Purpose of Primecoin?

I am here because of Peercoin, but I am curious about Primecoin - if only for the sake of, ‘for the hell of knowing’.

I went to the Primecoin main website, and I have to say It says basically nothing as to the future purpose of the coin except that it was designed with scientific computing in mind. It’s a Prime numbers machine that potentially advances certain aspects of science including Physics. And it states as being 10x faster than Bitcoins network.

Ok, I get all that, even though I am no math head. What is Primecoins market purpose? Simply to help science? Is it also designed like Peercoin for long term potential savings? I get the vague impression it should be used as a more frequent transaction system for daily spending, and Peercoin should be used more like a long term savings account that you only draw on as a supplement?

I just feel like there was no real effort put into informing anyone of it’s intended use. Or barely, I should say.

At least with Peercoin it was made obvious on it’s side of what the intention was, and that is why I am here.

We all know from Peercoins side of this forum it needs more publicity, it needs to be simplified and explained, and in a fairly laymen fashion - if people can’t grasp it in the first 30-60 seconds, you start to lose them - especially if it starts to sound techy and complicated.

That being said, what truly is Primecoin’s future goal(s) - besides science?

Thanks everyone, love this forum!

A robust ecosystem of cryptocoins needs many members with different characteristics. When the dinosaurs roamed, the mammals looked like a failure. However the mammals turned out to be the ticket in a grander scheme of things. The little odd guys are a necessary, even critical, component to mitigate systemic risks in the long process of evolution, where blackswan events are a norm. Primecoin is the strongest GPU-resistant coin. (Riecoin might be another but it doesn’t offer a lot of difference from primecoin.)

I’m working on FAQs to explain Primecoin better. Maybe that helps:

[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.

It helps shed some light on what is at its core.

The amount of coins in it’s future, and being ASIC unfriendly are definitely useful information, but…

Let us pretend I am just Joe Consumer. Why would I ever invest in this? What is in it’s future? Are there any serious merchants that supply goods I can
use Primecoin to purchase products for my every day life?

Everyone always fills in the blanks for profitability. That’s great for miners or serious investors, but the WORLD market is Joe Consumer - is this coin attempting
to be a usable coin in this sense? Or does it fall under the shuffle game? Buy coin lower, sell coin higher routine? Is Primecoin looking to be a 1 to 1 coin per USD?
I think these are pretty valid questions that a lot of people would ask, no?

What makes Primecoin stand out? ““Math, mumbo jumbo, science, physics, profitability, ASIC resistant.”” (I am not trying to sound like an ass btw)
Where is the real consumer interest?

For any and all answers I, of course, thank everyone for their time. I truly am interested in a positive way, but digging for answers never hurts :slight_smile:

I guess the website is kind of targeted towards people who already know what currency is used for.

I know what currency is used for, okzx. My question was angled as someone wanting to know what Primecoin currency is used for.
How did/do people already know what Primecoin currency is used for if it isn’t stated on their main web page? The whole purpose of creating
this thread is to dig deeper. See where the roots lie and how high the branches grow.

Obviously snagging savvy Investors and Miners is easy. They either want it or they don’t based on market appeal. (Show me the money!)
* Why would it appeal to Joe Consumer?
* What is his incentive to join the Primecoin world and start spending/purchasing his XPM currency?
* (Going back to what I originally said) What is the future appeal? Shops/Malls? Redbox? Nothing? Another Cryptocurrency simply to trade to the next guy
strictly for a profit? - Or is it really just as plain as day?

Most Cryptocoins rely heavily on their geek speak facts. How is anyone that is just an average anybody going to get interested without the real meat and potatoes?
Word of mouth isn’t going to help someone “get” these coins, and pointing a non tech at a website and telling them “Go read the FAQ and tutorial to figure it out”
will likely turn Joe Consumer off entirely. So what incentive is there to be ‘decentralized’ when you are stuck knocking on the door with ?'s floating all over your head.
They shouldn’t have to source out the internet to find answers that should be readily available on the main website (presumably it is?) Everyone points to forums and wiki’s and says look there, look here, look at that! The confusion is as overwhelming as someone trying to explain source code for someone new to Crypto.

Ok, I’ve rambled on enough. I think I’ve made my point as well as I am able. And it still comes down to the topic “Purpose of Primecoin”.

Anyone and everyone, please feel welcome to share all your sides and views!
Thank!

That indeed is the main crux of the problem. Primecoin is highly innovative and in many ways superior to other altcoins, but was never fully explained in layman terms. That’s why it has a certain image of being “math coin” – merely Bitcoin clone that finds primes. In the FAQ, I tried to clarify some misconceptions.

For Joe Consumer the most important aspect should be that, Primecoin is much less deflationary than Bitcoin. That means even late adopters have almost equal chance to own coins without having to buy them at much higher prices. That also makes Primecoin more stable as a day-to-day currency, having less volatility. On top of that, you can mine it in the cloud with various VPS services (that are multi-purpose and you can use for hosting as well). Which is fairer and more convenient than being at the whims of an ASIC supplier like BFL.

I’d love to work with you on drafting a better presentation for Primecoin. On the peercoin.net page, there is a FAQ section that addresses some key misunderstandings. I’d love to write something like that for Primecoin.

Let’s work on it together! Please PM me your email and I’ll add you to the GoogleDoc

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gQZ369Scb_nOlr7Av7XYlRdVUw2YgBm5rHSO1Fccktw/edit

I agree that Primecoin is completely misbranded. We instead should be branding Peercoin + Primecoin as a complete solution. I’m going to write up a post on that now.

Developers have found other ways to make money, such as: NUBITS, so I doubt it they have more time to take care of xpm,Of course this isn’t we expected

Interesting - please elaborate.