Bitcoin Forum

I've been researching the different altcoins for a while now, and it seems to me there is actually only one real ALTERNATIVE to Bitcoin. What I mean by that is if some flaw, vulnerability, or weakness was found in Bitcoin and an alternative was required to step up and take its place, PPCoin would be the only viable option. The simple reason for that is that all other 'altcoins' are based on Bitcoin code so I fail to see how they're real alternatives. The changes proposed by the other 'altcoins' would be akin to someone saying a fake dollar bill or a yellow dollar bill or a slightly smaller dollar bill (NOT issued by the government) is a good alternative to the original dollar bills issue by the US government. From what I hear advantages promoted by these so called other altcoins are not even advantages, like how Litecoin boasts of being faster but apparently there was a legit reason why Satoshi made the block speed at 10 minutes. Even the biggest of these (Litecoin) doesn't have ONE single article in Google News so it's not like the attention is warranted.

Also, after following the media's recent reaction to Bitcoin, two major flaws are pointed out and will be pointed out, which PPCoin seems to address:

-The fact that Bitcoin is deflationary and as such always gains value and does not make people want to spend it as currency (PPCoin would have slight inflation that would I guess grow somewhere in line with population growth and therefore make it actually usable as a currency in the long term. It would immediately be preferred by the economists who shape world economic policies, whether they're correct or not is another matter.)
-The fact that Bitcoin would take tremendous amounts of computing power just to maintain in the future at a time when environmental and energy concerns increase (which I hear PPCoin addresses somewhat and is more energy efficient with its PoS approach)

There's other advantages to PPCoin but I wanted to focus on the term 'altcoin' that has been thrown around. It's sad to see that so little resource and attention is being given to what seems like the only real alternative . How is the cryptocurrency scene going to grow when so much attention is given to complete copys like Bytecoin (I'll admit, I even briefly jumped on the train) and innovations like PPCoin are largely ignored.

What does concern me though is the creator seems hellbent on helping everyone around him (including copies of his work like NVC or recent competitors like TRC) instead of focusing his limited time on his own project. It's not like PPCoin is perfect and has everything ready and in place (they don't) - so I really don't understand this approach by the creator which frankly concerns me.

TLDR: If some critical flaw is found in the Bitcoin code (and there's alot of eyeballs now looking at it with malice), PPCoin is the only alternative that can step up to fill its place right now (and essentially keep the whole cyrptocurrency concept afloat), so more attention should be given to it.

I tend to agree - however, one of the great things with open source projects is that new people can take over a project once the previous person has done their thing.  Its one of the myths of life that the same person who has the idea, is the one best suited to running that idea all the way through to cash cow status!

We are all good at something, and awful at other things - and its knowing when to hand over the reigns is a skill in itself! :)

I hope P2PCoin takes off - oh, and I do hope it starts getting called P2PCoin too! 

Or maybe P2coin, as that sounds really cool ;)

Someone was saying that P2PCoin (prefer that name too) was not decentralized - is the creator taking on too much responsibility at this point which is halting progress?

PEE PEE COIN....

May as well call it DO DO COIN.  :P

As a trader, you should be one of the ones supporting this coin - its the only true hedge against Bitcoin at this point. Even when the economy was doing alright, it was advised to keep some gold in the portfolio as a hedge against unforeseen developments. I see PPCoin serving a similar function for Bitcoin

I agree. PPCoin actually has some value as an idea unlike most the other alt-coins which are only expensive because of people pumping the price up in the hopes of easy money, I bet most of them don't even research these alt-coins before they invest in them, they probably couldn't even tell you the differences from BTC.

Two of the bitcoin properties are:

* It is deflationary.
* Is is decentral and not controlled by goverment/central bank/bank/company.

This two properties are independent from each other. It is possible to have a decentral and uncontrolled crypto currency without inbuild deflation. PPCoin demonstrates this.

The slight inbuild inflation of PPCoin reminds me of the very sucessful monetary politics of the Deutsche Bundesbank (German Central Bank) in former decades, when they were much more independent from politics/EU/NWO and much more concerned about the value of the Deutsche Mark and the german economy. Every country around germany was pissed off because of the hard and successful politics of the Deutsche Bundesbank in stabilizing the value of the Deutsche Mark.

The concept of PPCoin reminds me of the former Deutsche Mark. The difference is, that the Deutsche Bundesbank was hacked by politics/EU/NWO. Something that can be avoided by the decentral crypto currency concepts.


Many people don't like the name PPCoin (PeePee-Coin or PiPi-Coin  :D) .

If SunnyKing reads this - I vote for a name: dCoin. Which can be officially interpreted as digitalCoin. For insiders it can also mean deutschCoin, in memory to the Deutsche Mark.

I also vote for - if necessary, I cannot say so much in specific about this - of a adaption/improvement/redesign of PPCoin to mimic more of the good properties of the Deutsche Mark.

I can also imagine a new fork to implement/establish something like the dCoin. For example the implementation of scrypt may make sense. NovaCoin(?) has implemented inflation and scrypt, but the people behind NovaCoin do not convince me.

If someone or some people as a team, serious and reliable (I like the very constant element in Sunny King daily updates) would do this (I cannot do this, not enough specific knowledge about cryptography/technology/economy/public relations), I would like to be informed to be able to profit from the early adopter bonus.

I think that a decentral and uncontrollable crypto curreny with slight inflation will  provide a lot to the economic well being of mankind in 21st centrury :) ...

Can anyone succinctly explain the moderate inflationary mechanism behind PPC? I was half way through their white paper last night and fell asleep - I did not fully understand the mechanism.

