I'm not having any illusions that this won't cause a torrent of controversy. That's not necessarily a bad thing. The prospect of an "attack" is what will make bitcoiners wake up to the fact that if they want to keep satoshis blockchain and currency alive, it MUST be upgraded. We simply cannot allow it to die. I think the people who are in this for the ideals rather than the profits will eventually come to understand why it is important.
Rune, why are you trying to do this? How would this possibly benefit the BTS community in any way?
It's about upgrading bitcoin and ensuring its long term survival. Coins will be sharedropped on BTS owners to fulfill the social contract, but it's not being done for our sake specifically, it's for the sake of the entire blockchain industry.
First of all it wont work. Second of all it will put Bitshares on the permanent blacklist by Bitcoin power brokers.
It's not worth it. It's better to work with rather than against Bitcoin at this time. They have the market cap and like it or not the entire industry rides on the success of Bitcoin. They might not have the greatest technology but they will be the first crypto everyone hears about rather than the last.
It sounds crazy, but it will work. Worst case scenario bitcoin sees massive volatility and the miner bribes have to be increased. Whatever the price, it will still be worth it in the long run if the result sees bitcoin being put on a sustainable long term trajectory.
This idea is madness. How much money do you think the bitcoin miners have invested in their warehouses of liquid-cooled, custom built racks of ASIC mining equipment, which are specifically designed to solve SHA256 hashes?
You seriously expect 51% of the mining power, with all that investment to all simultaneously agree to throw their existing tried and tested business model, equipment and infrastructure away on the promise of some untried, untested idea?
It's as simple as paying 51% of them more than their current expected return. Using incentive structures that abuse the tragedy of the commons inherent in POW mining can reduce the price even further. Since the incentives are vested and conditional on the upgrade taking effect, they can be freely increased to whatever level is required to convince miners to support it. In the end, whatever the price ends up becoming, it will be worth it because the alternative is bitcoin simply dying a slow death. Also in the long run it will prevent another 7 million BTC created out of wasteful inflation, so there's a lot to pay with.
I prefer a stealth attack where BitBTC poses as friend, starts getting used interchangeably with Bitcoin, and slowly captures part of the marketcap (channeling it into BTS).
I don't think this strategy will work, because bitcoin true believers are good at identifying things that will result in the longterm irrelevance of bitcoin. They consider the bitcoin blockchain and the bitcoin moniker culturally significant, and anything working to undermine that is rejected for reasons that have nothing to do with economics. Upgrading bitcoin will ensure that these important symbols are preserved when the inevitable migration to next generation blockchain technology happens, and will overall make the transition significantly faster.