Hopefully not, because:
1) Primecoin looks to be GPU-resistant, it will be very hard to implement calculating it's long integers on something that is design to deal only with vertices
2) GPU rigs are the cancer for mining, eliminating 99% of regular people who are not OK with the idea of monster cases with external GPUs all over the place, laptop users with no external cards, etc. Non-existence of GPU miner is the main reason for Primecoin's unusual popularity. People are successfully mining even on Raspberry Pi's.
I have few pi's...
Yes, I'm thinking primecoin solves many of my complaints about bitcon... Fast block confirms, potential resistance to specialized hardware, and no coin limit.
All I think are glaring flaws, but the last is the biggest. It's hard to reconcile the advantage of bitcoins fixed number of coins against the fact that they're still being rapidly issued.
Now, if only primecoin could adopt a more marketable/catchy name...
Why is coin limit a flaw? That's the one major advantage of Bitcoin. Controlled and finite supply of currency. Faster block confirms result in more forks, nothing more. Potential resistance to specialized hardware? I don't think so, I am sure we can use CUDA here.
Edit:
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/493679/prime-generator-for-cuda/8 317 200 Primes / sec
OK... here's a LOOOOOOOONG rely. I apologize in advance!
Hopefully not, because:
1) Primecoin looks to be GPU-resistant, it will be very hard to implement calculating it's long integers on something that is design to deal only with vertices
2) GPU rigs are the cancer for mining, eliminating 99% of regular people who are not OK with the idea of monster cases with external GPUs all over the place, laptop users with no external cards, etc. Non-existence of GPU miner is the main reason for Primecoin's unusual popularity. People are successfully mining even on Raspberry Pi's.
I have few pi's...
Yes, I'm thinking primecoin solves many of my complaints about bitcon... Fast block confirms, potential resistance to specialized hardware, and no coin limit.
All I think are glaring flaws, but the last is the biggest. It's hard to reconcile the advantage of bitcoins fixed number of coins against the fact that they're still being rapidly issued.
Now, if only primecoin could adopt a more marketable/catchy name...
Why is coin limit a flaw? That's the one major advantage of Bitcoin. Controlled and finite supply of currency. Faster block confirms result in more forks, nothing more. Potential resistance to specialized hardware? I don't think so, I am sure we can use CUDA here.
Edit:
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/493679/prime-generator-for-cuda/8 317 200 Primes / sec
The current block rate is too fast, yes. So hopefully that's something that is able to fix itself. But 10+ minutes for a single confirmation just is far too slow for anything but online commerce. And if we're hoping that cryptocoins make it big one day, they need to be useful for more than just things you order for next day delivery. Surely, there's a medium between 6 seconds and 10 or 15 minutes? Litecoins is 2.5, that's a bit better, but it suffers still from fixed coin supply....
As for coin limits, everyone talks about the fixed limit of bitcoins as a plus, but every 8 minutes more and more are created. So as much as people call it an advantage, we have yet to see what the bitcoin economy will actually be like when we reach the end of coin issuance. A fixed limit definetly encourages hoarding for one. No other resource on earth has such a hard limit, and people hoard those too. Even the supply of gold, the libertarians dream for a resource of finite supply, is added to on daily basis as more is dug out of the ground.
Right now, miners are encouraged to mine because of the reward for finding new blocks and new coins. And that serves all of us, because their action of doing so is what validates transactions across the block chain. Currently, transcations are essentially free because miners get compensated elsewhere. Once the supply of coins has dried up, those dynamics will change. Vastly. A transfer that costs a fraction of a penny to complete right now will not cost that little in the future. How much, though, is anyone's guess. And the low costs associated with bitcoin transactions are a much bigger selling point (in my mind) than a fixed supply limit. So once the limit is reached, transactions will be cost all around. Will bitcoin be competitive with credit cards at that point? We have no idea...it could cost even more, for all we know, especially if there are relatively few transactions for miners to validate because people are holding their coins tight to their chests in the hopes that they'll appreciate further. I'd rather incentive miners to process transactions by creating more coins to pay them with than have them pass through fees to us; if people hesitate because of those fees, then miners will shut down and then there's no one around to make sure transactions actually go through.
Even future cuts in the block reward could be painful to the economy. Yes, it survived the December/January cut without issue, and the next cut is still years away. But we have to hope that bitcoin is valueable enough at the next cut that miners will continue to be there for transaction processing. I would advocate for a reverse of the situation... as coins get more plentiful, the block reward should go upwards. Afterall, as we all know, when more coins are issued, they each are worth less and less, so a static block reward should technically become less and less valuable as time goes by, and when that static reward is halved, it should be worth even less still.
So no, in my mind, a fixed supply is not a panacea. And no one can say factfully that it is, because the bitcoin economy we're watching right now is one where new coin are created continually, not one where coin supply is strictly limited.
We'll only know for certain in the future, but I think that a supply cap is an incredibly huge detriment. So, I am very inclined to support an offering that has rid itself of that.
As for specialized hardware; as an upcoming technology with plenty of potential enemies, I'd think that we'd want things to be as distributed as possible. Satoshi designed it that way, having it be peer-to-peer rather than client/server. Ask what happens if ASICminer and a few pools all get taken down together, or DOS'ed? You lose all that hashing power while the difficulty is sky high and the network would fail to operate. People who invest greatly in specialized hardware become big targets, a couple of big pillars to be attacked rather than a mesh that can't be taken down. For best security, I'd think we'd want everyone on the network actively participating rather than most of the network relying on a couple of giants.
And in that light, faster block generation with fewer transactions in each can potentially remedy that situation, as the reward for solving a single block will be much less than you see in the BTC world (25 coins * $90 = $2250 / block, of course you'll see things like ASICMiner trying to grab whole blocks)... but divy up the transactions into smaller chunks, the reward for finding that chunk goes down. And so far, luck seems to play heavily in mining success, which hopefully continues to be the case... if returns are less certain (less guaranteed) then people will be less ready to commit huge amounts or resources in trying to jump ahead of the crowd.
Those are my thoughts. Very much at odds with most of the BTC community, I know. And that's why I'm excited by this new coin in particular. I'm interested to see what the future holds...
So.. I guess the solution would be to not CPU mine it then.. Strangely stupid comment.
ughhh, another thread cluttering coin.