Ben Progress Blog - Googler

General
1

Here’s a great example from Bagog:

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Made a few comments, would appreciate it if you could like/approve/upvote them etc… Would also appreciate any criticism.

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www.scmp.com/lifestyle/technology/article/1351752/bitcoin-miners-find-it-increasingly-hard-make-money

First comment on article by user embracethesandwich

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www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-2013-11?pundits_only=0&comments_page=3#comment-527e4f3869beddfb5ea9d103

Comment by user Sam Bags

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www.technologyreview.com/view/521521/bitcoin-vulnerability-could-allow-malicious-miners-to-seize-control/#comments

Comment by user Samba

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www.zdnet.com/why-dollars-are-better-than-bitcoins-and-always-will-be-7000022986/

Comment by user Sam Bags

2

Here’s the note I sent to cryptothrift.com this morning, re: considering PPC as a transactional currency:

Good morning!

I wanted to reach out to your team to please request that you consider including Peercoin (PPC) as a supported transactional currency on cryptothrift.

As the third-largest crypto currency today, based on total market capitalization (currently $14,700,198 in 20,737,228 PPC units as of Nov. 14, 2013), there are definitely a number of people in the world who would love to be able to spend their PPC on items that are offered through cryptothrift.

As a fork of Bitcoin, Peercoin’s market is well-positioned to continue to grow in the coming months and years. Lately, as Peercoin’s per-unit value has neared parity with the USD, and as knowledge of crypto currency in general has started to reach the general population, the media has begun to report on it’s rise. For instance, Danny Bradbury of CoinDesk[1] calls Peercoin the “little alt-coin that could”, and highlights the fact that the Vault of Satoshi, a Canadian crypto exchange, has added PPC as it’s third traded currency, alongside BTC and LTC. The addition of the Vault of Satoshi will make it even easier for consumers to trade or buy PPC outright, increasing the available market.

Personally, as a holder of PPC, and as a supporter and member of the Peercoin community, I’m excited about the opportunities that it has, and look forward to finding places to use the coins to fund transactions. I’m positive that if cryptothrift makes PPC transactions possible, that the Peercoin community will work tirelessly to bring merchants and service providers on board.

If you have any questions at all about Peercoin, I’d be happy to discuss them with you. If you’d like to learn more about the currency, you can visit the primary site, http://www.ppcoin.org/, or, to learn more about the community at http://peercointalk.org.

Thank you for the consideration, and I look forward to a point in the near future, when I’ve just completed my first PPC transaction on cryptothrift!

Ben Rossi
b@PretendItsTheFuture.com
Bitmessage: BM-NBgq4X37ae9ggb1TDR1Ch4KL7jsBxQ38

[1] Bradbury, Danny. “Third largest cryptocurrency peercoin moves into spotlight with Vault of Satoshi deal“, CoinDesk, November 7, 2013, URL: http://www.coindesk.com/peercoin-vault-of-satoshi-deal/

3

This isn’t a Google’d link, but I noticed that CryptoCoinCharts didn’t list the Vault of Satoshi exchange yet. As VoS is one of Peercoin’s supporters, I feel it’s important to get it’s transactions listed on the crypto valuation sites, so others can see that PPC is a viable and traded currency.

Here’s the note I sent over to Christian Eisenberg (support @ btc-play.com), who runs CCC:

Good Morning, Mr. Eisenberg.

I’ve found CryptoCoinCharts to be very useful, and it’s a site that is almost always open in at least one browser tab on my machine, so many thanks to you and your team for putting it together. In fact, I’m considering picking up some of the available shares on the CryptoStocks exchange, because I’ve been so impressed.

I’m reaching out to you today to request that you consider including trade data from the Vault of Satoshi (https://www.vaultofsatoshi.com) on your site. As one of their users, I’ve been very impressed in the company’s level of service, along with their very usable interface. While they aren’t, yet, moving the volume of crypto as BTC-e or Mt.Gox, it is my understanding that they are larger than some of the other exchanges that are listed on CCC. Having their volume and exchange rates included with your dataset will, in my opinion, definitely increase the number of data points available to investors and currency holders, which in turn will help cement CCC as a premier source for crypto research.

Vault of Satoshi has enabled a public API (https://www.vaultofsatoshi.com/api), that should provide all of the hooks to their data that you would need. If there is a metric that you aren’t able to access that you would find useful, I’m certain, based on my interaction with their team in the past, that they would consider adding it.

To be clear, I’m not an agent or representative of VoS, in any capacity, other than as a user of the site and as someone who is interested in seeing crypto currencies gain wider adoption. Thank you for the consideration, and if you have any questions at all, please feel free to reach out to me.

Have a nice day!

–
Ben Rossi
b@PretendItsTheFuture.com

Bitmessage: BM-NBgq4X37ae9ggb1TDR1Ch4KL7jsBxQ38

and here was his response:

hello ben,

thank you for your email and visiting my website!
adding vauld of satoshi is already on my todo list but i have a lot of
things on it. so it may take some days till i can implement their API.
it will definitely happen. just cant say when. its looking very promising.

regards
chris

4

Jordan Wathen for The Motley Fool, “Is Bitcoin Really Going to $1 Million?”, November 16, 2013. URL: Is Bitcoin Really Going to $1 Million? | The Motley Fool

Overview:
How high will the pricing of a single BTC go, given that the current market size is still low, plus the possibility that institutional investors could get into the game in sufficient enough numbers to boost the price significantly.

