Annual 10% bitcoin dividends if mining were Proof-of-Stake

[LeChatNoir]

Yes. I see. So this brings us to the problem of how to create the monetary base then?

- Loan it into existence (current fiat banking system). Most evil and insidious way that indebts and consequently enslaves most everyone.
- Create it out of thin air and give to the early adopters/whoever (premine). Unfair, uneconomical and does not work in practice.
- Mine it, with each unit of currency created against an equal value of real resources wasted (Bitcoin).

Creating a bitcoin spin-off is unethical because you are giving away most of the value to the already rich bitcoin early adopters and the majority of them will surely dump their stake in the early stages and they can kill the project.
Creating entire money supply out of thin air and give to the early adopters is ok but i think the best solution would be to launch an Etherum style IPO to raise money for developing and promoting the project.
I think that only those who believe in the project and those who develop it deserve to become early adopters. Why do you want to give a stake to someone who doesn't give a shit about PoS?

And before talking about the distribution i think it is better if we find a way to achieve consensus using PoS which is the real big issue.

[rpietila]

Yes. I see. So this brings us to the problem of how to create the monetary base then?

- Loan it into existence (current fiat banking system). Most evil and insidious way that indebts and consequently enslaves most everyone.
- Create it out of thin air and give to the early adopters/whoever (premine). Unfair, uneconomical and does not work in practice.
- Mine it, with each unit of currency created against an equal value of real resources wasted (Bitcoin).

Creating a bitcoin spin-off is unethical because you are giving away most of the value to the already rich bitcoin early adopters.
Creating entire money supply out of thin air and give to the early adopters is ok but i think the best solution would be to launch an Etherum style IPO to raise money for developing and promoting the project.

Shares are not currency. (Oh my. In the "ancient times" 100 years ago a banker would need to know the difference between a mortgage and a real bill, since the former was not currency but the latter was. Now people are in all seriousness propagating shares as currency  )

[rpietila]

Is there a thread where we could talk about the interesting concepts of distributing the currency (assuming that the network security is a non-issue)? For example:

Satoshi gets 100,000 units of the new currency. Everybody that applies for his share after him gets an ever-declining amount. No new currency creation, only way to amass it is to buy in open market.


The idea of IPO or one-week premine just does not fly, because nobody would have the incentive to join the system where random blokes own all the money and others have to buy it from them. Bitcoin's mining schedule is pretty much perfect in this sense.

[LeChatNoir]

Yes. I see. So this brings us to the problem of how to create the monetary base then?

- Loan it into existence (current fiat banking system). Most evil and insidious way that indebts and consequently enslaves most everyone.
- Create it out of thin air and give to the early adopters/whoever (premine). Unfair, uneconomical and does not work in practice.
- Mine it, with each unit of currency created against an equal value of real resources wasted (Bitcoin).

-Airdrop it to current BTC holders

(Peter R's spinoff proposition, which is awesome imho).

This is a very bad idea why rewarding Bitcoin early adopters even more? And i'm sure most of them don't give a shit about this project and they will rush for dumping their Bitcoin PoS as soon as they can.

[LeChatNoir]

Yes. I see. So this brings us to the problem of how to create the monetary base then?

- Loan it into existence (current fiat banking system). Most evil and insidious way that indebts and consequently enslaves most everyone.
- Create it out of thin air and give to the early adopters/whoever (premine). Unfair, uneconomical and does not work in practice.
- Mine it, with each unit of currency created against an equal value of real resources wasted (Bitcoin).

Creating a bitcoin spin-off is unethical because you are giving away most of the value to the already rich bitcoin early adopters.
Creating entire money supply out of thin air and give to the early adopters is ok but i think the best solution would be to launch an Etherum style IPO to raise money for developing and promoting the project.

Shares are not currency. (Oh my. In the "ancient times" 100 years ago a banker would need to know the difference between a mortgage and a real bill, since the former was not currency but the latter was. Now people are in all seriousness propagating shares as currency  )

I don't know what you are talking about. I propose to do an IPO for initial distribution and you tell me that i don't know the difference between shares and currency, are you drunk?

