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General Discussion / Re: My friends, gather closely.
« on: July 18, 2014, 04:32:18 am »QuoteIn order to grow, business owners typically hold strong to their shares as much as possible and pump the services, capabilities and products of their business.
If crypto "currency" were actually valuable because of the service it performs, then we wouldn't need to give away ownership.
The mining subsidy of bitcoin isn't directly felt due to the non-linear increase in demand versus the rather linear increase in supply. Combined with the enormous network effect, you have a problem that consumers will typically stay with the sub-optimal standard. Asking people to migrate to a better standard when the old one is still making them money and sufficient for the needs of value transactions is a tough nut to crack. One can say hey we are better for the following reasons (I think apple did it best ->https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNnX6XRQBec), but ultimately, consumers are lazy.
Getting people to do something new usually requires a hook of some kind. With proof of stake, you have to premine the supply. So why not just distribute amongst a basket of currencies and use it as a hook? If the coin starts to get market value, then people have a stake in protecting it and will naturally become surrogates. The keys are properly engineering the basket, the value bootstrap and consistent release cycles. The Nxt team got two of the three right, but succumbed to greed for the distribution. Ironically, if they had simply given the coin away via a snapshot distribution and bought up cheap coins during the initial launch, then they probably would have had similarly sized stakes without any fairness fallout. This action would have also created the perception of demand for Nxt, combined with clever marketing, could have made it a legitimate contender to replace bitcoin (and why not, roger will still have a lot of Nxt).
The whole thing really just seems like a wasted opportunity to me.
I have yet to come up with a reply towards mr. Hoskinson's sharp observations. I'd like to point out however, that a community that is still fapping to Gisele Bundchen in an Apple commercial is a long way from attaining public acceptance.