I think the most likely outcome will be mars having its own Bitcoin fork, with a floating exchange between earth and mars. If Mars ever starts needing a currency, they will need something they can use locally.
As for why mars would ever get colonized? Mining for resources on mars is one possibility, but a bigger one may be that mars has a much lower gravity than earth, and thus would make a much cheaper (from a re-launching point of view) stop for refueling and restocking of resources for space miners (those mining stuff from the asteroid belt and such). Sounds far fetched, but Virgin and other companies are seriously looking into mining in space already.

Some more PoS concerns:

Fees on keys that do not maintain active nodes? How will "active" be determined without exposing the key to being traced to its IP address?

Right now, if I'm one of the wealthiest Bitcoin owners, all I need to do is keep my private key safe, and pay a fee to whoever wants to do the mining to be able to spend my money. I can mine myself, but mining for coins isn't the main reason for cryptocurrency, and I would much rather leave that to professionals. With a PoW system, I would be almost obligated to mine using my large wealth, with means also keeping a copy of the whole blockchain, and making sure my private key, which would otherwise be stored on a paper somewhere, is exposed to the web so it can keep mining.

The idea that to gain 51% of control in PoS is very expensive is quite wrong.
PoW has mining pools. A pool operator makes money by providing a central mining point, but if he proves to have bad intentions, or his pool gets over 51% hash rate, miners point their pools elsewhere.
In a PoS, the wealthy owners have a higher chance of signing a block and earning a reward. People will likewise pool their resources together into a single account in hopes of getting a more steady reward, and the pool operator will likewise have incentive to set up a pool and make money off of it. However, if the pool operator turns out to have bad intentions, or gains 51% of the hash rate, the owners are at the mercy of the pool operator, and only hope to get their coins back.
I think recent Bitcoin history has proven that people are quite willing to give their coins to someone if they can give them a good return, and when you pair that with the mining pool idea, I think it would pretty much be a guarantee.

Decentralizing and separating as many functions as possible is a good thing. Easier to upgrade and fix a piece if it's separate, for example.


Yes, I can. We know close to how many ASICs were ordered and how much hashing power we are expecting to have within a month after they start shipping. Yes, they will cover their costs. A Mining Rig SC will earn about $6,000 a month at first, which will taper down to about $2,000 a month after about a year if sales continue to increase. We can't get exact predictions, but we can calculate that if the hashing power is such and such, and the difficulty is at a specific level, the payout will be a certain specific amount. You didn't think miners were just throwing dice in the dark, did you? I know on a certain other forum the general con census is that miners have no idea what they are doing, and are burning more electricity than they make, with the hose that maybe they'll get lucky and make a profit, but that's not how it works. Everything is very precisely calculated and accounted for. For example, I am currently earning exactly BTC5.43BTC a month, and am spending close to $45 for electricity (plus a few pennies).

On the other hand, in a PoS system, those with the nighest savings are the ones who generate blocks. I'm guessing who gets to process a block is chosen at random? How would people pool block mining? How can you tell whether you'll be the one to generate a block? How can you tell if you even have enough money to generate a block? Or is the hypothetical system totally ignoring the concept of blocks to secure transactions, and is just paying everyone 1% or whatever for just having money?


The difference is that I have to go through the effort of taking my mining profits, and actually use it to buy new mining equipment. I also have to compete against others to set up the most efficient miner possible. Or I can let it mine at the same rate, and use the money on other things. And someone who isn't a miner can use their BTC to buy mining equipment and join the mining as well. With PoS, I get a new "miner" every time I get paid. It's automatic. You don't need to work for it, you don't need to compete, you just keep getting richer from simply being rich.



Again, this is assuming everyone mines. I'm not sure that can be the case. Who creates the blocks, whoever has the most at stake? Or is everyone just getting paid?

Oh, just thought of another major problem with PoS. Mining has two purposes: securing transactions, and distributing coins. Anyone who wants to make coins can buy mining equipment, and thus coin generation is available to anyone with money. PoS, on the other hand, only gives coins to those who already have them. That's not a very good method of distribution I don't think.

