Guugll Search: July 2014

I chose Vericoin for its unique outlook on decentralization of PoS (Proof of Stake) within its network. Vericoin uses VeriSMS and VeriBit for this purpose, where VeriSMS allows users to store Vericoin using SMS and withdraw it later, and VeriBit allows you to pay companies accepting Bitcoin, with Vericoin. VeriSMS is capable of being spoofed and hackers can withdraw your Vericoin to their address. Vericoin advises users of this service to not store large amounts of Vericoin through it.

Vericoin is quick to the draw when problems occur with their coin’s block-chain. Mintpal suffered an attack recently and lost 30% of the total Vericoin in existence. Vericoin responded by forking their block-chain before the situation occurred, thus allowing everything to go back to normal. The trade off is that any transactions that occur after the incident will not be available on the new fork. You can read an interview that CCN’s Clay Michael Gillespie had with Vericoin about the incident.

Vericoin Review

Market Cap: $3,925,405

Maximum coins issued: 26,751,452.35 VRC mined (Total coins in existence: 26,797,500 VRC)

Hash algorithm: Scrypt

PoW or PoS: Both originally, now only POS

Is it able to be mined: Not any more (POW finished May 17, 2014.)

Exchanges:

Cryptsy: http://cryptsy.com/

Coins-e:http://coins-e.com/

Bter: http://bter.com/

Block explorer: CryptoID

Launch date: May 10, 2014

The following is taken directly from Vericoin’s theorem on how POS can remain decentralized and why it’s important.

One of the more important and less discussed challenges in preserving decentralization, which is important for both PoW and PoS coins, is ownership. Centralized ownership can have a direct impact on the decentralization of PoS coins but also has an enormous role in the centralization of power, of PoW coins. In some ways this is an aspect of decentralized currency that is rarely addressed publicly, yet has an enormous effect on the real world decentralization of control.

A simple example is as such if a coins technology is 100% decentralized yet the ownership is distributed such that 10 people own the largest aggregated share of the coin, then inevitably the market value, coin access, future distribution, application and so on, can be directly controlled by those 10 people. Ten individuals with excess power will more than likely be plagued with excess corruption. In this case, the purity of the technology has little effect on the real world decentralization of power and control, and we are immediately back to square one.

That is why VeriCoin’s emphasis is two-fold; A decentralized, secure, proof of stake transaction core and the most accessible technology possible, for the largest number of individuals all over the world. That is why VeriSMS and VeriBit are so important; they remove entry barriers and improve the odds of decentralized ownership being dominant. Accessibility of use can enable an exponential adoption rate and preserve true decentralization of money, power and control. We plan to engage the world with this approach and believe it is the most efficient path to achieving true decentralization, and ultimately enable voluntary access to the many.

What problem does it solve?

Vericoin seeks to resolve the issue of PoS making its coin become centralized with only a selected few owning large quantities. As you can see by the block explorer rich list, their efforts seem to be working for the most part. My guess is the account with 14.36% at press time, is the same address Vericoin said, originally had 9% and was due to being an exchange. After that address in the rich list, it jumps to 6.34%, 4.91%, 3.02%, and the rest have around less than 2%.

Who are the developers?

David Boehm, Patrick Nosker and Douglas Pike are the developers, and you can learn more about them on the team’s page.

What are the coin’s future endeavors?

Vericoin has an Android open beta wallet, and right now, and they’re working on creating a new GUI for their wallet as well.

source: http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/vericoin-review-unique-coin-decentralized-pos/2014/07/25

Vericoin Review

SYSCOIN

Some more news has been announced by the SysCoin developers. Even though the pre-sale is currently going on, and going quite well, they did have to rethink the mining rewards strategy. Let’s take a look at what is changing.

The biggest concern is the fact that there will be a lot of coins available on the market one the pre-sale has concluded. As we know, it wouldn’t be surprising if some people dump their pre-sale coins as soon as possible to take their profits and look for the next coin.

