointerra

how many millions should i return to HF customers when i did not make millions?  

You should at least pay them back what Hash Fast paid you to shill for them IMO, but I guess that is up to you. That is what I would do personally..

Anyways... as I said, I am paying my debt and always had good intentions. Soon I will be cleared of my wrong doings and I know that will happen as soon as financially possible. You can call me a scammer if you like, but scammers do not repay debts- they take it and run.

I guess I am done with this conversation, I didn't mean to derail the thread I apologize, but it was applicable to the conversation you have to admit that ASIC scams are another bad thing about PoW. So many people have been scammed because of ASICs and so many people have lost money due to buying unprofitable mining equipment. Many more will lose money due to both of those in the future. This is just another reason why PoS is better than PoW in my opinion. ASIC mining opens up the mining community to scams and unprofitable investments disguised as money making opportunities. Just because people are still buying unprofitable mining equipment does not mean that it is sustainable, it just means that these people haven't learned their lesson yet. I'd venture to say these people will learn eventually that ASIC investing is a losing proposition sooner rather than later.

but just like many ppl try to tie Bitcoin to drugs, you are trying to tie the asic pre order mining scams to POW.  that's ridiculous.

btw, HF didn't start off being a scam, i can assure you.  there's a case to be made they didn't even end up being a scam.  they were incompetent's.

It's not ridiculous, it's just a fact.

PoW opens people up to getting scammed by mining hardware manufacturers because they (or eventually with all PoW algos) will need to buy specialized hardware to compete with other miners.

PoS solves this problem as it doesn't require mining hardware in the first place.

Drugs are a whole different conversation. As long as money exists (FIAT, PoW, or PoS), people will use it to buy drugs. However, crypto currencies can be made to not require mining hardware by using PoW alternatives, which solves the problem of people getting scammed by shady hardware manufacturers.

I am all for the improving crypto currencies because they align with my libertarian beliefs, and I feel like PoS is a step in the right direction because it solves a lot of issues with PoW coins. Sure, it is not perfect, but it I feel it is a step in the right direction nonetheless.

The reason for the scams is because it's not really PoW it's incentivized PoW.  Btw the next scam wave is cloud mining.  These scams won't stop because current mining is more like bitcoin investing/annuity and that's the direct result of the way the current bitcoin PoW works.

the reason POW is successful is because of the incentives.

The only successful PoW is Bitcoin, and only because it has a few years first mover advantage, and habituation and herd mentality keep its market cap above others. But that's not forever.

The reason for the scams is because it's not really PoW it's incentivized PoW.  Btw the next scam wave is cloud mining.  These scams won't stop because current mining is more like bitcoin investing/annuity and that's the direct result of the way the current bitcoin PoW works.

it's a fact in your own mind.  why else would we be having this debate if it was truly a fact?

that is simply an educational and early adopter issue.  in fact, pre-orders have become a thing of the past as ppl have learned not to trust these potential scams.  as mining hardware becomes commoditized by the likes of major hardware corps, prices will come down, and all the scams will disappear.  it's already happening.

b/c POS involves no work, it is easier to scam.

all the failed POS systems are evidence of this.

in fact, there are no successful POS systems in place today.

by tying the mining to a real world cost, electricity, it is much harder to scam.  

POS's have everything to prove unlike the ultimate POW system, Bitcoin.

the burden of proof is on you.

dickhead Coinhoarder started it.

what's with all these changes being announced in NXT anyways?  it's a constantly moving target/project.  btw, that's bad.  why?  b/c long term investors need to know exactly what they're investing in.  they want to know the rules ahead of time.  investors, like myself, hate uncertainty and the alts/POS/NXT/NEM are great examples of chameleons.  you may call it "innovation" or "evolving".  i call it confusion.

Exactly, I agree and that's the point I am trying to make.


This isn't a debate, it is you feigning ignorance. I refuse to believe you are this stupid. Both PoW and PoS each have their flaws, and none is "better" or "worse" than the other. PoW is better than PoS in some areas, and PoS is better than PoW in some areas. It is a two way road, but you are acting as if it is a one way road.

