Waiting for Microcash

I guess I am tired of waiting for Microcash, it came full of promises and the screen shots are very promising, but the delays again and again makes me wonder if it had died even before it has gone Beta.   Won't be bothered to wait some more.  It is a great pity as the features that was promised are very very interesting.   I think I will just concentrate on Litecoin for the time being which seemed to be the most promising of alternate cryptographic coins.

LTC More Profitable than BTC

This is the fourth week in which LTC is more profitable than mining of BTC using AMD cards.   Hopefully this trend continues.  In the past, every launch of an alternate cryptographic coin, started out well but ended up worthless against the BTC due to pump and dump action.  LTC is one of the longest lasting and still continuing to be strong.   Interesting to have a contender for Bitcoin.

Microcash

I am still waiting anxiously for Microcash, hope it turns out to be as good as it claims.

Microcash

On the Alternative coins side, I do not see much news, it seems extremely quiet with no alternative coin able to hold its own against Bitcoin, but I am waiting for Microcash which seems to be the largest initiative at the moment.  Hopefully will be able to try it out when it launches and keep readers updated.

Microcash Launch

We are still waiting for the launch of Microcash, this will be the latest of the alternative coins and looks interesting enough.   Wondering why the delay, hopefully it will come out soon so that we can try mining it.

Microcash

Seems to be very quiet on the alternative coins front with the exception of the announcement of Micro Cash.   Hopefully they can generate enough new interest in alternative coins with different uses from Bitcoin.  Namecoin is a good example.

GeistGeld

GeistGeld coin is known more for its innovation rather than trying to replace the Bitcoin.   The founder is an extremely smart person trying to break the speed limit to one block per 7 seconds!   As given on their web site, this is what they intend to achieve.

Geist Geld is an experimental, innovative cryptocurrency which aims to implement the highest sustainable blockrate while ensuring maximum versatility and feature-richness by serving as an attractive platform for a community of enthusiasts seeking to investigate and deploy novel cryptocurrency features.

I had great fun installing and mining Geist Geld coins.   But I seems to be having problems downloading the chains anymore.   Hopefully the founder does not stop his innovation but continues to press on for further and newer innovations.

Microcash

Solidcoin evolved from a GPU coin to a GPU resistant coin.  It is now going to evolve yet another time into an interesting product known as Microcash.   Copied from Coinhunter Posting in the Bitcointalk, the features are as below

*) MicroCash is going to include every SolidCoin in it,
*) When MicroCash launches there is going to be a "Launch Bonus" , meaning mining rewards are going to be MUCH higher than normal for a week or so. Total inflation from the bonus will be 100K
*) MicroCash will not have trust nodes
*) MicroCash will have a similar hashing and pool mechanism as SolidCoin
*) MicroCash will not have trust accounts. Meaning the only coins brought forward will be the 2.8 million user coins
*) MicroCash will have an alternate 51% mining protection mechanism which will mean the power of the network is more in the users hands
*) MicroCash will have a different address format. It looks like micro(QSM3PKS3EOZBUZO4A)cash

I think a lot of us Alternate coin fans will be anxiously waiting for the launch.   Wishing Coinhunter a smooth launch!

SolidCoin 2

SolidCoin 2 is announced on September 17, 2011, 07:18:33 AM.   Instead of SolidCoin 1 which is GPU, this was GPU resistant.   The additional advantages as described by Coinhunter :

1) You can still mine other coins like Bitcoin whilst simultaneously mining SolidCoins on your CPU
2) The amount of coins generated will be the same as the network adjusts difficulty based on number of hashes
3) No more need to run a separate miner, you can connect to your own client and pools from SolidCoin v2.0 itself, much easier to get your friends mining which will bring balance to the network

SolidCoin joined the interesting GPU resistant coins such as FairBrix, TeneBrix and Litecoin.

Some Thoughts on Alternate Coins

Bitcoins is by far the most popular coins for transaction usage.   I think it is not logical for anyone to try to setup something to compete against it.   Namecoin is a good example of a separate usage, but I feel that the merged mining somehow reduce it to a subordinate of Bitcoin.   Alternate Coins does have its uses.   I feel that for subsequent Alternate Coins, it would be useful for the founders to identify their usages for example Namecoins and try not to tie to Bitcoins.  Problems with tying to Bitcoins are that miners often make use of the less difficulty in mining when the coins just started, mine and change these coins to Bitcoins.  At the end of it, such Alternate Coins have not much value left especially when merged mined.   A thought for Alternate Coins, think out your own niche and stick there.

Video Introducing Litecoin

A short and interesting video introducing Litecoin

Litecoin

Litecoin is arguably the most popular GPU resistant coin available.   While other coins come and go, Litecoin still maintain a certain interest among some groups.   It has been liken as silver compared to Bitcoin which is gold.   I must say that the founder is respectable in the Bitcointalk forums and willing to listen to advice to evolve Litecoin.  