[rpietila]

I don't know what you are talking about. I propose to do an IPO for initial distribution and you tell me that i don't know the difference between shares and currency, are you drunk?

Quoted for lulz. I think I need to put this to my sig 

[LeChatNoir]

The idea of IPO or one-week premine just does not fly, because nobody would have the incentive to join the system where random blokes own all the money and others have to buy it from them. Bitcoin's mining schedule is pretty much perfect in this sense.

What incentive had someone to buy Apple shares at 30$ considering that random blokes owned all the company at the time?
If the system is well promoted and well developed, and it is safe and resilient and works perfectly without wasting resources people will buy it even if 3 days after launch its market cap is 100M$.

[BldSwtTrs]

Shares are not currency.

Currency is the most marketable good. Shares can be currency if marketable enough.

And a share almost instantanely and freely exchangable anywhere in the world thanks to a P2P network is damn marketable. We can even assume a bitcoin is a share in a non-profitable corporation (ie. which pays no dividends).

[LeChatNoir]

Shares are not currency.

Currency is the most marketable good. Shares can be currency if marketable enough.

And a share almost instantanely and freely exchangable anywhere in the world thanks to a P2P network is damn marketable. We can even assume a bitcoin is a share in a non-profitable corporation (ie. who pays no dividends).

I agree 100% with you on this but he will probably laugh at you because a sheep is not a dog after all.

[wachtwoord]

Yes. I see. So this brings us to the problem of how to create the monetary base then?

- Loan it into existence (current fiat banking system). Most evil and insidious way that indebts and consequently enslaves most everyone.
- Create it out of thin air and give to the early adopters/whoever (premine). Unfair, uneconomical and does not work in practice.
- Mine it, with each unit of currency created against an equal value of real resources wasted (Bitcoin).

-Airdrop it to current BTC holders

(Peter R's spinoff proposition, which is awesome imho).

This is a very bad idea why rewarding Bitcoin early adopters even more? And i'm sure most of them don't give a shit about this project and they will rush for dumping their Bitcoin PoS as soon as they can.

Because the current distribution of Bitcoin is a much better distribution of currency than any of the other proposals. Whether it's deserved or not is not relevant in the slightest.

[Adrian-x]

Yes. I see. So this brings us to the problem of how to create the monetary base then?

- Loan it into existence (current fiat banking system). Most evil and insidious way that indebts and consequently enslaves most everyone.
- Create it out of thin air and give to the early adopters/whoever (premine). Unfair, uneconomical and does not work in practice.
- Mine it, with each unit of currency created against an equal value of real resources wasted (Bitcoin).

Creating a bitcoin spin-off is unethical because you are giving away most of the value to the already rich bitcoin early adopters.
Creating entire money supply out of thin air and give to the early adopters is ok but i think the best solution would be to launch an Etherum style IPO to raise money for developing and promoting the project.

Shares are not currency. (Oh my. In the "ancient times" 100 years ago a banker would need to know the difference between a mortgage and a real bill, since the former was not currency but the latter was. Now people are in all seriousness propagating shares as currency  )

I don't know what you are talking about. I propose to do an IPO for initial distribution and you tell me that i don't know the difference between shares and currency, are you drunk?

Hang out here a little longer and you see the problem with the IPO has been discussed, the premises is Bitcoin distribution is unfair so an IPO would be fair except it's unfair for those who didn't here about the IPO

[mgburks77]

Is there a thread where we could talk about the interesting concepts of distributing the currency (assuming that the network security is a non-issue)? For example:

Satoshi gets 100,000 units of the new currency. Everybody that applies for his share after him gets an ever-declining amount. No new currency creation, only way to amass it is to buy in open market.