Preorders are becoming a thing of the past, but that is only one way ASIC manufacturers and/or distributors are scamming their customers. They have moved on to doing it in a more upfront way by selling the mining equipment at a price that will never break even. It may not be a scam, in the sense of the true meaning of the word scam, but it is a dishonest shady business to say the least.

A lot of companies advertise in stock products only to delay those as well, so the preorder-type scams still exist, only in a different form.

It is "easier" to scam, yet no one has been able to do it yet. As market caps grow and the crypto currencies are more evenly distributed it will become even more unlikely that it will happen.


Name one PoS crypto currency that has been attacked through the same avenues that PoW evangelists claim to be so insecure. To my knowledge there is not a single one. There are only cases of services/people getting hacked which happens out of incompetence rather than PoS being insecure. PoW coins suffer from the same vulnerabilities that PoS coins have suffered thus far, both of which stem from incompetence. Not a flawed protocol.

There are a few very successful PoS system in place... Nxt, Bitshares, and Blackcoin... all of which have market caps above 4.7 million dollars.

I think what you mean are there are no invulnerable PoS implementations in place today. The same could be same for PoW implementations though, which is where you are wrong in claiming PoW is so much better than PoS. They both have vulnerabilities. Bitcoin has a long list of known vulnerabilities as well: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses

You have somewhat of a point here, however to build a mining farm would be the most inefficient way of attacking the Bitcoin network. It can be done many other ways that would be cheaper. Rooting a large mining pool would probably be the cheapest way, and you could pay someone to do that for much cheaper than you could buy 51% of the available currency in the larger PoS crypto currencies.

Along with that possible avenue, as I mentioned, there are many other avenues you could take: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses

BOTH PoW and PoS are unproven thus far. PoW is not fully played out yet, as ASICs were only available a year and a half ago. It is my belief that all the profit of PoW mining will be sucked out by ASIC manufacturers and people with deep pockets, that the Bitcoin network will become more and more centralized as time goes on. With this centralization can lead to many bad things, such as the small mining conglomerate deciding they want to be paid more for transaction fees or reversing a transaction when they are hacked at some point in time. That is one of the things PoS is getting a lot of heat for lately, but it could just as easily happen to Bitcoin (or other PoW coins), especially as mining becomes more centralized.

It could happen today if Ghash.io or discus fish are rooted. Someone with 30% of Bitcoin's hash rate has something like a 60% chance of being able to reverse a transaction with only 1 confirmation. IT is actually quite scary how easily a 51% attack could be performed, and even though it is called a 51% attack... you don't need anywhere close to 51% of the network's computing power to do it. See page 10: https://bitcoil.co.il/Doublespend.pdf

out of curiosity, what exactly are you confused with? its decentralized asset exchange? its marketplace?

what is it that's so hard to grasp?

Actually, you did with you Ad hominem attack.

If you can't make an argument to support your claims then attacking the other persons character is a time honored and childish move that unfortunately for you we here are intelligent enough to spot.

You lose by default.

confusion on the part of NXT devs and it's community.  i'm not confused about anything.  it's clear to me that i'd never invest in such fickleness.

Those are empty words.
"confusion on the part of NXT devs and it's community" -- what exactly?
"fickleness" -- where exactly?

all the code and rule changes and promises for more.

from an investor's standpoint, i wouldn't touch it with a 10ft pole.

So undefined...

Which "code and rule" changes? Which promises exactly?


That's your freedom of choice and perfectly fine, but why would anyone care? Why keep saying this, are you that important?

you really do need to be spoon fed, don't you?  i'll leave it to you to read about all the coming changes.

The incentivized PoW may be a feature but what happens when it stops.  You can't have both cheap and secure transactions.  Currently 1% worth of asics are securing 100% of bitcoin and that's with block reward being 50 times higher then transaction fees.  There's currently a feedback loop where fiat/wealth is being sucked into the bitcoin system through the appearance of profitability through mining.  It may very well continue for many years to come. But how do you see this change after next halving or how about the halving after that cypher?

No, your undefined claims are empty words hence require more detail for me to take you seriously -- which is why I unfortunately wasted my time asking you for the details that you fail to provide.

i can see that you're invested in POS.  that's ok.