I don't think the fact that ppcoin has a 1% annual return for creating proof of stake blocks makes it not deflationary, it's really no different from bitcoin in that way. First of all, the new coins go to the holders of coins so there still isn't the incentive to spend that inflation normally creates. If an apple is $1 today and will be $1.01 tomorrow, but my $1 will turn itself into $1.01 by tomorrow, then I'm in no hurry to buy that apple today. Second, ppcoin would have max 1% money supply growth long term (probably less since not all coins make stake) and you'd still have deflation with that I believe. The money supply for fiat currencies grows a lot faster than that over time.

All that said, I think the deflationary model of these coins is fine. AFAIK the only coin that doesn't have this "problem" is freicoin. People have wants and needs in the present and they will spend their coins (or convert them to other currencies then spend) even if they expect that they might be able to buy a bit more stuff if they wait a year.

1% annually is currently very far away.

What you PEE PEE fan boys forget:

1. PPC has not proven to have fixed the previously found vulnerabilities exposed by jutarul and have not proven the 'new' POS algorithm to be well tested for exploits.

2. Shady development.

3. Sunny's ineptitude to discuss publicly his design of the NEW POS algorithm.

Dont take something as truth just because you heard it was "energy-efficient" etc.

What is the point of energy efficiency if their is an exploit that still needs to be fixed within the code?

I prefer not to touch this coin until Sunny comes out and addresses my three points above with 100% transparency.

 :D :D :D

Oh and as a TRADER, I know what not to touch/invest in when the writing is on the wall.

Thanks smoothie, noted.

Who is this guy ? Some kind of joker ?

Quoted for posterity.

Yes we are aware there are some problems, one could find a bunch of complaints relating to Bitcoin as well (such as who the heck is the creator?!) but the important thing should be potential. I'd definitely like to hear Sunny address some of these direct complaints because it seems the community is stuck on some minor points and can't move on to see the bigger picture.

Lmao at people listening to Smoothie. He is a self proclaimed troll


1. All the vulnerabilities have been fixed, just like Bitcoins early problems were fixed. Go ahead and exploit one of these vulnerabilities you are talking about? It is true that the other alt coins have the advantage of being so similar to Bitcoin they haven't got to worry much about exploits. Sunny is an extremely active developer unlike a lot of the other coins and he even found an exploit in Terracoin this week. Just like Bitcoin, the longer PPCoin is 'stress tested' out in the wild with real users, the more secure it is. PPCoin is going from strength to strength, it's only getting better. And it's innovative.

2. The development is anything but shady. It's open source, with weekly updates (there is a weekly update topic). Because PPCoin is not a cheap clone of Bitcoin and requires a lot of work it's hardly surprising he doesn't have time to do everything you say yet he is still very active in this community unlike certain other devs I won't name. Anyone here don't believe me? Go to his profile and click on recent posts - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=63182, he is answering tons of questions daily

3. You can actually find the algorithm quite easily in the source code, I found it and I only have basic programming knowledge. It's all there for you or anyone else to read.

I doubt Sunny the developer will address Smoothie, he probably put him on ignore 6 months ago due to his endlessPPCoin trolling (I am semi joking semi serious).

lol @ PPC

yeah no, you're really wasting your time trying to promote ppc
this artificial hype attempt is so hilarious

ppc is just a lame attempt at devaluing the ltc so the btc wont have a solid backup currency acting as a lower denomination

banking shill detected
goback2africa

If anyone wants to buy some PPCoin for TRC let me know. Have about 4.5k to trade

You produce no arguments or discussion in your post. You shouldn't fear it, it's very different to Litecoin and Bitcoin (both of which I own).

And there is a lot of interest in PPCoin, look at this google trends graphs showing the number of people searching PPCoin vs the number of people searching Terracoin:

https://i.imgur.com/ppCU7gV.png

(PPCoin has double the amount of searches and is trending upwards heavily).

Which part is artificial? Go back to BTC-e to trick newbies into buying your LTC and leave the serious discussion to adults.

Yeah, teracoin is the real hype coin.

Major point I am stuck on is public discussion of his POS algorithm design. That is huge. Potential is only able to go as far as the system's security to exploits allows it to.

Yes I am joking. Please sell all your possessions and buy PEE PEE COIN.

If you watch my track record on calling things out you will see that more times than not I am right on what I use and when I buy and sell.

But dont listen to the big fruit drink. Make your own decisions lol

Smoothie, for some reason almost every post of yours I read is trolling against someone or something. Angry man? This thread made me lol though

Instead of whining on the forums and demanding developers waste their time responding to your trivial postings, how about you take the initiative to read the code SK has uploaded to github like other people are? Here, I'll even give you some help and get you started: https://github.com/ppcoin/ppcoin . If you are waiting for someone else to tell you why you should invest in their currency instead of you go figuring it out on your own, then you are doing it wrong no matter how you want to spin it.

Want to know how that vulnerability was found? It sure wasn't a result of sitting here bitching on the forum. Go read the code

I don't think it's the only alt coin, obviously LTC is still a major force and likely here to stick.

PPC is interesting, I've been very antagonistic in the past but about half of the arguments I had against it have turned out to be baseless.

I think there are still problems with scaling that are unaddressed, and I still don't know if his theories are economically sound or reasonable.

I'm going to publish another PoS whitepaper this weekend here, feel free to to tear it apart because that's what makes a strong chain.

>  I had against it have turned out to be baseless.