Fairbrix

Fairbrix was announced on October 01, 2011, 09:36:57 PM。 I would say that it is not as well prepared as Tenebrix in that it still required the miner from Tenebrix to mine.   It is another of the so call GPU resistant coin but had no loaded Genesis block.  As given by Coblee of Bitcointalk, The main difference between Fairbrix and Tenebrix is that Fairbrix does not come with 7.7 million premined coins.  In fact it has only 100 blocks premined.

Fairbrix details as given by Coblee

Fairbrix details:
 - scrypt proof of work
 - 25 coins per block. this stays the same forever
 - blocks found every 5 minutes on average
 - 2016 blocks difficulty retargeting (1 week on average)
 - default rpc port: 8645
 - default port: 8591 (open this in your router)

To be frank, I like this coin a lot, but it doesn't seem to catch on under pressure from Tenebrix as well as the later Litecoin, it goes into oblivion.   Hopefully someone can revive it for other purposes such as a MMORPG currency, that would certainly be interesting.

Solid Coin 2

I will skip this for the time being, have emailed the developer of the coin for more information on the launch dates etc.   Will be posting when I have more information with me.   Now we are basically assuming 3 GPU Resistant Coins, Tenebrix, Fairbrix and Litecoin.

This is a special method of mining for Litecoin using a new software known as the Reaper which can take in the processing power of GPU which somehow broke the convention that the coins are suppose to be GPU Resistant.

GPU Resistance Coins

As stated in an earlier post, the growing difficulty of Bitcoin forces the use of GPUs.   A group of enterprising and innovative Bitcoin adopters decided to do something different.   That is to build a coin that is only suitable for CPUs but no GPUs.   I am trying to find out if SolidCoin2 is the first or Tenebrix.  But at this moment it seems that Tenebrix is the first GPU resistant Bitcoin.   It was announced on September 26, 2011, 12:09:44 AM.   They are using scrypt which is friendly to CPU and not to GPU.   This has one major advantage, miners can use their spare CPU cycles instead of investing in GPUs.   But the appearance of Tenebrix leads to an interest in CPU only coins and also more innovations ahead!

Turning back the Clock

There was a time when the ever increasing difficulty and the usage of GPU which consumes huge amounts of power started a debate on whether to revert back to CPU mining.   For CPU mining, other algorithms have to be included so that GPU would not have an advantage over CPU and CPU can be a mining tool.   Given that all computers need CPU, it will cost less on the equipment as well as provide for additional income for those having CPU spare cycles.

Some of the innovative guys at Bitcoin started experimenting with the concept and they did come back with a series of interesting CPU coins which I will discuss in a subsequent blog post.

Compare Bitcoin and Namecoin

I think it is interesting to see a comparison between Bitcoin and Namecoin.  Bitcoin is the pioneer while Namecoin is the 2nd cryptographic currency to appear.

I find it a great pity that they merged mined Bitcoin and Namecoin, this cause any Namecoin miner to switch to Bitcoin mining instead because of the difficulty in mining once the hash rates of Bitcoin flows into Namecoin.

Why do People Mine Alternate Coins?

Bitcoin is at an extremely high level of difficulty, whereas for alternative coins, when they first started, their difficulties are quite low.   It is attractive to mine them to exchange for Bitcoins.   In fact this is the killer part of it.  When people mine alternate coins, they do so not for trading or saving but to exchange for Bitcoins.  As the selling continues, the prices drop until it is no longer profitable and the alternate coins die away.   The situation now with merged mining is the opposite, you can mine Bitcoins with alternate coins.   Therefore using the hash rates of Bitcoins, it artificially inflates the difficulty of the alternate coins being merged mined.   Therefore no one is likely to mine alternate coins alone but as a by product of Bitcon merged mining causing the prices to go near 1 Satoshi for some of the coins.

SolidCoin issues

Solidcoin ran firstly into some issues especially with an exchange called Moonco.in.   This was the exchange I was using also for Solidcoin, it was hacked or something to that effect and the problems started.  Whatever problems was really quite technical and was discussed among the experts at Bitcointalk.  

Solid Coin

Solidcoin is a very interesting coin as it started out with a lot of controversy.   There are two main parties, that of Coinhunter who is the owner of the coin and his rival Bitcoinexpress.  I would say both are fascinating people and super intelligent.   So their conversations are interesting to read.   Basically Solidcoin started on 20th of August 2011.   There are suppose to be quite a lot of improvements as listed:

• Faster transaction processing
• Protection against pump-n-dump by large pools
• Twice daily difficulty retargets
• 3 minute blocks, 32 SolidCoins per block
• Maximum coin generation of 18.9 million (18900000) to be reached by ~2022
• Fixed transactions fees instead of unknown variable fees in BTC
• Interface improvements
• JSON API improvements
• Different address format

i0coin

i0coin has a very interesting start.   It was setup in oppose to ixcoin because of the 580 000 premined coins of ixcoin.  Therefore i0coin, "0" meaning no premined coins.   It started as an idea in the Bitcointalk forums.   It has similar characteristics as ixcoin except for no premining.   But it is a pity it suffered the same fate as ixcoin.   The hashing rate decrease till pathetic levels until the start of the merged mining.   But i0coin basically has not much value and is more of a byproduct of the merged mining.   I find it a pity as I like i0coin a lot too.