Just as much as I'm invested in POW. Don't see how that makes a different in this discussion though. You tend to get personal once further elaboration of undefined claims is required or arguments have run out, why is this?

do you deny that there haven't been many changes upcoming to NXT that have been promised?

NXT is under constant development and has been introducing exciting features over the course of time. Some of these features have been completed and are implemented in the current release, such as its Arbitrary Messaging, Alias Function, Account Leasing, Decentralized Asset Exchange and Marketplace. Other features are in development, such as the completion of Transparent Forging and Smart Contracts.  

There is complete transparency over what is being worked on and anyone can contribute, which is why I am so puzzled what exactly seems to be confusing you. What do you expect?  Do you dislike technological advancement of cryptocurrency?

my only point is that it is confusing from my standpoint (yes, i am personalizing this purposely so as not to generalize to all investors) to put money into something that is so fluid.  i freely admit, that's my opinion.  not everyone will agree with me.  feel free to ignore as it should be clear i am not a fan of POS to begin with.

btw, HF didn't start off being a scam, i can assure you.  there's a case to be made they didn't even end up being a scam.  they were incompetent's.

Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

i actually do believe POW is better than POS.  i guess that makes me ignorant.  otoh, i am articulating the reasons why i think so.  i suggest you consider them.

It seems like you do believe that, I can tell, and you are certainly entitled to your own opinion. That isn't what I was talking about when referring to feigning ignorance. It is that you try to push your opinion on everyone else as if it is fact and ignore the fact that PoW has vulnerabilities also. You act as if it's impossible to attack a PoW coin, which is quite a stretch of the truth. Sure, it is unlikely, but it is far from impossible.

The same applies with PoS, it is unlikely someone would be able to attack it, but it is far from impossible. There are two sides to the debate, each side has valid arguments, but it is your reluctance to admit that your side of the debate has some holes in it that makes you ignorant (or feigning ignorance.) I can admit PoS has flaws, you seem to be having a hard time admitting that PoW has flaws as well.

By the way.. your offer of me to go root ghash.io or discus fish and 51% attack Bitcoin... I extend the same offer to you. Go attack a PoS coin using one of the known vulnerabilities and report back to me......

the difference being it wouldn't even be worth my time.  for you, however, it would be.

in other words, POW has nothing to prove, POS does.

lol.  keep your blinders on.

HE was the one who brought up unrelated HF allegations out of the blue.  i simply responded.

and in case you haven't noticed, i've been posting boatloads of key arguments about why i don't like POS.  you, otoh, would simply like to ignore them with no quality responses on your part.

No, it would not be worth my time. I don't own any crypto currencies at the moment, and am an unbiased observer giving his honest opinion. I'm not sure you are quite so impartial, whether it is intentional or not. It definitely would not be worth the time, money, and effort just to prove you wrong. I am here discussing and debating crypto currencies because they fascinate me, I think they are generally a great idea, and I would like to see control of the money supply taken away from the government as they have proven themselves incompetent by printing money left and right.

"PoW has nothing to prove, PoS does"

More ignorance.. you do not know what will happen in the future, you can only speculate, and Bitcoin/PoW is still a relatively new technology. Windows XP has been out since 2001 and people are still discovering vulnerabilities. Even if more vulnerabilities aren't discovered, which is highly unlikely due to history and statistics, you are speculating on how ASIC mining will play out. My prediction is not so hunky dory as yours.

Both PoW and PoS technologies are unproven at this point.

...

i find it also interesting about the circumstances of your scammer debacle.  you borrowed Bitcoin.  and in 2013 before the huge run up.  someone who truly understands Bitcoin would never do such a foolish thing.  those of us who do understand it know that it's a deflationary currency that's likely to ramp in value.  part of that understanding is that it's a secure technology.  no wonder you got trapped in a debt you couldn't pay back.  now stop and think for a moment; a rational person would try to learn from a major error like that.  it doesn't sound like you have.

further up the thread, you were the one who said something to the effect that if someone gave you enough money you could easily destroy Bitcoin in about a few seconds, or something braggadocio like that.  that's more than just a little hubris here.  i never said something like that about POS.  you are the one who keeps insisting it's a "fact" that POW can be destroyed.  i never said something so definitive like that either.

i find it also interesting about the circumstances of your scammer debacle.  you borrowed Bitcoin.  and in 2013 before the huge run up.  someone who truly understands Bitcoin would never do such a foolish thing.  those of us who do understand it know that it's a deflationary currency that's likely to ramp in value.  part of that understanding is that it's a secure technology.  no wonder you got trapped in a debt you couldn't pay back.  now stop and think for a moment; a rational person would try to learn from a major error like that. like what went wrong.

it doesn't sound like you have.

