Demand is simply perception,
Perception is based on believes,
So when one stops believing all the crap talk about Primecoin, such as usefulness for scientific research (because some smart mathematicians have spoken out in this forum confirming no validity of such arguments, but pure speculations) the demand will fall. Shortly followed by price drop and VPS mining farms down.
By the time only botnet scammers remain operating, Primecoin is over, paving way for PrimeClone or something else, or perhaps Sunny can make a new coin based on new innovative hashing algorithm!
Even his supporters got pissed when he announced Primecoin last month!
This is hilarious, check it out.Who cares what the PPC supporters said a month ago? What are they saying today?
Personally I laugh over you "smart mathematicians" comment. Some of the most intelligent math people I know are downright stupid when it comes to dealing with people and real world things. I once commented in a math thread how 2^9(512) was twice as large as 2^8(256) and a PhD jumped all over me saying it was only 1.125 times as large. Technically we were both right, 256*2=512 and 9/8=1.125, but it depends on your point of view, and i caused one heck of an unintentional flame war over a simple statement.
Primecoin does have value other than electricity waste, just as the concept behind Curecoin has value other than electricity waste. The work done on primecoin may one day be usable on things like curecoin, your statements lack insight. Bitcoin will just continue to be a waste of electricity.
Your point on the 'no limit' VS limit, while intriging, is also kind of shoprtsighted. Look at playstation for example. When the PS3 came out, the people who got one of the first ones eagerly sold them to people who had to be 1st and made a bundle. I bought my PS3 over a year after the release and I paid the same as the people who got the 1st ones. Millions of PS3's have been produced since I bought mine, but I can still buy a new one for roughly what I bought mine at.
Now look at Magic the Gathering. Bitcoin = Beta, Litecoin = Unlimited, ?coin = Revised and all the other altcoins = the various expansions. MTG is both limited and unlimited in a way, kinda like the various crytpocoins. I remember Ice Age coming out and getting a Jester's Cap, worth $50 at the time! Since some of the early cards were over $2,000 I held on to it. Today it's worth $5 and some of those $2,000 cards are under $400 and some has gone up insanely (mainly due to CGC grading). No one cared THAT much about grading when they were $2000, but boy they sure do now. Bitcoins don't have that luxury though, they aren't all that rare (I've mined over 5 BTC total between mining it and ALT coins) and their value depends on demand. April's jump to $250 after it 'went public' and people wanted one lasted microseconds. The recent plummet to $60 showed a lot of people bailing on it. The current price seems close to the 'stable point', but that depends on the next hype or bailout.
If you want to use real-world terms, Bitcoin is technically *not* a currency, it is a commodity, like Gold, Silver, Tin, Iron, etc. People call the halving of block rewards similar to Gold mining... the longer you mine the less is left available to find. Bitcoin will end up like Gold today... mined by a stubborn few indivduals for the minute flecks and chunks they find and mass-mined by corporations as long as the cost does not exceed the income. The more BTC climbs in price, the more you will see huge hubs mining it just like the gold mining companies useing acid-leeching to get the last minute dregs of gold from a huge pile of dirt.
Where does that leave Primecoin? I see Primecoin as iron to BTC's gold. There's a heck of a lot of it available to be mined, but it's at a fixed rate due to demand.
ASICs are the gold corporations of the BTC world. Problem is that they are flooding into the marketplace and soon only the strong will 'survive' as difficulty climbs through the roof. I think most people's estimates are way off... I forsee bitcoin reaching 1PH by Sept 1 with a likelyhood of 6PH+ by Oct 1. Maybe now is the time to invest in BTC... the price increase caused by difficulty increases will do more damage to ALL altcoins than all your 'predictions'.