Uh.  What about the fact that its still centrally controlled by developer announced checkpoints, and that none one the layered complexity seems to address the fundamental issue with PoS that an optimal-rational PoS miner will concurrently mine all the chains he is able, because doing so maximizes his expected income... because nothing is at stake when mining a fork that ultimately fails?

(If you're sensing some frustration from me, it's because I think that "cryptocurrencies" which are just inefficiently implemented centralized systems distract people from working on real, viable, decentralized solutions)

Bitcoin has checkpoints, albeit much less. I think checkpoints are the only way to launch an alt currency Like PPcoin which has a radical new approach, it's for security and Sunny has said they will be phased out gradually (I read somewhere by summer but dont quote me on that).

Bitcoin's checkpoints _never_ arbitrate the selection of the best chain. They protect against some silly DOS attacks that will be fixed when we get around to changing how the initial block download works.  In the mean time, I had some of my own blocks orphaned by the block at a time checkpoint placement in PPcoin (long before POS was active), this was what actually triggered me to stop mining ppcoin. 

Yes, it's centrally controlled "for your protection" ... ignore the man behind the curtain. :P   I can buy "launch"  but PPcoin has been around for a while now ("PPCoin is the only ALTcoin") and practically all mining on it is PoS mining, so the initial risk of it being massively overpowered should be gone now if it would ever be gone. I'm not arguing that it isn't needed: I'm arguing that with it, PPcoin is just a very inefficiently implemented centralized system, and that the need for it basically disproves that PPCoin currently achieves its goals.

Don't forget though that SK is just one guy and can only do so much with the code in a given time. PPCoin is still a baby to me, it's breaking off pretty majorly from BTC in some ways and needs time to mature. If stuff like centralization is never addressed, yea it would be a problem, but I'm giving PPC the benefit of the doubt for now

Here's a fun fact that might rain on your parade:

Bitcoin is inflationary until 2140.

After 2140 it becomes static if we ignore destroyed coins.



It seems with the frenzy of BTC hype, we have a new class of adopters. A new class of users who must breakaway from Keynesian dogma, and study the free market principles of which Bitcoin was based upon.

I urge those who see an inflationary model as the answer to read the works of Ludwig Von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Thomas Woods.

Afterwards we can revisit a debate about whether money should be inflationary or deflationary. (Hint: Bitcoin is neither)

Well PPCoin is trading on BTC-e right now, check it out.

so there'll be upwards of 2billion ppcoins

that sounds like its gonna do real well

the bigger the number the better.  like zimbabwe dollars

Just like there will be more than 2 billion bitcoins as the retort to not having enough coins to fuel a global economy is often... shift the decimal places....  number of coins don't matter, its all supply/demand and in that it is coins entering the market that were not there before vs. New uses/users of the coin that were not there before....  there are enough people and a large enough global economy to support a very healthy price for a coin that has 2 billion units, actually even more could be supported as said currency system gains more and more market share.

LOL so how many PPC did you buy to make you that emotional to post this ^?

Being open to discussing design and development is a huge part of a transparent system. I looked at the code it isn't very well documented. Nor do I care to spend my time disecting it when I can easily speak to the main dev and have him disclose the design.

I mean what's the problem right? Even Gavin Andresen disagrees with SK's operation of how is developing PEE PEE. lol....it never gets old....PEE PEE coin. "Sir would u like to pay with your PEE PEE?"  :D

One more thing. You've been on this forum for what, 7 days? Get a grip and do more reading on what actually happened and all the details surrounding PEE PEE lol.

7 days and already thinking you know everything. Take a step back little one and read more and do less talking.  :D :D :D

This +1

LOL breaking off from BTC? It's proof of work algorithm is SHA256. Take an ASIC farm and point it at PPC network....and PPC just got fucked.

 :D more ZEROs is a good thing!

This is actually another potential danger with PPC's difficulty algorithm -- someone with a very large hash rate can buy hundreds of thousands of PPC and then hit the network hash rate very hard for a few days.  Because difficultly increases AND reward decreases, the supply will be restricted severely for everyone than would be for just bitcoin.


Still, to achieve a 16x increase in difficulty is difficulty for most miners... except for a large one like ASICMiner.  If ASICMINER, with 7 TH/s, were to buy a ton of PPC under the table from someone and then suddenly hop onto the PPC network, they could very easily completely destroy the supply of PPC for normal miners and drive up the price so long as people didn't quickly catch on to what was happening.  Then they could dump their massive stock of PPC, hop off the network, and let the whole chain enter an inflationary spiral.

The same could be said for BTC or LTC, but the problem is exacerbated by the manipulation of both subsidy and difficulty at the same time by miners.

Just read the PPcoin paper, seems quite complex. Little energy consumption and inflative, sounds more like a fiat currency

There are huge problems with cheap and inflative money, that's the reason bitcoin is so different, it is designed to be an expensive and deflative currency. One of the most foundamental support for bitcoin's value is its energy cost, current value is an estimation of the total energy cost for daily output

If you don't use any energy to create the money, then the money itself worth nothing, just like fiat

Maybe you can use this argument to go sort out Paul Krugman....

Or better yet - please go post a comment on this dumbass' article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemmanuelgobry/2013/04/05/krugman-baby-sitting-co-op-bitcoin/ (http://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemmanuelgobry/2013/04/05/krugman-baby-sitting-co-op-bitcoin/)

Can I have all your "worthless" fiat then? 

Literally just did a facepalm.

How is he employed by Forbes?

