Reasons why Peercoins are so advantageous

[quote=“Centaure, post:4, topic:810”]Why is being energy efficient so important?

It is important because…
• it safes a lot of energy cost in all the countries. And since the energy cost in different countries is different, a high energy efficiency can help to better decentralize the amount of miners on earth e.g. in the US the miners have an advantage since the energy cost is low, whereas in Germany the energy cost is high so there are not a lot of miners to help the network since it is not so profitable. This is not preferable since it centralizes the mining power to certain low energy cost countries.
Peercoin uses an additional Proof of Stake system which allows all owners of Peercoins, independent whether they hold only a few Peercoins or a lot, to emit additional Peercoins at a rate of about 1 % per year in form a blocks. This emission by Proof of Stake requires almost no power which helps to decentralize the miners.
• it reduces upkeep for the network so less energy is needed to keep the Peercoin network alive which helps to pollute less CO2.

Couldn’t Bitcoin improve over time?
• This is unlikely. Bitcoin has a large mining industry and dedicated mining hardware. If Bitcoin was changed, theses miners would lose a lot of their income from mining and trust in Bitcoin. I think is it not a good idea to play with miners since they are crucial to secure the network from malicious attacks.[/quote]

Maybe Bitcoin could slowly phase out one PoW for another (greener) one by allowing both,
but using a subtle protocol for adjusting the alternate’s difficulty. Let’s say the phase out
is desired to take 25 months, to allow existing miners to recoup their investments
(their hardware is normally obsolete in less than a year). Initially set the alternate PoW difficulty VERY hgh.
Then after i months, make the alternate PoW difficulty either higher or lower, depending on whether
the proportion of alternately proved blocks is more or less (resp.) than a fraction i/25.

Hmm, not likely to happen still:-(

So do you need the full client to mint additional peercoins? Or can a program be written on a mobile device to do this?
I guess I’m asking if the whole blockchain is needed to mint (POS) coins

[quote=“traiz, post:22, topic:810”]So do you need the full client to mint additional peercoins? Or can a program be written on a mobile device to do this?
I guess I’m asking if the whole blockchain is needed to mint (POS) coins[/quote]
Yes, as minting occurs, a block needs to be created in the blockchain.
You don’t need a full client, just the blockchain and the stake and minting functionality. Still probably a lot.

Just to play devil’s advocate: If PPC is so much better than BTC, why does it seem that PPC only increases in value when BTC goes up? What does it take for PPC to not rely on BTC´s success?

Good question, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers on this one, but I will give it a go as it also does have my interest. There is some speculation in my answer, so please just see this as an opinion built on some facts. So here are a few reasons which I think explain why we are where we are now.

  • Bitcoin was the first one and lot’s of people are still entrenched with it not always for rational reasons. They know what cryptos are but don’t like any of the altcoins including Peercoin. So Bitcoin stays strong (first lover principle).
  • Cryptos are still not mainstream, so many people don’t even know what Peercoin is and might have heard of Bitcoin as it had more media exposure. Many people will buy Bitcoins first therefore. This is an area Peercoin needs to work on.
  • Positioning the coin right is still difficult in a growing market without clear direction (we have a thread running about the positioning of the Peercoin) and legal issues.
  • There are far more developers for Bitcoin as it has been around longer and due to the recent increase of value has more money floating around for bounties and hiring part-time or even full-time developers and setting up a foundation. It is not easy to catch up and it is not said Peercoin should follow exactly the same path, but I think we’re doing a good job to catch up in time.
  • Market is dominated by speculators as real-life application for cryptos are only just getting some real traction.
  • Peercoin inflation is still relatively high, but decreasing.
  • There are already more Peercoins than there will ever be Bitcoins.
  • Peercoin does still share a lot of the code with Bitcoin.

Peercoin still growing up
So I think cryptos in general and Peercoin specifically are still in their early childhood. Peercoin is like the 3rd child (not technically BTW) and doesn’t get all the attention the first had. Peercoin has the right environment and mix of genes (Bitcoin + Sunny King’s code) though to grow up and find its own place in the market. As soon as that becomes more clear and mainstream the value of Peercoin is more likely to rise and be less related to Bitcoin.

Personally I don’t think Peercoin should rise in value too sharply in a short term as Bitcoin did, although it’s always nice to see that happening when you own Peercoin like I do (disclaimer). I think it’s better for a store of value as Peercoin is positioned to have a slow, but steady increase of value. Something where you can count on without the sharp throughs and steep highs.

Legally, I prefer to compare it with a house, it is a store of value but you still would want to use it. It goes up and down but usually not too extreme and you can still sell it and buy another house. Emphasis on value and usability and some liquidity. That is what Peercoin should be in my opinion.

Bitcoin ties loosening
The connect with Bitcoin is already decreasing since 3 months ago as it initially followed Bitcoin very closely. You’re now seeing steeper increasing when Bitcoin goes up and sharper decreases when it goes down and it has been growing on its own. This is likely the result of Peercoin becoming available on many exchanges. But even in the real fiat world currencies are connected with each other even when they are not locked into each other by governments.

On a sunny day the markets are usually more positive than on a rainy day, doesn’t matter which merchant you are or what you sell. So there will also be some relation in value between cryptos either directly with Bitcoin or more indirectly through economic variables where commodities and currencies get most of their value from.

There are lots of day traders who trade huge volume in coins based on candle trends and patterns, news releases, etc, etc.

Many of them could care less about what “features” a coin has…

At the moment, BTC has all the attention, simply because it has been around longer, it is more widely known, and talked about in the media, so most coins are compared in value against BTC. So when BTC rises, people sell their altcoins or fiat and buy BTC. When BTC falls, they sell their BTC and place their value in altcoins (or fiat)

The problem lies in the bloat in the size of the bitcoin blockchain. Compare it to Peercoin, and it’s easy to see a major difference. Developers (like the Peershare project) already see the benefits of Peercoin.

It’s going to be one of those things that Developers will want to build things that use Peercoin’s Proof-of-stake and smaller blockchain in their own technology that will bring the value of Peercoin front and center.

I’ve written before that Peercoin may very well be worth more than Bitcoin. But it’s too early to see this Jan 28, 2013 on the exchanges.

Development in all coins and cryptocurrency technologies is at an all-time high right now.

2014 is going to be a very interesting year.