It is a fact that it is possible any PoW coin can be destroyed, just as it is a fact and PoS coin can be destroyed. If someone has enough time, money, reason, and gives enough effort it can be done much easier than you would like to admit. Give me a billion dollars and I will show you.

I did learn a lesson. Never get a loan denominated in Bitcoins, as the value fluctuates wildly and it can lead to never being able to pay back the loan. Don't act like you know what is going on inside my head in regards to that, and talk out of your ass when you say "I didn't learn a lesson." Are you psychic?

I believed Bitcoin would rise in value. Ask anyone that knows me irl. I just didn't think it would rise in value as fast as it did. It went from $150 to $1200 in 4 months. I think just about everyone did not expect such a huge run up in price that quickly. That would have pretty much been best case scenario predictions in August. If it were so easy to tell that it would do that, then a lot more people would have bet huge... only a handful of people did that. Hindsight is 20/20.

Anyways.. enough about me. I mentioned your involvement with Hash Fast because it was applicable to the debate... poW opens people up to get scammed by ASIC manufacturers. It seems you want to talk about our personal issues, so how much did you get paid out of customer funds to shill for Hash Fast? How many free mining rigs did they give you which were paid for out of customer funds?

i can't and won't talk about that b/c there are legal issues involved.

no, you bring that personal shit up b/c you still don't understand Bitcoin and you're using all sorts of BS arguments to defend your position as flawed as it may be.

everyone knows it's possible POW might be hacked.

but it's like talking about the possibility of a key collision.  it's highly unlikely at this point.

you continue to ignore the fact that $6-7 billion and at times more has just been sitting their on the blockchain begging to be stolen.  why hasn't it happened?  you say "they don't want to".  that's ridiculous.  sure they do.

look at all the stumbling over themselves the gubmint has done to try and block Bitcoin.  look at the Bitlicense proposals.  no, gubmints like to do the easy things, like regulate or print money.  they don't like to work.  hmmm, funny, just like POS ppl.  

and just which gubmint will do the attack?  the US?  what about China or Russia?  maybe they're building secret mines themselves so as to overthrow the USD and protect Bitcoin.  you don't know.  gubmints won't collude to destroy Bitcoin; there's too much opportunity for them to use it themselves for financial gain.

Passed btc to another finance guys iPhone last night at a dinner table of 8. Even the wives got quiet when I did this for the men. Made a big impression and the skepticism is decreasing significantly amongst these people.

I also made the point that because I was using my vpn to connect with Sweden, that the btc were traveling 11000 mi before landing in his phone. It took 10 s. I only sent him 60c worth but emphasized there is no other payment services that could do that. His words were "that's amazing". So happy that Apple opened back up.

They call me Mr. Bitcoin :)

CH,

are you Jonathan Levin by any chance?

Never heard of him. I think you sound like someone I know of though, do you by chance keep getting banned from a poker forum?  ;)

Anyways, let's agree to disagree on the last remaining difference... the ability of the government to 51% attack Bitcoin. To make it clear, I also think it is unlikely to happen, but I do feel like they have the ability if they chose to do so.

hey mr bitcoin cool story brutha! 8)  ONLY POW CAN DO THIS!

those ppl 4 sure thought u are a nifty genious.

~CfA~

nvr play poker.

yeah, i think like most arguments in Bitcoin, it comes down to one's outlook on life.  i've learned to be an optimist, altho hopefully not blind-fully so.  perhaps i've been listening to too much Andreesen. ;D

btw, have you noticed? it's Rally Time. ;)

Nxt, Maidsafe, Ethereum, Stellar and NEM are all PoS.

The combined market cap of them is still rather large and have room to grow further. So, PoS is very much alive.

I think in a year or two from now Bitcoin will still be number #1 but that these and/or other PoS will take up the 2-10 spots according to market cap.

