Environmental concerns of Bitcoin

[grum2Hall]

If someone comes up with something better, we'll switch. Until then, the energy use isn't wasted.

Peercoin, or PPC, which currently primarily uses Proof of Work, but eventually plans to switch completely to Proof of stake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake), based on coin age, could be well be the way to go, at least environmentally. Since Peercoin will eventually stop relying on mining, and switch over to Proof of Stake which doesn't require any complex computation, this should serve the dual purpose of not affecting the environment, while at the same time, eliminating the threat of a 51% attack.

The only concern I have with Peercoin is the transaction fees, which is 0.01 PPC at the moment, no matter how big or small your transaction is. Wouldn't this reduce the liquidity in the system and make it more difficult to make micro-payments? I'm really having a hard time wrapping my head around this... Perhaps someone could help me understand why there is a fixed transaction fee at play here?

[grum2Hall]

If someone comes up with something better, we'll switch. Until then, the energy use isn't wasted.

I would say Primecoin's specification is better than that of Bitcoin in almost every way, it is even ten times faster (Litecoin is in-between). However, I think people will not be ready to make the switch until more sites and exchanges accept other cryptocurrencies.

I just took a look at the Wikipedia article on [[Primecoin]] (which the idiots at Wikipedia are considering deleting), and I'd say Primecoin's specification is worse (less secure) than Bitcoin in almost every way. But hey, that's just my opinion.

Out of curiosity, which security aspects of Primecoin do you think are inferior?

I think Primecoin is less secure than Bitcoin because of its different proof-of-work system (no ASICs, at least not yet), because of its faster block generation time (more orphans), because of its "smoother difficulty adjustment" (easier for an attacker to manipulate the difficulty), and because of its "self-adjusting block reward" (allows an attacker to manipulate the block reward).

You make several great points. Primecoin's POW is definitely untested in my opinion too.

By the way, I'm now arguing on Primecoin's deletion talk page that it should be kept. I don't know how they can even think about deleting it... lol.

[raspcoin]

If someone comes up with something better, we'll switch. Until then, the energy use isn't wasted.

I would say Primecoin's specification is better than that of Bitcoin in almost every way, it is even ten times faster (Litecoin is in-between). However, I think people will not be ready to make the switch until more sites and exchanges accept other cryptocurrencies.

I just took a look at the Wikipedia article on [[Primecoin]] (which the idiots at Wikipedia are considering deleting), and I'd say Primecoin's specification is worse (less secure) than Bitcoin in almost every way. But hey, that's just my opinion.

Out of curiosity, which security aspects of Primecoin do you think are inferior?

I think Primecoin is less secure than Bitcoin because of its different proof-of-work system (no ASICs, at least not yet), because of its faster block generation time (more orphans), because of its "smoother difficulty adjustment" (easier for an attacker to manipulate the difficulty), and because of its "self-adjusting block reward" (allows an attacker to manipulate the block reward).

You make several great points. Primecoin's POW is definitely untested in my opinion too.

By the way, I'm now arguing on Primecoin's deletion talk page that it should be kept. I don't know how they can even think about deleting it... lol.

Agreed on both points. Primecoin must first gain traction in order to be able to prove its security. But that request for deletion on Wikipedia is ridiculous.

[tinybike]

Because 1) Boinc projects are not suitable for ProofOfWork (hard to find, easy to validate); 2) Boinc projects were/are centralized; 3) The Bitcoin creators 4 years ago did not anticipate and are not responsible for today's "insane waste of computing power"

I don't think 1 and 2 are always true -- for example, take protein folding.  It's hard to calculate a protein's ground state, but easy to validate against NMR or crystal structures.  It also doesn't need to be centralized; anyone can plug into the Protein Data Bank and get a full list of experimentally solved structures.

The Bitcoin creators did not anticipate that Bitcoins would blow up the way they have, but clearly, they knew that they were wasting some computing power, and that the amount would grow if/when Bitcoins became popular.