Four questions:
1) Some people are reading these posts thinking proof of stake is some crazy, amazing thing now, but there's a few issues. The coin you were working with was in a low market cap, utilizing a coin many people probably thought was abandoned. This, as you alluded to, made it so the minting model on the coin seemed to work exceptionally well at the start, and the mere creation of this single thread caused an already noticeable drop in efficiency?
2) Can this test be redone again to see how much capital is needed to live off beef jerky acquired solely from the stake now that the market forces have normalized on stake difficulty?
3) Was this a front running/dump campaign?
4) Will the market even accept coins in the long term where people can arbitrarily set crazy interest rates that may or may not be used depending on how liquid people wish to keep their money? A corporation could just corner the market on some stake coin years from now, require you to pay for their services in AT&T coins, then payoff whoever is running the thing to issue an "emergency maintenance" fork to raise interest rates higher. The idea of these stake coins existing in that context is absurd and wide open for abuse, while PoW is not. As time goes by, I think more people are going to see these proof of stake coins don't pass the Occam's Razor test, and that you cant just let some random guy off the street design weapons of financial terrorism.
I will try to answer some of your questions.
2) The test can be done again, but future results vary. Although HBN is designed to give 100% interest annually, the network will reduce the returns if the diff is too low. So it may be that in a calender year, I might only get 80%, 50%, or even 30% returns through PoS mining.
3) No it is not a front running/pump/dump scheme. I started this journal for a few reasons. They include to maintain discipline, be accountable and learn from my mistakes. I came to learn about HBN through the work that Tranz did in helping ADT. Once I did my research, I was convinced that HBN would be a good investment.
Prior to me starting my journal, I held zero HBN.
4) PoS can be used as a financial weapon. If you look at HBN from another angle, its pretty much a High-Yield Investment Program. The best thing about it is that the parameters set at launch determine the supply and the market determines the price. You don't need new investors to pay out old investors, this is how ponzi schemes work. HBN pays you out through PoS mining to secure the network. The difference though, is that HBN is capped at 100 million coins, which will take years for us to hit. Also, as the amount of coins grows, this introduces liquidity into the market from people wanting to cash out. This also brings in buyers who want to mimic what previous sellers have done, which is buy the coin, stake profits and then exit the trade. its a steady cycle which should ensure HBN experiences steady growth for years to come. I am pretty sure the demand for HBN will be there.
If Goldman Sachs came out today and announced a Scrypt-based "digital bond" paying out 100% annually, they would create a billion dollar market overnight. You would get every heavy hitter dumping money into that bond just for a chance to double up.