I'll admit I don't know enough technical details to really comment on how 'future-proof' PPCoin is, but my point was that it was an actual alternative that provided enough differences in ideology and code to serve as a real Plan B if the whole Bitcoin experiment met a critical flaw. It still seems PPC is in its infancy so I think its healthier to discuss its potential as a theory rather than how its performing current day. Hopefully the new round of attention will help boost development on it, or a similar fork that addresses its problems if necessary.

I'm certainly not going to sit here and defend Paul Krugman and his flawed Keynesian principles either (that experiment is failing before our very eyes), but I do believe that the built-in deflation in Bitcoin is too extreme, even gold which Austrian economists swear by experiences 2,500 tons of new gold mining supply every year added on top of a 180,000 tons stockpile (there's also recycled gold which hits the markets when price rises too much).

 As for the energy aspect, it might not seem a problem now to have to extend such energy to keep it running, but looking at world trends one can't help but worry if it will be a problem one day in the distant future. And I've heard claims that transactions fees are what will give miners incentive to keep mining after no new currency is left, but I'm not sure how the promise of extremely low transaction fees and ever-rising electricity costs go hand in hand (even today there seems to be a 5 cent + transaction fee if you want to get your transaction through in a reliable manner, so how much will that become when there's much less miners, more transactions, and higher electricity costs?).

That's not true, 'fiat' is worth a great deal, you may not like it but you can buy anything with it.  The world is run by it.

I see ppc as high risk high potential gain. 

I'm have 5% in PPC, 10% in LTC and the rest in BTC

I don't get why TRC is currently worth more than PPC. They are both speculation coins, acceptance is pretty much non existing.

Don't look for too much sense in the valuation of altcoins at the moment, it's pretty much driven by crowd mentality and pump & dumpers at BTC-e for now. The good ones will rise, bad ones will fail eventually when the craze dies down.

is it because PP inflates, and no limit

Right to the point.  The long term future depends on the quality of design.

Did you check freicoin? They also seem to try addressing same problems which you mention here, but different way. So, it is also not just a clone of bitcoin.

I don't have it, and I don't want it, if you are a friend of FED, you will get it for sure

Fiat's value is usually guaranteed by the government by using law and police/military force, but those are forced trust. (And that trust will disappear when the government went insolvent)  If you have choice, you will select a volunteered trust instead of a forced trust

Me neither. Then factor in TRC does nothing new that Bitcoin or Litecoin don't do already, whereas PPC takes an innovative approach and has it's own unique advantages (e.g. energy efficiency+ proof of stake). Energy efficiency is a going to be a biggie in years to come, when Bitcoins are commonplace people will look at the billions of units of electricity being wasted and look for a 'greener' alternative.

I have not checked out Freicoin, I heard something bad like its either premined/dead/51%'ed/scam or something of that sort but probably worth a look considering all the BS flying around on these forums.

Question about this: Is nothing really at stake? To POS mine, you need to have a decent chunk of coins. If there's honest chain A and attack chain B, I do agree that a rational miner doesn't waste any of his coin-age mining on both chains, though he would waste hashing if the coin were using POW. However, it doesn't seem completely free to me to mine on chain B, you still need a client running to work on POS blocks for that chain which consumes a bit of resources I believe, but more importantly it seems you risk compromising the value of your coins on chain A. Miners have an incentive to preserve the value of their coins, and since POS mining requires quite a few coins that is not negligible and attacking the chain for no good reason is victimizing oneself. Does this make sense, or am I missing something?

On an unrelated note, I believe this talk of ppcoin being inflationary is nonsense. A currency whose money supply increases a maximum of 1% per year (but in actuality quite a bit less due to coins not used for stake, transaction fees, and lost coins) is not what I would consider inflationary. Furthermore, the coins generated from the 1% increase in money supply are rewarded to the coin holders, which doesn't create any additional incentive to spend (either a good or bad thing depending on your econ school of thought I think). With USD, money supply increases much greater than 1% per year on average, and any new dollars created are spent by the government, not by the people who hold dollars. Therefore, holders of dollars have an incentive to spend, knowing their $100 could buy 100 widgets today but probably only 95 widgets in a year or two. This is why, as I understand, most mainstream economists see inflation as a good thing - it encourages spending and thereby increases GDP (not necessarily a good thing). With PPCoin, that's not going to happen. See Freicoin if you want a coin that does that, not that I'm a fan of their model.

I think the value/worth of a currency should not change over time - that's when you know you've created a golden system. The purpose of currency and money is to facilitate trade, and also as a store of value that remains for the excess work you have contributed to the economy. If currency rises in value (deflation) then it will take away from the trade facilitation aspect as people will hoard, if a currency loses value (inflation) then it will take away from the store of value aspect. The perfect money should find a middle ground between these two aspects, which gold has done remarkably well in history, and which is why it is so beloved my people who understand money.

So, a bit of extra money coming into the system is good as long as it stays in line with the general economy/population growth. The current system has abused this system, and way more money is coming in than any sort of growth in the economy. That's why fiat is coming crashing down.

Once again. Bitcoin is not deflationary.

Right now it is inflationary, increasing at ~10% yearly.

Once it reaches 21 million units, the amount of units will not change, unless you account for lost/destroyed coins.


Firstly, money has different value to different people. Everybody has a unique demand for money relative to how they value it against what they must trade for the money.

For example, a thirsty man in the desert would likely trade more bitcoins for a sip of water than would a man who has a water well on his property.

A market value for money is only established after individual value assessment of buyers and sellers are considered.

Secondly, now that we understand that money cannot keep its value static over time, because we know that this value is not actually measurable, and that demand/supply schedules will change as exchanges are made, we must consider the idea that a perfect money does change its market "value."