The idea of IPO or one-week premine just does not fly, because nobody would have the incentive to join the system where random blokes own all the money and others have to buy it from them. Bitcoin's mining schedule is pretty much perfect in this sense.

Have 100% premine and then sell the entire supply at 1 satoshi per coin until the initial supply is fully distributed. Then give proceeds to charity or something.

[Brangdon]

If SlipperySlope succeeds in releasing his PoS spin-off with pre-mine proportional to the bitcoin unspent outputs, and if he has agreements in place with various crypto-exchanges prior to launch, and if the launch is well-advertised, what will happen?

All bitcoin users will instantly be awarded an equal number of bitshares.  On the exchanges, bitshares will trade directly against bitcoins.  If you have 10 BTC in your Cryptsy account, Cryptsy could credit you instantly with 10 BTS for free.  That's what PoS is: shares created without any work requirement.

No, getting the coins for free happens because of the spin-off idea of basing the initial distribution of coins on a snap-shot of the Bitcoin block chain. Any altcoin that uses spin-off will give free coins, even if it uses PoW.

Similarly, the altcoins that have an initial allocation based on, eg, Icelandic or Scottish citizenship also give free coins, and again it has nothing to do with whether the currency is based on PoS or PoW. The initial distribution has to come from somewhere. It's always going to be controversial.

[Brangdon]

SlipperySlope reported in his PoS alt-coin development thread that a bitcoin core dev said this:

The problems to address as viewed by a member of the developers email list . . .

The problem with proof of stake is essentially that there is no cost to
creating a proof-of-stake.

...

The problem is what wrecked Peercoin, which I understand is now
centralized (all blocks are signed by the developers to be valid). ]

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this information, but it sounds like the fact that shares are free to create caused a problem that forced Peercoin to become centralized around the developers who sign each block to be valid.  So in essence, these developers are the "Central Bank of Peercoin."

This is referring to a rather technical problem with PoS. The basis of PoS is that mining a block be expensive, with the cost in coin-days. The problem is that they only pay that cost if their mining attempt is successful, because the transaction that takes away their coin-days is effectively part of the block they mined. This means it is free to mine blocks that aren't included in the block-chain. So a rational miner would mine new blocks for the longest chain, but also mine blocks for shorter chains in the faint hope that the shorter chain somehow becomes the longest and that the miner gets some advantage when it does. And this in turn means that there are a lot of long forks floating around, and the system isn't doing a very good job of establishing consensus.

It's a big problem with PoS, that needs to be solved or else the system isn't viable. However, it's not accurate to say that "shares are free to create". They are only free if they aren't actually created.

[Brangdon]

You are not making any sense. In your model, there is no work that the "PoS" does.

The PoS does require some work to validate transactions; it's just a lot less work without the proof of work requirement. So forgers (what NXT calls the validators; it doesn't like to use the word "miners") still need a reward, but it can be a much lower one.

So all coin creation serves only to inflate the value of all coins.

Coin creation devalues existing coins through inflation whatever the system. Arguably, PoW requires more inflation because the miners are doing more work and so need higher rewards than mere transaction fees can give them (at least while the currency is young, transaction volumes are low and the capital value is low).

Is there anyone in the thread who knows what he is talking or do I have to conclude that all "PoS" is smoke and mirrors?

Part of the problem is that there are multiple PoS systems. I, for example, know NXT somewhat better than I know PeerCoin. I get the impression people are assuming features of one coin or another are inherent to PoS, even if they aren't.

And I'm very far from an expert on NXT. I hope you don't conclude that all PoS is smoke and mirrors just because people in one thread aren't expert.

[raskul]

here is the newest PoS altcoin

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583591

and only 24hours after launch, exchange volume:

https://www.scifi-ex.com/#/trade/exchange/39

people want fun, not serious clones of bitcoin

[rpietila]

Arguably, PoW requires more inflation because the miners are doing more work and so need higher rewards than mere transaction fees can give them (at least while the currency is young, transaction volumes are low and the capital value is low).