To me, the only PoW I see surviving in two years is bitcoin.   

While I think Bitcoin is very awesome, I also think it is flawed.  These others are just far more advanced in tech. 

I am not sure if those advances are going to be enough in the short term to overcome Bitcoins very large first mover advantage.  Ultimately it is the breadth of a network that makes a coin valuable not necessarily its tech.  In that aspect for now Bitcoin is king.

Nxt, Maidsafe, Ethereum, Stellar and NEM are all PoS.

The combined market cap of them is still rather large and have room to grow further. So, PoS is very much alive.

BitShares is also proof of stake and currently #3

Ethereum is hybrid last I heard, though Vitalik wants to go to DPOS.

and i keep putting up this chart which shows yet another backing off away from the 51% scenario that you are so worried about.  how many times have we bumped up against that % w/o incident?  3x.  and still no problems.  there's a game theory going on here that you guys conveniently dismiss.

The idea of PoS is everyone holding their coins so they can generate new coin.
Now, what if everyone holding their coins? there would be no market activity, then the would be delist from market.
Delist = dead

Nxt, Maidsafe, Ethereum, Stellar and NEM are all PoS.

The combined market cap of them is still rather large and have room to grow further. So, PoS is very much alive.

All of these PoS coins are heavily centralized...
Also, we have not yet seen a well financed, well executed exploit of a major PoS coin...
Just trivial exchange hacks on hot wallets or passwords.

When a guy like Peter Todd says PoS = "Proof of Shit"...
He is speaking as a foremost expert on the subject...
Notice Todd joined VIA which is a scrypt PoW coin.

The only possible rebuttal is that PoS is "good enough"...
And that the world runs on stuff that is imperfect and "good enough".

It's like we have regressed 200 years...
And people hope their bank is "good enough"...
To withstand a bank robbery by a bunch of retarded outlaws on horses...
Only now we have retarded sociopaths with botnets... what progress.

But there is one problem with pure PoS coins:

Rich get richer JUST by sitting on their stake.

which (in my opinion) inevitably leads to centralisation of stake (just getting all fees until you get all the currency).
It will take definitely much longer time than centralisation of mining power did, but it probably will happen some time.
And wide adoption of such currency is only speeding the process (more transactions → more fees)
Am I wrong?
That is the only thing that i dont like about NXT and
that is where NEM with their Proof of Importance algorithm can succeed.

PoS is the way to move forwards, its PoS which is dead. There are many variants of PoS now - TF, POI, DPOS etc.

Indeed, the main problem is that the difference between the rich and the poor gets worse with POS. Sure it is energy efficient, but that does not make up for anything. POS does not have a future, and sadly I do not see even NEM succeeding. It's all speculation who knows what will happen in the upcoming weeks.

PoS is the way to move forwards, its PoS which is dead. There are many variants of PoS now - TF, POI, DPOS etc.

It was good to see POS when we saw it first time. Now there are so many POS coins so it doesn't attract anymore.

PoS is the way to move forwards, its PoS which is dead. There are many variants of PoS now - TF, POI, DPOS etc.

Anyone can start a PoS and it is just as secure as anyone else's. They're like wooden nickels. Worthless. I'll use them if my nation declares them legal tender, but not before because there is no fair distribution with any of them. Governments will only distribute them to themselves anyway so why bother buying into them beforehand? In fact the philosophy behind PoS is so state-centric, I don't see why anyone bothers to develop them. Nobody has yet shown that they are immune from permanent centralization. So just face it, they are ideal for central banks.

Nobody has shown that Bitcoin is immune from centralization. On the contrary, it's getting more centralized with each passing day. Welcome to corporate crypto world, crypto slaves, say greetings to your crypto masters (aka early bitcoin adopters), they own you.

Nice strawman. I didn't say centralization. I said permanent centralization.

ahhh give up preaching your hate for PoS.. its getting old.. those who know anything about PoS know your totally wrong.. those who dont know anything about PoS will know you are totally wrong at some stage probably sooner than later.. currently many believe(wrongly) that you are correct so you dont look like too much of a knob but when the day comes that PoS takes over the show your going to have admit you were wrong and at that point your going to look like a far bigger knob then you do now so quit while you not so far behind and you might make it out of here with out destroying what reputation you might have left.