The changing market valuation of money plays an important role in the economy.

Lower interest rates signal to entrepreneurs that there are savers in the economy, with a time preference to spend later, not now. These entrepreneurs may decide to embark on grander endeavors because they know that there will be sufficient demand in the future.

On the other hand, when consumption increases, the interest rates will rise, as lenders compete to attract borrowers. There is a time preference to spend money now, and less of a savings pool will be collected for future spending.



Money must be able to change its value in accordance with market forces. Otherwise, the prices of all goods would be badly skewed.

Imagine if a bitcoin was always worth 1 gallon of milk, 1 hamburger, or 1 t-shirt, and that this value did not change.

What do you think would happen to the economy if an epidemic caused a shortage of cow livestock? In this hypothetical there is a shortage of cows, which means a shortage of milk and beef. Milk and burgers should cost more in terms of money units, assuming that demand has not changed. But with some external force pegging bitcoin to 1 gallon of milk, the milkmen and burger flippers would be getting a bad deal.

I m lloking for a great ppc pool not coinotron or vpool. Someone have it?

Bitcoin is absolutely deflationary once it approaches its limit because more people and goods are being produced yet not money in ciruclation to factor for that addition.


No it's not money that people value differently, its the other good which it is being exchanged for that's value changes for people.


You're confusing what changes in value, money is supposed to stay constant while different goods and services' worth in the eyes of potential buyers is what changes.

Interests rates do signal the state of the economy, but they shouldn't change the value of money itself, it just changes the value of what you can do with money in the economy. (ie: In a booming economy, there is more opportunity to make profits so entrepreneurs will be looking to get capital to get their businesses going.)


Again, I think you're confusing money with price. Prices are what change in relation to each other, money is just a common unit that keeps them all related for easier processing by the brain (would be hard to remember things like 2 gallons of milk = 7 apples otherwise).


No one is pegging anything, free market forces will always determine the correct price.

Bitcoin is never deflationary...  in order to be deflationary coins must be removed from the supply and destroyed.  The only deflationary component of PPC is the destruction of fees.  The inflationary rate of Bitcoin simply decreases over time and approaches zero.

Yes, but in comparison to USD, BTC is deflationary.

all the lost btc will make it deflationary no?

Compared to USD, all cryptos are deflationary

The actual amount of units of currency doesn't necessarily have to change for a currency to be deflationary. All prices going down (currency value going up) is what deflation is.

Imagine a small island of 2 people. They each have 100 dollars and use it to buy stuff from each other that each can produce. Now imagine that one new person was born into this little island every month and the dollars in the island is stuck at 200. Obviously each dollar in that environment would keep gaining value (and buy more stuff the longer it is kept) - which would lead the dollar owners to not usethat cash as sparingly as they normally would.

No.


So even if you are ignoring the economical definition of inflation/deflation, you could only say that BTC is experiencing price inflation in comparison to USD.


No, see above.


Yes it is the value of the other good, which they trade for money, thus requiring the value of the money to be match the goods!


How do you suppose that money stays "constant" if its worth different amounts of goods?

What do you mean by "constant" value then?


Again, I'm not confusing anything, but you are confusing me!

If the price of goods change, then the value of the money you hold relative to those goods also changes! How could it be any different?

1 BTC = 2 Gallons of milk or 1/2 BTC = 1 Gallon of milk.

then suppose

1 BTC = 3 Gallons of milk or 1/3 BTC = 1 Gallon of milk

In this situation, the receiver of a BTC considers the value relative of milk as having appreciated.



So we finally agree.

But if the price is determined by the market, the value will change, so I would still like to hear what you mean by money being of "constant" value.

Not necessarily, and only when the amount of coins being generated no longer outpaces  the amount of coins destroyed.

I think what you're referring to is price increases from disinflation.  The Bitcoin protocol is heavily reliant on disinflation.

Gold is the perfect type of money because almost the same amount of gold was used thousands of years ago to buy a nice suit as it is today. The reason this applies is because gold has just enough inflation to account for growth (and not be deflationary) yet not too much inflation that it starts diluting the value of the money and make it buy less and less as time passes. The reason this applies to suits and not say, a computer, is because equal effort and resources is needed today for a good suit today compared with a good suit from back in history. Some goods wont fit this example because they might have become harder/easier to make or less desireable/useful in the eyes of the consumer - none of this means the value of money has changed, just the perception of the goods and services in question.

We could be saying the same thing I dont know, sometimes semantics gets in the way of things..

There will be disinflation for a while yes, but when no new coin is made this should turn to deflation unless world growth is halted.

PPCoin has moved up to third in the market capitalisation list, behind only Bitcoin and Litecoin  :D

Again this does not address the point of what you mean by constant "value."

During the California gold rush, local prices of goods increased dramatically because there was a high supply of gold. I doubt very much those who lived there thought of gold as having a "constant" value.

If gold stopped inflating right now, we wouldn't be any worse off. The only difficulty that might arise is working with extremely small amounts. Interestingly, BTC is even better at handling divisibility than is gold.

Ok gold is not 'literally' perfect but pretty damn good track record over thousands of years - there will be vert brief windows when the supply fluctuates messing up the inflationary/deflationary balances..but I dont see how this relates to your point, it just proves that money supply when controlled can lead to stable prices and no inflation/deflation and when it isnt controlled can lead to price fluctuations. If gold miners said today there was no more gold in the world, you can bet the house that gold prices would skyrocket and people would be hoarding their gold like crazy.

