> So you're just arguing that a notary is different to a miner, without spelling out exactly why.

I'm afraid I still don't understand why you think notaries would build long term businesses but miners wouldn't, in this model.

I think you are saying because notaries have identity, brand awareness and because they have big up front bonds, that means they will be trustworthy.

Well, sure. It's the same model governments use and is why being a money transmitter in the USA is so difficult: you need to put up large sums of money as collateral and have your fingerprints taken 48 times. Then you can start advertising to get customers!

The reason mining is such a nice model is it doesn't have these sorts of requirements.

As notaries can be small operations ..... [snip] ...... (almost every large organization in the world have some unallocated funds somewhere).

Which is it? Are notaries small operations or large operations? 

I think exploring new consensus models with semi-trusted notaries is interesting, but it's not Bitcoin.

Depending on that which isn't guaranteed is baaaad, and breaking other people's assumptions is by itself NOT an attack if there never was a guarantee or even as little as an implicit understanding it is safe.

Please don't try and apply this logic in the real world :( Rephrased:

"That's a nice house. I noticed it's made of wood. I'm going to start fires until it burns down, because there is no guarantee your house won't burn down in future and it's important you understand that wooden houses aren't safe. Really I'm just doing you a favour."

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for what you're doing - please do continue to research and explore alternative trust configurations! This is helpful and useful work. Perhaps we will find something that solves the burger problem in a way that satisfies everyone.

I'm really not a fan of Peter's approach, which is "hey let's try and cause as many problems as possible to try and prove a point, without having created any solutions". Replace-by-fee-scorched-earth doesn't work and isn't a solution. Miners can easily cut payment fraudsters in on the stolen money, and as they'd need to distribute custom double-spending wallets to make the scheme work it'd be very easy to do.

Your also ssume people will expect the Bitcoin network to keep zero-conf safe forever and that Bitcoin valuation is tied to that. Given the options available and current state of things, I'm assuming that's wrong.

Why? You think ability to make payments in a few seconds is some irrelevant curiousity?

Let's put it this way. If BitPay's business model evaporates tomorrow, along with all the merchants they support, do you think that'd have any effect on Bitcoin's value? If not, why not?