If Bitshares are going to give a fair % (> 50%) for all holders of BTC from a given snapshot then I'd support it but I somehow doubt they are going to do that.

And how exactly do you *know* that their initial distribution wasn't concentrated such that *one owner* (under various aliases) actually already has > 50% of the stake?

As you see the "initial distribution problem" is not something trivially solved (it is the Achilles heel of PoS IMO).

Glad to see that your eyes are open.

So far only Peter R's idea for initial distribution based upon a *snapshot* of the Bitcoin blockchain makes sense to me (no IPO coin will ever be more than a scam in my eyes).

You seem to have missed the IPO idea of creating a PoS with say 21 BTC and a bunch of anonymous bitcointalk accounts (do I need to name the coin?).

It is perfectly easy to collude to gain 100% of the initial distribution if the cost is so low (but maybe very expensive for anyone else to *take that away from you* once the coin *gains value* via an exchange especially if the "initial stakeholders refuse to sell").

That in itself is "worrisome" as presumably it means that forks could appear more often.

The other problem with PoS is that those not mining could be in fact colluding to present a new better chain (the cost of doing so being very little as the "Nothing At Stake" point made).

Again it comes down to "distribution" with PoS that basically *cannot be anonymous* in order to be trusted.

And make money from that?

Anyway - a "share in an ASIC" farm is *not real ownership* as far as "control of what it does".

This seems poorly thought out - proles can't afford "high end ASIC" can they?

The real problem with PoS is the "initial distribution" (although Peter R's idea of using a snapshot of the Bitcoin blockchain is perhaps one possible solution to that issue).

We have already seen coins where > 50% are owned by "anonymous people" whose accounts were created around the same time as the coin was launched (so quite possibly sock puppets of the coin creator) and the cost of owning the "initial distribution" can be *very low* (say as little as 21 BTC).

Whilst that might not be an issue immediately it certainly could become an issue at a later stage if said "coin creator" decided to "do the dirty" in order to gain funds.

Maybe this should be called "Proof of Spam". 

This is very hard and in fact the biggest issue with the approach (how do you know that a group of "large stake holders" haven't decided to collude?).

I think PoW is not going to die any time soon and that PoS approaches can be used to create "other chains" which will probably be "less secure" (but much more energy efficient).

As I have stated the CA system is *flawed* because of *trust* (just search for "ca certificates hacked") to get a start (do I really need to post the links?).

The Finney attack is nothing new and so I don't see why it is relevant especially as you have shown no way to avoid it (apart from relying upon the CA system which is flawed).

Bitcoin does not use X.509 for anything important (it was added for merchants and has nothing to do with the core operations).


Your statement about "sometimes allowing double-spends" is *completely false* - please show me 1 example of a *double spend* in the Bitcoin blockchain to back up your claim (and yes I know *you can't because there is no such thing*).

Again - you trust the CA system which has been *proven* to be flawed.

We just have to somehow *trust you*?

Let's see your papers and how they are reviewed before you ask for any funds please.

BTW - this:

-   Does not permit double-spending, whereas Satoshi's Bitcoin sometimes does.

is *wrong* (if you want to be taken seriously then I'd suggest that you remove it).

Maybe I was answering in a "technical way" so it didn't make any sense.

The reply about 10 minutes indicated *one confirmation* but *one confirmation can take a lot longer than 10 minutes* was what I was getting at.

EDIT: Basically if you are using a service like BitPay (which all the big companies being mentioned do) then it is really BitPay that makes that decision for you (not the other way around).

Sometimes 1 confirmation can take an hour (not often but it does happen).

So unless you are dealing with 0 confirmations then you should probably keep this in mind.

Nice article and a very important contributor to Bitcoin (especially because he was the first person with the necessary crypto skills to actually review and help improve the code).

Sure - you are asking for *trust* so I am just making sure that people are aware of that (if they want to trust your system then that is up to them).

I could mention about my own years of experience (in financial and other fields) but I think it is irrelevant to the discussion.

It won't help - the corruption (or cheating) is not possible to stop with any system (that is why Bitcoin is what it is).

Basically you'd need another Bitcoin blockchain to stop any fault with your CA system which means you are back at square one.

The issue is not "lost somehow" but "stolen/leaked somehow" - so the system can be "played" if those at the "top" decide to be corrupt (or are cheated).