I am finding some contradictory statements here.

Let's just see if we can agree on these points:

A finite money supply means that changes in the value of the money can be attributed entirely to demand for the money. Price fluctuations in this case are not caused by changes in supply.

Inflation means increasing money supply. Deflation is a contracting money supply.

Price inflation is increasing prices. Price deflation is decreasing prices.


Now hopefully we agree up to this point, but I will have to respectfully disagree with your last statement.

A finite money supply will not cause people to "hoard [...] like crazy." I think the most commonly used arguing point for this is that the electronics industry does just fine and electronics experience price deflation year after year.

There will come a point when the present value of the appreciated currency is more valuable than the future value of the currency, especially considering downside risk. For example, you save (not "hoard") until you can afford a farm, and you decide that diversifying your assets might be a good idea.

After all, you need a place to live, and land is just as limited as Bitcoins!

What value does a currency have, if it is not actually used? If hoarding were really an issue, the price would reach such a point that eventually people would breakdown and decide to spend. Imagine a BTC price of $1M. Are you telling me you wouldn't cash out at all? Not even to get a new wardrobe? Or fix your plumbing? Or buy some food, to you know, survive another day?

Won't PPC also be owned by ASICs?  If I understand the memory requirements it is vulnerable to ASICs.

Do we want all our cryptocurrencies controlled by elites with giant ASIC farms?

Hell no!

In a perfect environment (where money supply grows/contracts in line with overall economic activity) the relative value of money will not change. If there is a finite money supply but more goods introduced in the economy, then naturally the value of that money increases because the same amount can buy more things. This is basic maths, not even economic theory.

.

When I'm talking about inflation/deflation I'm talking about prices, I'm aware some people relate this to overall money supply but I think just looking at changes in money supply is misleading because it doesn't tell the whole story. Higher money supply COULD cause higher prices, but not necessarily. Anyways this difference in interpretation is not the matter I think.


One of the main factors affecting gold price is indeed related to the supply of gold, so I'm going to stick with this premise that people will prefer to hold on to something that's going to gain value.


Electronics industry suffers from deflation because of innovation and always new and better products coming out, and is not related to the general money supply of an economy. Also electronics are not money that you hold to preserve wealth, they are something that you spend your wealth on to enjoy.


I'm not claiming a deflating currency would not be used AT ALL - of course it would as people need to eat and have bills to pay. I'm saying it would decrease people's willingness to spend it because like you said the value you would need to derive from it would need to be much greater than the current worth of the money. So you go to the shop and see a nice chocolate bar you want to eat, but then you think 'yea I want this, but maybe in couple of weeks I can buy 20% more of this so maybe I'll wait". This kind of thought process shouldn't even be going through the mind of anybody, it just hinders trade and commerce and halts economies and standards of living.

Money supply hardly matters at this early stage of cryptocurrencies. What matters is that we have a sound system and a fair system.
This is why I back PPCoin, because it offers proof of STAKE, not just proof of work (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=168924.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=168924.0)).

Coins are lost in bit coin/saved/hoarded ... these all add deflationary pressure

Deflation can also happen when demand increases and supply does not keep up ... this will be a permanent state for bit coin once the last coins are minted.

Some of you guys have unusual definitions of inflation/deflation. It's not only about money supply, it's about prices. A fixed money supply in a growing economy is going to experience deflation, according to the accepted definition of the word.

Also ASICs aren't going to control PPCoin since it's a proof of stake coin, they might get most of the new coins but, even then, with greatly increased hashing speed would come lower block rewards.

The strict definition in economic terms is in regards to the money supply.

Otherwise you are talking about price inflation/price deflation.

If it is not specified which is being discussed, there will be room left for confusion.

This.

This is no longer the case, look at Investopedia or Wikipedia or anywhere for that matter for a definition - the way the word is used in modern lexicon has changed.


"The term "inflation" originally referred to increases in the amount of money in circulation, and some economists still use the word in this way. However, most economists today use the term "inflation" to refer to a rise in the price level. An increase in the money supply may be called monetary inflation, to distinguish it from rising prices, which may also for clarity be called 'price inflation'"

Source: http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/Commentary/1997/1015.pdf

Has anyone tried to create a P2P currency with stable prices yet?

Since the price of a currency is set by supply and demand, like anything else, you'd have to adjust the supply of the currency with changing demand. You could use transaction volume as a proxy for demand (or is it actual demand?). It's easy enough to increase the money supply with that rule: perhaps you could adjust block rewards. I have been wondering how to decrease the money supply, however: if you have an idea, please let me know. Perhaps this model could create a currency that wasn't a factor in economic decisions: people would be indifferent as to whether they held or spent it. It could then just be used for what money is for: transferring value over time and between people.

BTW, I like the name P2PCoin for it.

I just now read that Freicoin has demurrage (holding) fees, and it occurred to me that you could destroy the coins collected through those fees, reducing the money supply.

No, they are not premined or dead (they are younger then ppcoin by few months), and they are definitely not scam. They are trying to address some economic and social aspects of cryptocurrency, and they are definitely not morons.
 

Some good ideas here but don't you think transaction volume can be gamed easily, for example through constant transfer of money from one of your wallets to the other. Higher transfer fees could dissuade people from gaming the system in this way but low transaction fees are one of the best features of this digital currency so I don't like that option too much.

I can offer no better alternative at this moment, so let me ponder this for a bit.

You could use average transaction count and average transaction size in a difficulty like equation, when he number of transactions goes down and the typical size of transaction goes up that could be a leading indicator of decreasing currency evaluations, in the reverse you might expect increasing currency evaluations and when only one or the other metric changes perhaps only minor currency evaluations are taking place?....

