Thanks for the detailed response, its much appreciated. I'm still not convinced by much of what you're saying though, or at least, it doesn't fit with what Gatra has said so I am confused. Again, I'm not here to fight, I welcome being set straight. Math and computers were not my major.
There is much more work to make a successful scientific computing cryptocurrency than having the idea and picking an algorithm. It took 4.5 years for the first of such coin to appear after Bitcoin and only a half year for the second one to show up. We see that the nut is difficult to crack but once it is cracked it is relatively easy to make a similar one.
This was answered above. The way you've phrased this sounds like Gatra benefited from Sunny and XPM release. Is that accurate? What is it based on?
I don't see why it is a big deal. There are about 40,000 Cunningham chains found by Primecoin, with less than 10 million prime numbers. If anyone wants to do research, testing these prime candidates one by one is no big deal. The Primecoin miner network has done most of the heavy lifting by prividing a candidate set that is 99% true. Many records have been broken and these C-chains are proven true.
I agree, its not a big deal. At the end of the day I appreciate that the data produced by both coins is useful, but neither Cunningham chains nor prime sextuplets are of any value directly to the work I do.
I don't know if you have mined Primecoin solo. In the first several months, old PCs can find Primecoin blocks. For those who are concerned with math and record, it is very cool that if you can find "your own" C-chain that is a contender of the world record, and have the hash signature, time stamp, and a cool address to show it. It's just more fun.
OK, but that is a characteristic of the launch, not the coin. Every coin is un-minable solo eventually if it becomes popular.
The checkpoint in XPM is just a message broadcast mechanism that individual miners can opt out. I think it is turned off by default actually. It doesn't make a coin more centralized than an "offcial" talk thread here on bitcointal or a dedicated message board does. Don't confuse it with PPC's check point system. Sunny King has said the plan is phasing them out.
Primecoin unfortunately lacks it. I struggle to call them siblings, to me this is just too big of a distinction - half brothers maybe.
Please understand that I am listening to 2 mechanics explain to me the inner workings of a UFO's carburetor. From Riecoin.org: "A centralized checkpoint allows its controllers to perform double spends without any need for any % of hash rate. Can we be sure it will not be hacked and/or abused?". If its feasible that a central controller could double spend, to me that makes it all dependent on trust - just like gov fiat. So who do I believe here?
Anyway credit should be given where it is due. Riecoin is mildly interesting. Its difficulty will make the coin unpopular. Its market capitalization will suffer. There are many rare coins -- bitbars, novacoin, onecoin ... the unit price can be high but the price of many of these coins are controlled/manipulated by giant holders who got it cheap initially.
OK, no offense if I've misinterpreted your statement, but are you trying to deceive me here? I realize many new people are confused by these concepts, but I am not. Those coins are not actually rare, they just moved the decimal to the left, that has no relevance on distribution of the wealth in the system whatsoever. Distribution is determined by how many people got involved, when and how.
The Riecoin launch wasn't perfect, solo mining was impossible for an average person and pools were not yet set up. So like many many coins initial distribution was not the best. This has happened to many good coins, they succeed if those initial big holders sell and distribute. I've seen some big blocks of RIC get sold all at once, I've bought quite a few myself. I believe those big RIC stakes have shrunk significantly. I don't think those big holders are the manipulative type either, this was not a hyped coin. You'd want to make a big splash and draw in many suckers wouldn't you? And the way the launch happened with the 24hrs of no reward, Gatra personally had no opportunity to become the big stakeholder. Why would you create a coin for other random people to use as a scam? And what scammer would bother setting his machines to mine an under mentioned coin? I think what happened was a lot of math types running the university's giant machines got lucky, decided they had too many coins, and sold a whole bunch.
At the very least. If this coin is "mildly interesting", its priced at "who cares" and peaked at "pretty boring".