My comment, addressing other reasons not mentioned in the article for why BTC and PPC are different than fiat:

Two elements that people tend to overlook when considering what a single unit of crypto currency (e.g. Bitcoin, Peercoin or Litecoin) could be worth is that they are:

  1. They are likely to be the most fungible currencies ever created. The ability to set the valuation of a good to 0.00000001 of a BTC or PPC is extremely powerful. Being able to buy a pack of gum as easily as you could a condo overlooking Central Park, out of the same “wallet” brings a convenience to money that is very difficult to replicate without bringing out the credit card (assuming you’ve got a credit card that can handle a $14.0M balance).

  2. Scarcity. There’s a cap to the number of Bitcoins that can exist. This scarcity, when paired with fungibility means that the “top” of what a BTC or PPC could be worth is not limited, as long as it gradually gains larger adoption.

The primary concern I have about Bitcoin’s long-term health is that over time the energy requirements required to continue to validate transactions in the network become extremely high. Peercoin, on the other hand, was designed to account for this, from its inception, and therefore, can bring the benefits of Bitcoin to the world, without the considerable overhead.

In any case, crypto currencies are here to stay. The ability to quickly process transactions, over the Internet, with a form of currency that is border-less and for-all-intents, private, is too powerful a concept to forget about.

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Joe Weisenthal for Business Insider, “Bitcoin Just Waterfalled”, November 20, 2013. URL: http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-crashes-more-2013-11?pundits_only=0&get_all_comments=1&no_reply_filter=1#comment-528d3226eab8ea9263076bff

Overview:
Bitcoin’s recent market price instability

My comment addressed another commenter’s argument that Bitcoin is inherently unstable because it requires human intervention through miners to secure the network.

3) Mining is the antithesis to a stable currency. Why should someone with a mining rig be allowed to generate anything? that does not promote stability both from a technical or psychological standpoint.

My response:

I like Bitcoin, and feel that it will have a place in our economy going forward. But I also agree with your #3 concern, that stability will only be assured when the network itself is the guarantor, rather than relying on the whims of miners.

Long-term, I’m looking at Peercoin (PPC) to be the answer - http://www.ppcoin.org. It is the first known implementation of a combined Proof of Stake/Proof of Work system. Rather than rely on miners to continue to be motivated to secure the network, Peercoin’s Proof of Stake system uses the coins that are already in use to generate proof of stake blocks, without the overhead and selfish-concerns of miners.

Peercoin is more energy efficient than the alternatives (a good thing, for the planet) and it places money production in the hands of currency holders, not mining cabals.

I need to get an account set up over there, because I can see it being a place I’ll post to often.

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[ul]Tasks in Progress:

[list]
[li]Refine Proof-of-Stake visual model based on input from the community[/li]
[li]Send follow-up message to Max Keiser, re: Peercoin[/li]
[li]Modify Peercoin client code to remove remaining interface mentions of “Bitcoin”, and make sure all mentions of Peercoin refer to it as “Peercoin”. Submit pull request to the official repo[/li]
[li]Outreach[/li]
[li]Set up 10TH/s mining rig. Profit.[/li]
[/list][/ul]

7

Alex Hern for The Guardian (syndicated through Business Insider), “Is Bitcoin About To Change the World?”, November 26, 2013. URL: Is Bitcoin About to Change the World?

Overview:
Is Bitcoin more than just a novelty?

My comment addressed another commenter’s concern about the long-term energy requirements of maintaining the Bitcoin network.

"The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, they'll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers."

Between this and mining … I wonder how much electrical power would be required for a bitcoined world vs the current electronic payment system. I don’t know much about this stuff, but it sounds like pretty intense usage

Read more: Is Bitcoin About to Change the World?

My response:

Those long-term energy concerns are why we've been working to get the word out about Peercoin. Originally a fork of the Bitcoin codebase, Peercoin expanded on the good that BTC has while innovating ways to solve what we perceive as the negatives -- namely, the energy costs required to secure the network as transaction volumes grow, the reliance on (rationally) selfish miners and the potential for a cabal to gain a large enough percentage of hash rate that they can effectively split the network and start to manipulate the market.

Peercoin utilizes Bitcoin’s “mining” structure, initially, but as the coin supply grows, we expect that a significant amount of network security will be provided by “Proof-of-Stake” minting, which allows anyone who holds coins to see an average return of 1% per year. While those coins are held, the algorithm “mints” against them, which is a similar process to mining, but requires significantly (~1000%) less energy.

Proof-of-Stake also significantly increases the amount of processing power and total coins held required for bad actors who attempt to conduct a “51% attack”.

To learn more, check out www.peercoin.net, and if you want to ask any questions, please join us at www.peercointalk.org

8

Dhara Ranasinghe for CNBC, “Don’t rule out a ban on virtual currencies: Peercoin”, December 6, 2013. URL: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101251925

Overview:
Possible governmental cryptocurrency regulation, and a discussion with Sunny King about his(her)(their) feelings for what that means to Peercoin and other cryptos in general.

Attempted regulation or not, cryptocurrencies are a concept that has been set free in the World. While only time will tell if Peercoin, Bitcoin and others will ultimately be successful, digital currencies will be an important part of the global economy going forward, precisely because they are decentralized and difficult to regulate.

I’m heartened to see Peercoin discussed, because I do believe it is a strong complement to other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Litecoin. Just like the cash, precious metals, stocks, bonds, checking accounts, savings accounts (and other less common, but still useful exotic vehicles) that are in use today to spread risk and meet specific investment needs; so will there be classes of digital assets.