Hello,
I'm still a cryptocurrency newbie, especially technically, but I have often found ideological discussions about Bitcoin and Altcoins, and, of course, also some interesting arguments and inspirations.
Although the Bitcoin will probably win over other cryptocurrencies, I favour learning, developing, evolving systems, so I would regard second generation altcoins as the better ones in principle.
I looked around a bit and found many altcoins which "want to do good" and some claiming to be environmental-friendly. Some seem to want to do good just by being nice ("Karma" coin etc.
), some seem to have (or want to have) some contact to the solar energy industry or other renewable energies etc., which might be an advantage and might be good for the believers (faith seems to me the only thing which most of the second generation altcoins are based on, therefore, IMHO they could die very easily).
BUT for me, the main argument for an environmental-friendly altcoin remains the energy-efficiency. In this respect, in my opinion there might be two phases: The current phase where the coin lives in a small niche, and, more importantly, a second phase where we should assume a wide adoption and a widespread usage and therefore many transactions etc.
There are some short threads about energy efficiency already, but it is from the miner's view, which is not my priority here, but could give important facts:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/most-energy-efficient-coins-566582https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/need-an-energy-efficient-algo-198191So what are, in your opinion, the "greenest" coins and why?Mainly by energy-efficiency, but also regarding other advantages and progresses like anonymity, security, transaction speed, rewards for users, etc. etc.
Can we make a list and verify it? E.g. I have read about some claims that coins like
Next NXT,
Peercoin,
Blackcoin BLK,
Energycoin ENRG,
Solarcoin SLR,
...?
claim to be energy-efficient / environmental friendly / "sustainable" etc. Can you confirm or falsify this? Can you further the list?
And there are more "decentralized" coins (POS, proof of stake), or coins with special Hash algorithms which seems to be energy-saving, like for example
Maidsafe,
Vanillacoin,
Deepcoin,
Clams
...?
(I just found a thread on the POS coins:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/which-coins-have-proof-of-stake-455692 and
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/proof-of-stake-coin-list-458726 - is this really THE solution when millions of end-user computers use it?)
Is a distributed network-POS coin always more energy-efficient than other solutions (POW) in an assumed widespread usage?
What are the important parameters to identify an environmental-friendly coin?
Additional question: How energy-efficient is the current fiat currency / credit-card / banking system? How much energy does the existing banking industry (plus the users) eat up with their transactions?
Last but not least, please tell me if this discussion already exists in another thread here - I am sorry then, but I did not find it yet.