There are a lot of things the market will do to shift resources around.  The one thing the market cannot do though is make those newly mined shares mature faster than 6 months.  As a result the demand for mining power will be limited to those willing to risk 6 months of carrying costs.

Someone who doesn't want to mine directly can 'hire it out' to a pool, the pool employees will be paid immediately, but the true miner is the person who ends up holding until maturity.    The profits from mining in a pool will therefore be discounted by the time-value of money.   

This creates a new class of owner... those committed to holding the currency for 6 months.   This means that the difficulty would be a good proxy for the long-term interest in the currency rather than short-term pump and dump mining.

This actually sounds a lot like a bond. In exchange for some CPU time, you get a certain number of Bitshares that will mature in 6 months, so you have to trust that those bitshares will actually be worth something, or that the bitshares DAC will still be a functioning corporation, in 6 months

Ey! This gave me a better idea! 

Why don't you use signed mining?
I mean: to be a miner, you must be aproved by Invictus and recive a key to be able to mine, and any client which tries to mine without being signed cannot find a block. You can also impose limits on the amount one miner can mine.
Then, after the 6 months period, you just release a new version which removes the signing requirement.
You can even sell a license to mine, but please make it cheap.

I don't exactly know how this could be implemented, but I'm sure you can think ways.

I feel like requiring a centrally issued signature to mine goes against the purpose of a decentralized currency. You should keep it open to the public, and keep entry barriers low for people that want to solo-mine. The difficult part is to make entry barriers high for people who want to cloud-mine

I tried to withdraw about 20.9 PTS earlier, and they haven't shown up in my wallet yet, is there an issue with withdrawals currently?
username: cyborgphionex@gmail.com
sent to: Pg5EhSZEXHFjdFUzpxJbm91UtA54iUuDvt

Quote from: phoenix on November 20, 2013, 08:53:56 pm

Quote from: Riverhead on November 20, 2013, 08:48:24 pm

Second question...which is more about the nature of ProtoShares: If I import my PTS privkey into the PowerBall DAC wallet have I "spent" by PTS or just gained access to a clone of them in the form of Powerball DAC shares leaving me free to also import my PTS privkey into the next DAC and the next one and the next one and....?

The great thing about PTS is that you get shares in every DAC that honors the PTS contract! You don't lose them, you just get shares in the new DACs that are released, and then you keep your PTS!

Maybe I'll start buying some up  .  Given the potential they seem dirt cheap right now.

I completely agree, they're worth so much more than they're trading for right now

Quote from: Stan on November 20, 2013, 08:22:27 pm

PowerBall, DAC is a lottery within a lottery.

We are using it to test out concepts for lottery-based mining by implementing an Unmanned Lottery Company whose lottery tickets are PowerShares themselves.

And ProtoShare holders start out with a matching set of PowerShares as a share in the DAC and a share in the recurring chances to win - thereby demonstrating to one and all how ProtoShares will actually work.

Absolutely poetic!

 

As a holder of ProtoShares do I automatically get a piece of the action of the Powerball DAC with no action required?  If this is the case than I'm starting to understand the value of being a PTS owner.

Once someone wins and the DAC pays out its shareholders their cut how would that payment look?  Would I need a separate wallet for PowerShares or would I receive an amount of PTS to my existing wallet/address?

My understanding is that you would download the Powerball DAC wallet, and then you import your PTS wallet data into it, and you get your Powerball shares. Then, you do indeed get the dividends from people winning the lottery, but you get them in Powerball shares. It's up to you to decide whether to keep them for a better chance of winning and more dividends, or to sell them for BTC/PTS

Quote from: phoenix on November 20, 2013, 07:48:35 pm

Quote from: Stan on November 20, 2013, 07:15:14 pm

Quote from: phoenix on November 20, 2013, 02:47:10 pm

This is a great idea, but it hinges very heavily on the coins having a practical use. Any ideas what that could be?
Edit: Also, the idea of the pot payout depending on the coins already at the address is a great idea to help encourage adoption among people trying to mine the coin, but not among people looking for a use for the coin

Well, if it were a real corporation, the corporation would keep half of the proceeds for itself and award the other half in some structured array of big and little prizes.  It would then pay out those profits to its shareholders. That would be one reason to hold the shares - as a simple investor in a for-profit enterprise.

So, if like any DAC you could either mine or buy your lottery tickets, er, I mean, PowerShares.  This implies that perhaps PowerShareholders should have a chance to win too.  Then there would two reasons to buy PowerShares:

• As a currency for playing the lottery
• As stock in the business that runs the lottery

There could also be two reasons for only little guys to mine:

• To earn a steady paycheck in PowerShares useful for either of the above reasons
• To have a chance to win an "employee jackpot" useful for either of the above reasons

Do I sell my winnings or double down by holding them for a chance to win bigger?

So by holding onto my powershares, I can earn dividends from the lottery rewards, or I could sell them to make money immediately.

... and be eligible for the ticketholder, er, shareholder jackpot as well.

Is the shareholder jackpot separate from the miners jackpot?

I do like the idea of the lottery to decentralize mining, I just think it'll be very hard to figure out exactly how to tune the lottery so that cloud mining and botnets aren't attracted, but the individual user is. After all, there are people who spend insane amounts of money on the lottery just for the chance of winning, so there may still be individuals that are willing to spend money on cloud mining even if it turns out to be unprofitable.