Mining Reward Schedule

Cumulative Days Days @ Reward Level Ends @ Blockheight Block Reward

180 180 259200 128

360 540 518400 96

720 1260 1555200 80

1080 2340 3110400 64

1440 3780 5184000 48

1800 5580 7776000 40

Rewards are 32 per block after height 7776000, until the 2bil coins is reached.

As of this writing, there are three and a half left on the SysCoin pre-sale. This time will be used to work on developing a built-in escrow feature for SysCoin. Please keep in mind there is no guarantee this will be finished before the coin launches, but it’s definitely being looked at.

Official announcements : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=587080.msg7996559#msg7996559

source: http://www.cryptoarticles.com/crypto-news/syscoin-mining-rewards-update-client-to-have-built-in-escrow

SYSCOIN

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Feathercoin to the moon

Do you want to have your nick (or real name) on spacecraft which will carry FTC to the moon?

In the picture above you can see orange custom-printable area (the one on the right).

It will contain:

FTC logo

FTC address with 1 FTC loaded

20 nicks or real names (or both) of donators

Catchword: “Feathercoin to the moon”

+ spacecraft will transmit our custom message

Complete info here:

http://pocketspacecraft.com/about/mission-to-the-moon/

We will buy Lunar scout for 199£ =

access to the online Scout designer

most of surface available for printing

custom message transmitted (<140 characters)

a replica Thin-Film Scout in a protective sleeve

our own Scout spacecraft that will be photographed as it is launched into space and attempts to land on Earth from orbit

a second Thin-Film Spacecraft that will be photographed when it is launched into space to attempt to land on the Moon

Cost is 350FTC per person and there is only 20 positions avaliable.

First come, first served.

No refunds, read carefully mission site to understand the risks of space exploration.

6riyz2pE239maPwK6KYMRAAsbowFvaPTTv

1. mirrax confirmed

2. Calem paid

3. reserved for ChekaZ

4. KrisDavison paid

5. Flobdeth paid

6. MrWyrm confirmed

7. Daniel Ščerba confirmed

8. iawgoM paid

9. Ruthie paid

10. Bushstar paid

11. Pryderi paid

12. ChisJ reserved

13. Ghostlander reserved

14. fyrputt reserved

15. Linus paid

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

Please reply in this thread if you donated and choose if you want to have your nick or your real name (or both) on the ship.

source: https://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?%2Ftopic%2F7458-send-ftc-to-the-moon-350ftc-each-20-positions%2F

Feathercoin to the moon

Vericoin technological innovations

Vericoin (VRC) has had a spectacular run since its launch in May. Back then, the coin was trading for $0.007. Today, one Vericoin is worth about $0.27. That’s a gain of more than 3757 percent!

Why all the hubbub? Fundamentally, Vericoin’s not much different than other proof-of-stake altcoins. It pays a variable interest rate based on the number of users who have their wallets open on their computers. This incentive to keep a wallet active ensures network security and stability. The coin also offers fast transaction times: 10 minutes for 10 confirmations.

Vericoin has moved aggressively to launch new features; specifically:

Veribit lets users utilize Vericoin to pay for items online anywhere bitcoin is accepted.

VeriSMS lets Vericoin users send cash via text message.

Development is underway on a VeriBank, which will feature a “hot wallet” for checking and “cold wallet” for savings.

While these features are impressive, I’m not sure it’s enough to make Vericoin a long-term buy. Veribit’s the neatest feature, but it’s one that I suspect a Paypal-like entity (perhaps Bitpay or Coinbase) will handle in the future by letting users pay for transactions in whatever major altcoin they’d like (in my mind, such a system would be powered by Ripple’s protocol).

That said, Vericoin’s moving faster and more proficiently than most of the altcoin teams out there. They’ve hired a PR firm, and they seem committed to continual innovation. If they can keep that up, it’ll be a coin to watch. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the developers get hired away to work at VC-backed startups.

source: http://crypt.la/2014/07/03/invest-vericoin/

Vericoin technological innovations

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Ashton Kutcher Tells: Invest in Bitcoin

Bitcoin has really started to creep into every subculture, no longer only paid attention to by people looking to rebel against the government. Even actor, and tech investor, Ashton Kutcher is publicly recommending that people invest in Bitcoin.