Right now the easiest exploit is probably to hack one of the nodes doing the checkpointing and steal the private keys for signing the checkpoints. Then pick a target merchant and feed them checkpoints for a faulty chain at a rate faster than the main network. Then trade PPC and move BTC off the exchange. The merchant gets stuck on a wrong chain and will (likely) stay there due to the checkpointing policy. Meanwhile, you introduce a transaction into the main network which moves the PPC you used for the merchant to another address.
Haven't studied that attack vector in detail, but it should work, theoretically. In fact, if Sunny would be one of the bad guys, he could probably exploit that himself and frame others or hide behind TOR. However, given what we've seen of Sunny so far, I doubt he would go so far. Anyway - just making the point that the network is centralized.

This attack has been considered before ppcoin's initial release so the checkpoint has built-in confliction detection. Nodes would not accept conflicting checkpoints and would set a warning message. I think Balthazar last week misoperated the checkpoint master in novacoin so the warning was triggered on novacoin users. So this mechanism is working as designed.

Given the current market acceptance of ppcoin, it's likely the central checkpointing could be phased out to be advisory later this year.

Perhaps, and maybe you'd never know till you tested it in the real world, but I'm skeptical there would be a profit in gaming the system that way. I suppose someone could want to make the currency dip to buy low (or if shorting it, if that were possible). If they did a lot of tiny transactions they'd generate a lot of fees relative to how much they were able to move the currency however. And if they did larger transactions, they'd be lowering the value of the currency they were holding by manipulating the inflation rate.

Are you suggesting changes in average transaction size as a direct measure of inflation? Interesting idea. I'm assuming coins traded, the standard measure of volume/demand, is best, however, unless I'm persuaded otherwise. We have a recent example of how # of transactions or size might be misleading: transaction #s soared and transaction size must have plummeted (I'm presuming the latter) when Satoshi Dice came online and withing weeks accounted for more transactions than the rest of the bitcoin network combined.

Excellent stuff.  :)

Can you explain what you mean by that?

1) Can someone explain if POS does actually solve the Byzantine General Problem - and if so why it needs POW aswell. This I don't get..

2) I'm not sure I like the voting in ppCoin.. I want a Mathematical currency. 1+1=2. Etc.. This should not be up for debate.

3) There's nothing for nothing in this world. The Energy used in maintaining the Bitcoin network, by the Bitcoin Miners, is the price we pay for the Crypto-Currency to WORK.. seems fair enough?

If you ask me THE ONLY viable ALT-COIN will be the first coin whose protocol is ABSOLUTELY specified at launch..

All a crypto-currency should be, is basically a piece of paper describing it well enough, so that we can all right our own implementations..

C may be the Grand-Daddy, but Java is the Internet's language.. I want to write one in JAVA from the ground up.. ! 

;D

can someone in a few words explain to me how ppc is invulnerable to 51% atacks?  they are saying over at TRC that they need to implement PPC retargeting to fix ttheir problem.  can somebody expllain in a few words what this means?  and what affect it would have on TRC?  thank you

Also - if PPCoin also uses POW, and having read the specs, it seems like there will be alternate POS and POW blocks, to prevent certain attack vectors, does this not mean that PPCoin will be just as, (1/2), energy hungry as bitcoin ?

I don't think it is an alternating schedule, I think ppc can go all PoS or all PoW as they each have their own difficulty and both types of block verification are kind of competitive with each other.... but that could be a misunderstanding on my part.....

The Bitcoin money supply is finite, and will eventually cease its expansion. At this point, the amount of BTC will be static, unchanging.

This makes it neither inflationary nor deflationary (it's money supply does not increase or contract). However, there will inevitably be some loss of coins due to human error/carelessness. This means the currency will ultimately be slightly deflationary.

Assuming Bitcoin reaches its static point (~year 2140), there are few things that could happen.


It demand continues to increase, possibly because people prefer more exposure to BTC vs other assets, or that the number of users grows, and the BTC price will rise. Remember that for each purchase there is a sale. In the case of increasing demand, a holder of Bitcoin must be persuaded by a higher price to be parted with his BTC stock. Otherwise, he/she is happy with his current exposure to BTC (Maybe he is happy with 40% held in BTC currency).

Demand could also wane at some point. Basically the reverse of the above will lead to a depreciating BTC. For example, lower population, BTC competition, and a discovered vulnerability are all possible causes to a decrease in demand. Again, each seller has a buyer, so the price is determined by a preference for exposure to BTC vs other assets.

If Bitcoin is a great success, it will likely go through periods of both appreciation and depreciation. With this type of stability, the value of BTC would be most dependent on public sentiment. How its value is measured is another topic altogether. It may be that you are no longer trading dollars for BTC, but are instead reaching for a pocket full of yuan, Litecoin, or gold.

JB:  We had extensive discussions about adjustable monetary base in FRC durring the design phase.  As we knew we would have demurrage that would have been the money removal method, and by adjusting our 're-injection' percentage above or below 100% we would effectively grow or shrink supply.  So while the mechanics of doing it were simple the amount was not.

