What is Peercoin?

[Drummel]

It’s the question that seems to be the bane of Peercoin.

 ■ It's a backbone
 ■ It's a Store of Savings
 ■ It's not a day to day "currency"
 ■ It could be a transactional currency
 ■ It should be a savings [account]currency

After reading over the Questions for SunnyKing thread I am no more or less confused then when I first found Peercoin. It seems that as a slightly late to the party
fellow I understood what I wanted Peercoin to be right off the bat. Allow a new community member his perspective - I would like to thank Sentinelrv for his elaborate
list of questions in that thread, it let my mind wander through my opinion of Peercoin a bit - on to the rambling!

What I saw when I first looked - When I found Peercoin the first things that clicked and MADE me like it was:

 ■ Savings and Interest
 ■ Hybrid with potentially more security. PoW/PoS
 ■ Back Bone currency - what that meant to me below ▼
 ■ Potential to be more energy efficient

Now I’ve been here awhile and I still stand on my original feeling. Those bullet points above.
What I have felt though is a community uncertain to what it is. I do not speak for anyone, it is just a feeling I get.

I personally thought it was pretty crystal clear what Peercoin is or should be, you just have to be willing to read through all the information. And there is a LOT
of it. And a compounded problem is this community does not put all that information in one place. Isn’t this forum suppose to be Home Base? Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc, so forth and so on are GREAT places to support Peercoin if they all point back here AND get the word out, but if the main focus isn’t here, then why be here? I feel I should be on Reddit to catch info, I feel I should be on the Bitcoin forums. I only feel “Home” with a certain FEW users that always post here, the rest don’t even seem interested (or maybe inactive?).

Anyhow, back to point…

Peercoin to me was what I thought it should be. A Savings, an interest bearing savings at that.
Peercoin is already in a position to provide strength with other coins, but with the confused attempted marketing I see why it’s more “techie followed” and less of anything else. You guys GET Peercoin, but new people don’t, or wont because it gets muddled in the massive over stated information. Simple sells folks, simple sells.

Not spending all of your Bitcoins? Do you want to put them to work for you? Peercoin is a great store value with the potential of earning interest while securing
the network.

It seems already decided that Peercoin is not a day to day currency, so all the extra “we need merchant speech” only confuses things even more.
If people knew what it was why wouldn’t it be used? My Cryptocurrency can make me money? A fairly stable currency that has very gradual overall fluctuation
making it a pretty predictable solution to store leftover value while I am not using it? What I said about backbone currency? No, forget it. Not a backbone Currency, but the backbone to all currency in one sense only, savings. You put your money here, and it will work for you - it will earn you interest like a real world bank account, without the real world bank account The Blockchain isn’t overbloated BECAUSE it’s a gentle stream. Put it here, leave it here. Only take it when you REALLY need it(Like an emergency fund). Word it however you want, the bottom line is, it’s a damn good idea - stick with it, no?

I guess I’m just rambling on at this point, but I know why I came here and I know what I want Peercoin to do for me, and it’s EXACTLY what was ‘promised’ in simple and plan English(I just had to dig around a bit). So why does it seem to me that everyone else is confused on this? If you want to market it - then show the people what it is. If folks store their unused assets with Peercoin they have the potential to earn you more. Being a fairly market stable price you can rest much easier at night
instead of racing to check the Market Cap to see…Oh crap, Bitcoin just fell 200 dollars again I lost 1.5kUSD tonight. Peercoin doesn’t sway so quickly.

Oh - why the hell does Peercoin drop when Bitcoin does? Anything to do with marketing? Or is the whole Cryptocurrency community just afraid of shadows down EVERY alley?(coin)

Ok I am done. I missed something, but I’ll be back

Note - this is not meant to offend anyone, if I did/do, I apologize.

[Sentinelrv]

Here was my final submission for the interview questions. I felt it applied to this thread…

[quote=“Sentinelrv, post:45, topic:1761”]Marketing has been Peercoin’s greatest weakness, which worries me because many superior ideas or products get overlooked because they don’t have the marketing to back it up. I feel the problem is that people don’t fully understand the purpose behind the coin. With Bitcoin it’s simple. Bitcoin is a transactional currency, so we proceed by getting businesses to accept it as payment for products or services. This generates a network effect which spreads the coin around to more people.

With Peercoin, the backbone theory of the coin overcomplicates things and confuses people, making it impossible to explain to others. You don’t need merchants if you are a backbone currency because you aren’t supposed to be for daily use. But if you aren’t for daily use, then how do you generate a network effect and get people to care? As long as we argue PPC is not for everyday use (store of value), the coin will be hamstrung. No need to pursue merchants or create network effects spreading it around. This is why the store of value argument is self defeating.

What we need from you is to explain what Peercoin’s purpose truly is. Is it a transactional currency? Is it a savings currency? Can it be both at the same time? How do we explain to people what Peercoin is used for? How should we be marketing Peercoin to the masses? If we’re not getting businesses to accept Peercoin, how do we create a network effect? And finally, what do you see as the steps the community needs to take to generate mass adoption? What is our path going forward? These questions about Peercoin’s identity are the most important questions we need answers to, so please take as long to answer them as you need to, the more information the better.[/quote]

[mhps]

I hope Peercoin is 75% savings and 25% transactional. The transactional part should provide enough depth of liquidity so big funds can move into and out of Peercoin with little effect on its price. Just like the T-note.