So? Is PoW immune from permanent centralization? No, it is not. It's moving towards permanent and full centralization like a speed train. In 1 year there will be 2 mining pools, each controlling 50% of the hashrate.

Yes. PoW is immune from permanent centralization by the simple fact that technology always improves. If one person controls all technology development we'll have bigger problems than how we buy porn online.

bitcoins continued centralization is not temporary, and if anything, the more centralized it becomes the more "permanent" it is.. the miners are like the banks, once they have the monopoly, are the hell going to give it up.. they will want to weed out every little miner until their is a small consortium of miners bringing in all the bitcoins into the hands of a very small few.. the longer time goes on the worse this gets.. it happens in every major profit making industry.. telecoms, electricity, water, banking, bla bla bla.. all started out with loads of little companies/businesses/public owned but as time goes on their are fewer and fewer players in these markets because the larger guys are pushing out the smaller ones by making it impossible for them to compete or just buying them out. the exact same thing is happening with bitcoin. more than likely in a few more years there will be 3-4 major miners at best.. another few years and it could be one guy that owns all of them.. he gets corrupted - bitcoin is FUCKED!

stop spewing such crap around, all your doing is trying to brain wash the newbies into thinking that PoS is a load of crap when your very obviously wrong. as if its even going to have any effect what so ever.

What group has claimed permanent control of bitcoin? Please prove your claim?

Reality shows a different picture. PoW is trending towards centralization, PoS is more decentralized. It's blockchain stats, not my imagination.

Your PoS blockchain stats are easily faked to make them look decentralized. Don't be so easily fooled by ip masking and proxies.

Do you have proof that any single entity controls PoS?

That's a guess, not proof. IPs have nothing to do with stats by the way. You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.

That's unfalsifiable. PoS has no way to know when it happens. That's the problem. I don't have a problem if governments use PoS because we can unelect them.

You didn't show me any stats. Please show me independently verifiable stats.

I don't need to. You say that PoS is controlled, you show the stats and the proof that it's controlled. We've all seen the stats for Bitcoin when Ghash had it owned, that's been proven.

PoW has no way to know when it happens too. How do you know if Ghash doesn't control already 70% of hashrate? After all, it did go above 50%, do you think they just switched off part of their systems or still mining but from a different IP now? Which is more likely?

I said no such thing Mr Strawman. Please reread my posts.

So what if it did? Tomorrow someone else will have better faster more hashing. That is guaranteed. Competition and greed drive bitcoin mining.

What if it goes above 50%? You tell me if it's good or not. If that is not centralization, then what is?

It's not good or bad.

Let's agree it should be avoided in crypto currencies and leave it at that.

Show any evidence that it's even possible.

totally agree.. im not confident that PoS will be the one that will take over the world, but i am certain it will not be PoW. there will most certainly be a new coin out very soon that is far superior to PoS. its simple evolution of technology in hyperdrive.

You asking for this or something else?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BqAnZzmIAAAmnq0.png:large

Nobody can claim anything is completely immune from temporary centralization. It's impossible. It's not good or bad. Only God is permanence we can trust.

Your memory is short. You forgot what you were claiming. lulz.
Are you claiming this is permanent centralization?

I am not claiming anything. It's you who claims here PoS is bad, PoW is good, you don't have the proof, but that's the law of this land :D

No. I said I love PoS and America will dominate it. God bless America.

You're in the wrong subforum, this one is not about Politics :)

Stake is all about politics, hell some of them even elect delegates, just like America!

That's only in BitsharesX. There is no electing delegates in NXT, the algo chooses the next block generator in queue. There are a few implementations of PoS, unlike PoW.

The algo doesn't choose anything. The queue is chosen by stakeholders. The algo simply executes the stakeholders wishes. The algo doesn't select the stakeholders either. The stakeholders are selected by people to have the power over the PoS economy. That is as political as you can get.

I said no such thing Mr Strawman. Please reread my posts.

Which PoS implementation are you talking about? This is not the way it works in NXT, and I am not familiar with all existing PoS implementations to claim you're wrong, because maybe some PoS behaves the way you described it. So which one did you just describe?