With Bitcoin, the "inflation" has not prevented the coin purchasing power from rising a lot. In this context I cannot see how inflation has been bad.

[Brangdon]

I don't get why people are so prompt to make the analogy PoS=Fiat. In fiat people who vote (Central bankers) have divergent interest with fiat holders, they have no skin in the game. Whereas with PoS the interest of the decision makers are the same than the interest of holders.

Correct.  It is like a popular democracy where shares (money) can be created and destroyed based on popular opinion.  For example, SlipperySlope has a tricky decision to make: should he credit Satoshi with his estimated 1,000,000 shares and risk a dump of 8% of the outstanding bitshares?  Or should he redistribute them more "fairly"?

This question concerns the initial distribution of coins; it's not the same as bankers making deciding how much money to print on a day-to-day basis. It's a one-off choice.

As an aside, I don't think it's right to pick on Satoshi but I do think there's an argument for basing the initial distribution on the unspent transaction outputs in the Bitcoin block-chain that are, say, less than 2 years old. The main reason being, you want the new coins to be held by people who are reasonably active in the Bitcoin community, in the hope that they will also be active in the new altcoin community. Satoshi would be excluded, not because he is too rich, but because he's too inactive. Arguably there is no need to reward the earliest adopters of Bitcoin because they are not early adopters of the altcoin. You would advertise the snapshot date in advance, so that whales that were still active and monitoring the scene would be able to transfer their bitcoins to themselves to freshen their transaction dates before the snapshot.

And then perhaps it will become popular opinion that some whales have too many shares and it's unfair that the staking rewards flow in proportion to stake rather than work.

Rewarding stake is actually rewarding risk. Anyone holding large amounts of bitcoin when they could sell them, is risking the bitcoin price crashing and them losing a fortune. It shows they have faith in Bitcoin. That risk-taking and faith does deserve some reward, in my view.

Also, do you see what a leap it is from "whales are dangerous to our new currency because they could crash it by dumping their coins, so perhaps we should exclude them to reduce that danger", and "we should exclude whales because they don't deserve to be rich, because they didn't work for their money"? The first is pragmatic. The second is philosophical/moral; the politics of envy.

And then perhaps they will vote for some sort of progressive transfers of shares from these whales to projects for the betterment of humanity (the "greater good").

You keep making things up and ascribing them to your opponents.

[rpietila]

initial distribution on the unspent transaction outputs in the Bitcoin block-chain that are, say, less than 2 years old. The main reason being, you want the new coins to be held by people who are reasonably active in the Bitcoin community, in the hope that they will also be active in the new altcoin community. Satoshi would be excluded, not because he is too rich, but because he's too inactive. Arguably there is no need to reward the earliest adopters of Bitcoin because they are not early adopters of the altcoin. You would advertise the snapshot date in advance, so that whales that were still active and monitoring the scene would be able to transfer their bitcoins to themselves to freshen their transaction dates before the snapshot.

Considering that everyone has a right to make an altcoin and distribute to whomever he wishes, that is quite a reasonable proposal.

Also, do you see what a leap it is from "whales are dangerous to our new currency because they could crash it by dumping their coins, so perhaps we should exclude them to reduce that danger", and "we should exclude whales because they don't deserve to be rich, because they didn't work for their money"? The first is pragmatic. The second is philosophical/moral; the politics of envy.

Whales are important to the new currency because:
- they have the means to prop up the price during downturns
- they have access to marketing and project development
- they supply the coins to the market at times of popular demand
- they provide the overall backbone to the economy.

If I did not have loads of bitcoins, would I do all that I am doing to help it succeed (for free)? Hell no. If there was nobody in that position, bitcoin would be without leader and without rudder. (It is already enough )

[MatthewLM]

If people want PoS they should go use Peercoin or some other PoS coin. Bitcoin is bitcoin. It's a PoW coin and should stay that way. That's not to say people should favour bitcoin. By all means start using a PoS coin.