If you want to be absolutely safe, generate a public key from a private key using pencil and paper only, while hiding in a closet with a flashlight, and wearing a tinfoil hat. That's the only way to be sure.

Cunicula is honestly the only person I blatantly insult like this, and I only do it because that's what he often does to others. I have no problems with stooping down to other people's levels if I feel they deserve it.
PoW separates the functions of saving/spending and mining, while PoS makes them one and the same. Mining returns are just as predictable in a PoW system as they are in a PoS system, but I'm not sure how you believe PoS is more fair. With PoW, you put in more of your own money, you earn more from mining. With PoS, you concentrate your wealth, and the wealth gets concentrated with you even more. PoW allows anyone to buy a small mining device and try their luck at mining, while PoS concentrates mining power among the most wealthy, and makes them even wealthier simply for being the most wealthy. It's about as fair as a tax system that makes everyone who is poor or middle class pay taxes, while giving money to the richest few just for being rich.

Would be cool if they tested the quality of their mini rig packaging by using it to mail those two to their office.

Nope. My argument is based on you being a rude asshole who thinks your specific flavor of Keynesian economic theory is the only correct one, and your belief that anyone who questions it must be an idiot not even worth talking to. That's pretty much been your entire argument on the whole forum. So my entire counter-argument to you will always be, "No, you're the idiot *sticks out tongue*."
Other than that, I honestly can't imagine getting anything substantial or informative out of you. Debate is give and take, point and counterpoint, where each side considers the merits of the other side before refuting them. It's a skill you sadly lack. Either that, or you're trolling.

When you said:


I was going to reply with, "Are you serious?!" and quote this


But now that I know that you apparently are only interested in abstract concepts, instead of real concrete ones, that explains everything about your weird posts. It even (almost) explains you promoting the 1% savings reward, and saying things like even though this reward will make a $100 TV cost $99 a year later, that deflation isn't a bad thing, which is really weird coming from Mr. "Krugman is tired of trying to reason blahblahblah" Keynesian like you.

Dafuc?? Saving in PoW requires a conscious decision to not spend your savings. That's it!

Yes, PoS incentivizes saving, or hoarding, or whatever, but doesn't that also mean it will icentivise a deflationary spiral? Or will the 1% you make by saving be counteracted by 3% you lose on spending as in your OP? And wouldn't that 3% fee plus 1% saving reward mean that no one will want to spend their money any more ever?

What I was describing was essentially a Proof-of-Stake system, where the blocks you mine and the fees you collect are themselves an increase in your stake, and thus as if you are mining for more mining equipment. It really is a piece of shit system.

^^^ Installs Armory, fixes problem 

I have an AWESOME idea for how to improve a Proof-of-Work system:

Instead of getting a 25BTC block reward, have everyone who mines a block automatically receive a small mining ASIC instead. Also, make it so that no one can receive ASICs other than through block mining. Want to increase your hashing power and get more mining hardware? Mining a block is your only way. The best feature is that if you manage to get 51% control and process a majority of blocks, you can improve your hashing rate, and control more and more of the blockchain, just by continuing to mine, since you will keep getting more and more mining hardware just by mining blocks. And the great thing is that no one can take control from you, since the only way to get ASICs is by mining blocks, which is something you can do at a way higher rate than anyone else; a rate that only keeps increasing. If you wait long enough, you can even get to control 99% of the blockchain, pretty much by default, and if you want some money, just sell some of your ASICs.

What do you think? In a system like that, it would be fairly easy for someone to get control and then hold on to it and become rich.

I fully expect they will want #2, like with drugs, bittorrent, and illegal websites, and I fully expect they will get #3, like with drugs, bittorrent, and illegal websites.

I'm assuming it hasn't changed from showing off the first prototype at an expo in January, with production to follow?