In this thread, Jt and Sepp discuss an adjustable base targets extensively and Jt in my opinion makes some excellent arguments for why the simple first-order statistics from the chain can't be relied on to correctly pick a target supply.
http://www.freicoin.org/adjustable-coin-base-t19-10.html

Also in this thread Jt and several folks discuss if adjustable supply is even necessary after the anticipated stabilizing effects of demurrage are taken into account.  Not everyone was convinced entirely (and Jt was by his own admission playing devils-advocate), it was generally concluded that we should see significant benefits from demurrage even under a static money supply.
http://www.freicoin.org/should-we-fear-deflation-when-there-s-demurrage-t7.html

In this final thread I present my thoughts on creating 'bonds' inside the block-chain and using them initially for the control of demurrage rates, but also money-supply which I conclude must be addressed together.
http://www.freicoin.org/decentralized-auto-adjusting-demurrage-t51.html

Thanks for those links Impaler. I'll read them when I have a chance. I noted your reply in the other thread as well. I've been struggling with how to define demand for a currency myself since I posted in the other thread.

Naming a coin as simple and descriptive as that would actually probably be a big boon to its ability to catch on and perceived ubiquitousness.

dame coin lost me money and its falling harder then a rock people are mining ppc and trc with asic and that is badddd

I would not invest in a stock notated in bitcoin, that operates in the real/non-cryptocurrency world. Because the expected growth of the buying value of bitcoin exceeds every realistic possible earning growth of any imaginable real world business including drug, weapon or sexslave trade.

Which means, that the a bitcoin notated stock will always lose value, calculated in bitcoin. Which gives not to invest the higher EV. You can watch this on bctc.co. Maybe stocks operating only in the bitcoin economy like mining or crypto currency trading are an exception.

It had a reason, why the German Central Bank (Deutsche Bundesbank) in former decades, when they were much more indepedent from politics and really concerned about german economy (like a doctor acting in the sense of Hippocrates), came to the conclusion, that a currency with a slight inflation is the best for economic growth and strength. Maybe there are even better concepts about this (deflation, american economy in the late 19th centrury), but the success of german economy in former decades prove them more or less right.

And again, I strongly vote for a name change to dCoin. Or something without "coin", that sounds like strategic metall, similar to "Tantalum", "Tungsten" or "Aurum". No idea n this direction, yet. The name Peer-To-Peer-Coin comes from a technical angle, which is -  as Sunny King is an excellent engineer - a totally natural choice. But most people do not think functional in logic terms. They think associative and emotional and will not accept this name, because they think of pee-pee.

I looked into the dictonary for "pee-pee". In the sense suggested there (dict.leo.org) even CockCoin would be better. Good to know the meaning of pee-pee, I associated it with the german word "pipi", which is the word children and childish people use for urine.

it's going to start with "P" coz the address starts with P

The Nintendo Wii (pronounced wee, as in urine) has been a spectacular success selling 10's of millions of units despite it's name.

I honestly never thought "pee pee" when looking at PPCoin til now.  Thanks guys!  Since PPC addresses start with P, I agree we should keep the P.  I also like P2Coin (and dCoin but not with what I just said; a new cryptocurrency could use that).  That might be easier for the general population to accept than PPCoin or P2PCoin and it has the "coolness" factor like W3 does.

What about ICUPCoin?  ;)

I don't think that this is a question of we or us. Sunny King is the one in charge.

You're right, but we can still call it whatever we want.  Maybe enough of us might convince him to change it, if we even want him to.  I'm just sharing my thoughts on it. ;p

What about Peercoin (PRC)?

Pretty damn good. I own P2PCoin.org if anyone wants to put it to good use.

I had the same idea. But why "PRC" instead of "PC"?

Peercoin is a solid name and doesn't stray much from PPcoin. PRC because it has 3 letters, same convention as other coins (bitcoin isn't BC after all).

Speaking for myself, I'd buy more coins if they were called peercoins.

PPCoin getting some coverage (along with Litecoin & Bitcoin) in a recent article in the MIT Technology Review:

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/513661/bitcoin-isnt-the-only-cryptocurrency-in-town/

Yes Tom has emailed me a short interview last week. Didn't expect it come out this fast. Yay!

I read in another thread sunny has no interest in changing name
also would cause problems with the 'stock tickers' on sites and in past articles and threads

tbh 'pp' logo has done no harm to paypal!
it's short and easy to remember

having said all that, peercoin is a great name
but ideally if name was changed how about peoplecoin?
2 p's in that!
could be the coin of the people
more coins, cheaper, low energy

I also think, which may be contrary to what many here think, that psychologically
bitcoin wont go to the moon in price becuase it has to win over the public at large, and paying say $500 for a coin
is too much of a mindf*ck
also if you're buying a tshirt or whatever off someone online and costs $3 you can easily send 0.00001 say and miss a nought and pay 10 times too much!

too few coins was one of the big 'mistakes' in the grand design of bitcoin, but of course i guess they never dreamed would get even this far

i really like ppcoin though

btc,ltc,ppc only 3 worth considering just in my limited experience and reading

Agreed that PPCoin does not have a nice name. But at least it is really an altcoin because of new values it brings up.

I'm going to jump into this old thread and see if anybody cares about what I have to say.

I think y'all are right about how important POS is to the future of cryptocurrency. I do not touch POW coins anymore.

I wanted to help tip everyone off about YACoin (Yet Another Coin). Maybe most of you already know about it, but it seems to me like it is the best cryptocurrency invented so far. Not only does it include the advancements made by Balthazar on NVC; it also includes a new hashing algorithm (called scrypt-jane) that changes its memory requirements over time, which ensures that only CPU's will really be able to mine it. As a result, it is distributed very well.

Unfortunately, it looks like interest in YAC dwindled once its first bubble popped. However, I think it has fantastic long-term potential until something better comes along.

Anyway, just thought I'd throw in my 2 bitcents.