“What are some smart ways I can put $25 to work for me?”

Ashton recently answered this exact question on Quora. His response, although heavily promoting a startup that he is an investor in, had a big focus on Bitcoin.

I would deploy a barbell strategy. Go to stockpile.com and buy fractional shares in blue chip stocks. Then buy bitcoin. Do this every other week for four weeks and on the fifth week buy a beer for someone you admire or gift someone either some bitcoin or fractional shares of stock. I’m a firm believer that generosity has a multiplying effect. Happiness, freedom, peace, and financial security are only sustained by sharing them with others.

Good Advice

Ashton is smart, most people don’t realize that when he dropped out of school to pursue modeling and acting he was a biochemical engineering student. I have also met and worked with Ashton on multiple occasions during my days designing product at the live video site Ustream. He is smart, and very tall.

His suggestion to purchase small amounts of Bitcoin habitually would have been successful if you had been doing it for the past year or more, presumably, although not guaranteed, this will continue in the future.

Celebrity Promotion of Bitcoin

Bitcoin is increasingly becoming mainstream. Major retailers, politicians, musicians, and now actors, are introducing their audiences to Bitcoin.

This is the same exact thing that happened with Twitter.

First nobody knew what Twitter was, then the tech community started using it, and then finally the world’s influencers started to use it, and that’s when Twitter really started to go mainstream. Bitcoin and Twitter aren’t all that different from each other.

source: http://www.followthecoin.com/ashton-kutcher-tells-internet-invest-bitcoin/

Ashton Kutcher Tells: Invest in Bitcoin

BLACKHALO PUBLIC BETA

The BlackHalo project has been announced for quite some time now, and what better day to release the public beta than on Independence Day? Let’s take a quick look at what we can expect of the public beta, and how you can get the client installed!

If you have no idea what BlackHalo will offer, you might want to read up on our previous article here. If you want a quick version : BlackHalo offers innovation beyond Bitcoin and limitless real world applications beyond Crypto.

Keep in mind BlackHalo is still in beta, so start out small when it comes to transactions. As it stands right now, the beta schedule will run for an entire week, in order to collect as much feedback from users, and to streamline the whole process.

There will be frequent updates during the time the BlackHalo beta period lasts. The client will also be translated to Chinese in the near future. The IRC automatic contracting bot is disabled, as there is still some work to be done.

For a full list of BlackHalo features, as well as more information about which features and changes are coming next, you can click here. Cold staking is one of the features we can expect in BlackHalo version 1.1, and I’m looking forward to that!

source: http://www.cryptoarticles.com/crypto-news/blackhalo-public-beta-available-celebrate-independence-day-with-financial-independence

BLACKHALO PUBLIC BETA

BLACKCOIN MANDATORY UPDATE INCLUDES POS 2.0

There is a mandatory client update for BlackCoin, which was released just minutes ago. This updates’ main feature will be Proof-of-Stake 2.0, but there are some other important fixes as well, so let’s take a closer look!

It has been announced for weeks now, how BlackCoin would bring us the new level of Proof-of-Stake, called PoS 2.0. As the current PoS system has a fair few vulnerabilities, rat4, the main BlackCoin developer, started working on a solution.

In our previous BlackCoin article, we talked a little bit about the changes PoS 2.0 would bring to the table. As the whitepaper was released, you might want to read up on that as well. You can find our previous article here.

PoS 2.0 is the main focus of this mandatory BlackCoin client update, but some other things are addresses as well. For example, there were a few DoS vulnerabilities, which have now been patched. You can find a full list of changes here.

The download links for the updated BlackCoin client can be found here :

http://blackcoin.co

source: http://www.cryptoarticles.com/crypto-news/blackcoin-mandatory-update-includes-pos-20

BLACKCOIN MANDATORY UPDATE INCLUDES POS 2.0