It will not be instantly worthless. As I keep saying, it will be exactly like the centralized currency of a Federal Reserve, and thus a currency in decline. The driving incentive will be to squeeze and steal as much value out of an economy using your 51% controlling stake, until something comes along to replace you. You can make way more by controlling the currency and squeezing the remaining 49% out of the economy, than by selling 2% of it. And if you don't do it, someone else will. That's the endgame in that system.

Would you willingly give up complete control of a currency? (Especially in exchange for currency you already control anyway) Would any rational sane person?
(I'm assuming by "enough money" you mean some other commodity, since you giving me 100PoScoins for 100 of my PoScoins is a wash)

I wouldn't use a system that is under 51% attack regardless of whether it's PoS or PoW. As I said earlier, such a system would be no different than the current fiat system, where the Federal Reserve has the biggest stake, and most control.
I see where your issue is. You believe that holding 51% of all the currency in a PoS system will somehow incentivize the stakeholder to protect the value of that 51%. There are two issues with that belief.

First, that 51% is unspendable, since spending any of it would mean you lose your 51% control. Thus, it's worthless as actual money, and is only worth anything as a single "key" to control the currency. As such, you can't value it as "I own $11mil coins." You can only value it as "I own a single bundle that let's me control the economy." The value of that bundle is thus completely different from the value of the coins it contains, and thus may not be affected by the overall economy the way you'd expect.

The second issue stems from the first, which is that, since your controlling stake has a wholly separate value from the rest of the coins you use, a controlling entity is really not restricted to trying to grow the value of its stake the way we would hope or expect. As long as they control their 51%, they are free to manipulate the currency, and implement any rules they want, even if the result is short term profits at the expense of the value of the entire currency falling. E.g. they could increase their non-controlling portion of coin ownership from 50 coins to 100 coins, while decreasing the value of the whole economy to 75%, and still make a 50% profit (50*2*75%), since, again, their 51% controlling bundle is not spendable, and thus does not care what each coin is worth. In short, they can keep deflating the value of the currency, as long as they concentrate more and more remaining wealth in their own hands, without worrying about their 51% stake.

Those two issues are much bigger problems for PoS than PoW, because of what I said earlier: if someone gets 51% in a PoS, everyone is hosed. If someone gets 51% in a PoW, everyone can fire up their GPUs and buy more hardware, and at least have a chance of stopping the problem.

How does cognitive dissonance apply to a distributed computing project? Better yet, how is a distributed computer incompetent? I think you're missapplying that favorite insult of yours to an inanimate system.

Not exactly. POWork control is externalized, POStake is internalized. If you have a majority of currency in POStake, no one can do anything unless you sell them some of your currency. If you have a majority in POWork, anyone can buy hardware to try to take some of your power away. It's the difference between the Federal Reserve being the only one who can coin money (POStake), and anyone with enough resources being able to buy their own money printing presses (POWork).
You know what, never mind. I doubt the subtlety is evident to you.

OK, step-by-step then:

Proof-of-work means whoever has the most work-producing hardware, decides what kind of transactions get approved, makes the most on fees, and if they get considerably more than 51% of the network, can control the rules of the currency, such as what fee everyone should pay, and maybe even who should get the money and what limits on the total amount of currency exist.
Proof-of-stake means whoever owns the most currency (has the highest stake) has all the power the 51%+ proof-of-work person above has.

Should someone get 51%+ in a proof-of-stake system, they will be able to control what kind of transactions get approved, who gets paid and how much, what kind of fees are paid on transactions, and how much currency can be printed, inflating and deflating it at will.
A Federal Reserve bank has a defacto proof-of-stake granted to it by law, which gives it the power to control what kind of transactions get approved, who gets paid and how much, what kind of fees are paid on transactions, and how much currency can be printed, inflating and deflating it at will.

Aside from having to establish proof-of-stake control by actually acquiring the currency (or starting your own blockchain where you have most of the currency to begin with), as opposed to just taking control through legal means, I don't see a difference. Especially since in the end, both systems end up with a single entity controlling a single centralized ledger that they have complete control over.

Sorry, but that's the most I can dumb it down for you.