Ixcoin

Ixcoin was announced by Thomas Nasakioto on August 10, 2011, 05:41:29 PM as a Bitcoin fork.   Each block consists of 96 coins with twice the inflation rate as Bitcoin with 21 million coins as limit - same as Bitcoin.   There was a premine of about 580 000 coins.   This eventually leads to some argument which caused the formation of i0coin, "0" supposedly to mean that there is no premine.   I guess it is some friendly competition despite the postings on the forums.  It has the features below:

1. Shorter maturity period
2. New blockchain
3. New key format

Ixcoin project is here at Ixcoin Sources.   But the prices are too low and with merged mining causing the difficulty to increase too much to be profitable mining it, it is more of a byproduct of Bitcoin mining which is a pity as I find the coin very innovative.   Hopefully someone can resurrect the coins maybe make it part of the virtual currency of a popular online game for example.

Ixcoin I0coin

Bitcoin has been popular, but Namecoin isn't too popular even though there are diehard advocates.   But because of the Bitcoin increased in popularity and also in value, there are some forks of Bitcoin starting to appear, ixcoin and the i0coin.   Both was popular for a while before fading off.   They were being revitalized because of merged mining, something that had also happened to Namecoin.   But the value was far too low to be considered Bitcoin competitor at all.   Miners mine them because the mining pools had merged mining for these. 

Why has Bitcoin miners turn to mining pools?   Simple reason was it was taking far too long to solo mine due to the difficulty.  Mining pool allows for the pooling of hashing power so that you can some Bitcoins regularly rather than to wait months for a Bitcoin block.   I will be discussing about Mining Pools in the subsequent Blog Posts.

With regards to ixcoin and i0coin, there is some interest in the naming.   It seems that ixcoin was premined and there was some objection that the creator can profit from the premining.   i0coin as in "0" was to say that there is no premining and to act as a competitor to ixcoin and serve as an objection to the premining.   Though I would say some premining may be needed as you really do need bounties to start the ball rolling for the coins you are developing.   You may need an Exchange, you may need mining pools.  By providing bounties for such development, it hasten the progress of the coin development.

Namecoin Client

Namecoin GUI is not as friendly as that of Bitcoin and the rest.   It is more of command line.  There are attempts to make the GUI more friendly but the adaptation rate aren't as good.  Most are still using command lines.  To get your address for information you will need to key in as below.

The rest all needs command lines to set.   One lucky thing is that those using Namecoin are normally experts themselves supporting the Dot Bit domain and hence a lot do have the technical knowledge to use the command lines instead.

Namecoin Usage

Given the more specialized nature of Namecoin, NMC, I would like to give more information on its usage.  I think this video is very useful.

Namecoin Mining

Namecoin used to be a much smaller niche than Bitcoin, the prices of Namecoin is extremely low compared to that of Bitcoin.   One Namecoin is only about 0.006 Bitcoin and the difficulty to mine the Namecoin is tremendous due to the new merged mining.   The difficulty of mining Namecoin at this moment is 639,363 as compared to Bitcoin 1,577,913 and it is just worth 0.06 of Bitcoin.  It is more cost effective to buy Namecoin from the market if you need it for the Dot Bit registrations and functions.   Reason being merged mining allow Bitcoin and Namecoin and other coins to be mined together hence increasing the hashes and the difficulties and driving down the prices of the other coins tremendously till they are nearly worthless.

The chart at Vircurex.com shows how bad the prices of the other alternative coins, Namecoins included as compared to Bitcoin, BTC.   It is basically far more effective to buy the other coins than to mine it if you are not using merged mining.  For merged mining, such coins are now byproducts of mining Bitcoins.

NameCoin Video Introduction

I think this will help us understand NameCoin or NMC better given that it is radically different from Bitcoin which is far more easier to understand as it is only about money.  NMC is a special purpose cryptographic coin.

NameCoins Introduction

NameCoins is one of the earliest alternative cryptographic coins after the Bitcoins.   It is not purely for monetary purposes.  It has one very unique use which is that of providing for p2p domain name registrations.   NameCoins or NMC for short is actually promoting the Dot Bit domain name extensions.   It's purpose is to grow this decentralized Dot Bit domain name extension.   Due to its specialized nature, it has its own die hard advocates and even though it is under a lot of competition from Bitcoins and that its value had fallen a lot, there are still die hard supporters wanting to see the project through.  

Bitcoin is one of the cryptocurrencies in that they uses computing powers to generate out the virtual coins.   But there are however, a lot of interesting ideas being spawned out either for fun, to try to replace Bitcoin or try to complement Bitcoin.   Till now we have not seen any serious challengers to Bitcoin yet.   But it is fun to track those alternate cryptocurrencies, how their ideas come about and how they flourish or sank.   I setup this blog to document these interesting development of the past as well as the future as I am sure more alternate cryptocurrencies will come into play as the geniuses behind them push out their inventions and innovations.