I’ve created a draft document to clarify some of the misconceptions about Primecoin. Please feel free to contribute, I’ll consolidate any comments later. The FAQs can be used for the website, as well as basis for information video.
GoogleDocs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gQZ369Scb_nOlr7Av7XYlRdVUw2YgBm5rHSO1Fccktw/edit?usp=sharing
[size=14pt]Primecoin - FAQs[/size]
Is there a hard-cap for Primecoin?
The total number of Bitcoins ever created is limited to 21 million, with supply decreasing geometrically roughly every 4 years. That, however, makes it scarcer than gold and as a currency increasingly deflationary. Primecoin, follows a different scarcity model: The total money supply is expected to follow an asymptotic curve – as computers get faster the difficulty goes up and the minting rate goes down. Most likely the total money supply will be between 50 million and 1 billion, with a bias towards the middle of that range. This is good news for new miners, as even late adopters have equal chance to receive coins.
Will there be ASICs for Primecoin?
The Primecoin algorithm is ASIC/FPGA hostile, and even GPU mining is not economically viable at the moment. While it is certainly possible to create specialized mining equipment, it is far more difficult and expensive to develop chips for high speed modular arithmetics. In contrast to SHA-256/Scrypt mining, those chips would also be multi-use and could be applied for other purposes after the next generation hits the market. In a sense, Primecoin is currently the “fairest” coin to mine, as it is purely CPU based. […] Besides this, Primecoin already offers a number cloud mining providers, which inevitability will be the final stage in the specialized-mining-chip-race. For example, ASIC supplier KnCMiner recently announced not to produce mining rigs for household use anymore, as non-industrial grade power supply is not sufficient.