This is not a strawman, do you even know what one is? <<-- This could be considered Ad-hominem.

The algo doesn't choose anything. The queue is chosen by stakeholders. The algo simply executes the stakeholders wishes. The algo doesn't select the stakeholders either. The stakeholders are selected by people to have the power over the PoS economy. That is as political as you can get.

The one that uses (among others) a thinly veiled form of power grab 'by iterating through all active accounts and seeing which one has the highest "hit"." determined by the "amount of NXT you can earn is dependent upon the number of NXT you hold in your effective balance, the total number of NXT "active" on the network."

It's right on your wiki. NXT is not a lottery. There is no randomness. It executes the wishes according to activity which is itself determined by the aggregated amount.

It's not my wiki. The amount of NXT you hold determines probability of forging a block, that's correct. What power grab are you talking about? Foring blocks isn't even profitable for anyone, no matter their size of stake. It gives a measly 0.5% yearly of the owned stake. Forging blocks is not about profits or power, it's about securing the network. What wishes does it execute? Like Santa Claus wishes? :) You're obviously making stuff up as you go.

I was quoting the nxtcrypto.org wiki. Since forging is how NXT secures transactions, who cares what the forging fee is if you can double spend? That is the type of political power any central banker wishes.

ANyway. I'm done here. I love PoS because it's so easy everyone should have their own PoS altcoin. I hate PoW because it's hard. That's why they call it work.

Yeah, double-spend my ass :D sure, you're done here, because spreading FUD is hard, hard work, especially if you don't have a clue on the technicals :)

Well said.  PoW is dead unless you are bitcoin. :)

POS is the evolution of POW.  POS efficiently mines a coin with minimal electricity waste while POW is simply massively wasteful and this is an evolutionary detriment to the survival of all POW coins.

The problem with PoS coins is that nobody mints/forges, or at least not enough. Everyone keeps their coins on an exchange, waiting for the next pump to dump on, in which case the coin staking weight is low and an attacker needs far less than 51% of coins to attack the network. Either that or the exchange keeps the coins in a hot wallet because they are greedily staking themselves, trying to get free money since everyone keeps their coins at an exchange and you end with a situation like vericoin/mintpal. Even when 5% total NXT were stolen from bter, there was talk that the thief could attack the network, probably because less than 10% of total coins were forging, which goes back to the problem of everyone keeping their coins on an exchange so they don't miss the next pump.

All of this is moot for PoW coins since stealing coins or not keeping your wallet open doesn't really affect the security of the network.

The problem with PoS coins is that nobody mints/forges, or at least not enough. Everyone keeps their coins on an exchange, waiting for the next pump to dump on, in which case the coin staking weight is low and an attacker needs far less than 51% of coins to attack the network. Either that or the exchange keeps the coins in a hot wallet because they are greedily staking themselves, trying to get free money since everyone keeps their coins at an exchange and you end with a situation like vericoin/mintpal. Even when 5% total NXT were stolen from bter, there was talk that the thief could attack the network, probably because less than 10% of total coins were forging, which goes back to the problem of everyone keeping their coins on an exchange so they don't miss the next pump.

All of this is moot for PoW coins since stealing coins or not keeping your wallet open doesn't really affect the security of the network.

[...]PoS is not backed by anything other than the belief there are worth anything[...]

[...]With a PoS the richer get richer.[...]

[...]This is because the wealthy spend a much lower % of their net worth than the masses do.[...]

[...]PoS can NEVER remain decentralized. Satoshi's Proof-of-Work is the only known solution to the Byzantine General's Problem (was a known unsolved problem since at least the 1970s).[...]

[...]PoS is forbidden under Sharia law as it is interest paying[...]

[...]To 51% PoS is dead easy:
You start buying aggressively or "willy" style until you have 51% of a PoS coin[...]

[...]As you once had a 51% stake, you can build a better blockchain than the other 49% can[...]

[...]Unlike bitcoin where everyone can see if anyone comes dangerously close to 51, in PoS its all hidden an attack can happen incognito.[...]

PoW is a promise x amount of energy has been used is backed by energy. There is no better backing than energy because everyone needs it[...]

Your thread is for the waste container.

Everyone knows POW is going to die!

R.I.P