Any interest in Cryptocurrency?

[Ericwt]

If anyone here is interested in Cryptocurrency, I would be happy to discuss some of the current Cryptocurrency options out there.

I am a bitcoin user and advocate, an original beta tester for Ripple, plus I mine a few different Cryptocurrencies. I am also a beta tester for two other Cryptocurrency projects.

If there is an interest in this subject I would  be happy to show what I know.

[de Heydon]

I'm interested, but it seems that something like that should have at least a semi-permanent place like a 'wiki' to be stored.

[Rock Private Office]

I'd be really interested to know more about Cryptocurrencies. I'd like to see it here.

[Ericwt]

Okay, I can start posting information and links.

It is a little to early to do a 'wiki' but I can start posting things I know and then in a few months it could become a 'wiki'.

I will start over the next few days posting links.

For the time being I will focus on the four largest CryptoCurrencies.

[Ericwt]

Cryptocurrencies are a range of alternative currencies that, are based on mathematics for the most part. There are a few exceptions however.

Collectively known as alt-currencies, they have opened up new ways to adapt and walk away from the Central Bankers controlling authority.

Cryptocurrencies are not money, they are units of exchange that people choose to give value.

Proposed in a paper by Satoshi Nakamoto, in November of 2008.
'Bitcoin launched in January of 2009.

Cryptocurrencies are mostly "mined". Computers "mine" for coins by competing to solve mathematical problems; all computers mining Bitcoins are connected together in a global network.

Every 10 minutes, they compete to solve the same mathematical problem to earn a handful of Bitcoins. The mathematical problem is also designed to verify Bitcoin transactions made around the world.

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Designed to be ,anonymous, easily electronically transmitted and independent of nation-states and their central banks. It is a payment system and a unit of exchange.

Although the US Department of Treasury wants to regulate it, it is easy to avoid if you never exchange your Bitcoins for Fiat Currency, or sell them privately to an individual.

The Treasury can regulate the currency exchanges under US influence, however it has little authority on what happens outside of the USA.

If you want Bitcoins you are either going to have to mine them, buy them or have someone send you some as payment for goods or services.

In the next posts I will talk about Cryptocurrencies that have strong potential to gain market acceptance.

Yes there is life beyond bitcoins..

Also as time allows I will add more Bitcoin information here.

[Ericwt]

The first non Bitcoin, cryptocurrency  worth watching...

Litecoin was launched in October of 2011 by Charles Lee.

Litecoin  transactions are 2.5 minutes as opposed to 10 for Bitcoin. Litecoin has  84 millon coins against 21 million coins of Bitcoin, and uses the Scrypt proof of work.

Scrypt is biased towards CPUs and GPUs, whereas Bitcoin is moving toward  ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuits).

Scrypt is designed to rely on memory-intensive computing. CPUs and GPUs are used and it is not nearly as expensive as the ASIC that is going to be necessary to mine bitcoins. ASIC can only be used on Bitcoins, they function on  mathematical speed rather than computer and graphical memory.

It is easier for the average person to mine Litecoins with a home computer and graphics card.

Litecoins are now starting to show up in the major exchanges and the community behind it is growing.

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I am going to make a lot of money on litecoins this year.

[Ericwt]

Feathercoin is the next cryptocurrency I will talk about.

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Feathercoin was announced on 16 April 2013 on the Bitcointalk.org forum.

Feathercoin is based on Litecoin.

Like Litecoin, Feathercoin uses Scrypt so it is relatively easy for the hobbyist to mine. No expensive ASIC technology is required.

FeatherCoin has a block reward of 200 coins and will have a total of 336 million coins.

This makes it four times that of LiteCoin, this is the same position that LiteCoin was set against BitCoin.

The difficulty with which coins are produced is adjusted 4 times as often as Litecoin.

[todofixthis]

I would love to start mining Litecoins, but I couldn't make sense of the documentation. Is there a good tutorial out there?

[Ericwt]

I am working on it.

Been real busy with this site and my Belize book.

But starting next week I am going to attempt to CPU mine litecoins. Not for profit, for fun and learning.

When I figure this out I will do a tutorial. After CPU mining, GPU mining will be easy.

I have spent the last week reading long drawn out threads about mining Litecoins. It is very cryptic and the tech support threads have hundreds of posts. It is very hard to read, especially if you are not a tech, and I am not a tech.

If I find something before then I will post it here,

I would love to start mining Litecoins, but I couldn't make sense of the documentation.  Is there a good tutorial out there?

[Ericwt]

This is what I will be working with starting next week.

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If anyone succeeds with these two links, please post about it.

It will take me another week to figure this out.

[todofixthis]

Awesome. Thanks Eric! I'm somewhat technical, but it looks like I have the handicap of having to translate from Windows to OSX/Linux

Maybe we can collaborate at some point this week. Do you want to do a Skype chat?

[Ericwt]

I will do some asking about OSX/Linux programs for mining litecoins.

I am totally open to a skype conversation. But I am not sure how much help I can be.

Skype is unpredictable in Belize. The local internet service blocks Skype and almost all VOIP. That means I have to rely on the satellite link connection. Not the best reception but usually it works okay.

I will need a few days or so to devote my attention to this matter so I can figure it out.

Bitcoins forced me to learn more of the tech stuff. Looks like Litecoin is going to do the same.

Fortunately I am one of those people who once I set my mind to something, there is no stopping me. I learn through sheer determination.

Cheers
Eric

[de Heydon]

I learn through sheer determination.

GEE! You know, somehow, I think I already knew that.

[Ericwt]

Phoenix, this link might help you.

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de Heydon, it is the story of my life. Once I am determined nothing will stop me.

The only way I succeeded in business was because I was to stupid to know what I could not do. Then I did it anyway. 

[Ericwt]

A new CryptoCurrency was released six days ago.

It is called Primecoin its function is to discover a specific kind of Prime numbers.

It is so new you can only CPU mine as the GPU platform has not been created yet.

It is from the developers of PPcoin, another Crypto that I have not had the time to write about here.

This one might turn out real big, it has very dedicated followers.

Not much information is out about it yet, but there will be soon. You will be hearing about Primecoin a lot this next year.

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[todofixthis]

With help from Eric, I got a Primecoin miner running on my system.  It was surprisingly easy.

I'm going to be running some tests on a cloud server this week to see if it's worth it to spin up a bunch of mining instances and start bulk-generating Primecoin before the herd moves in.

If that goes well, it might be interesting to offer a service to automate setup and management of Primecoin miners, maybe for US$5/month and something like 1.5% of all Primecoins mined (i.e., from a fiat perspective, it operates at cost; the profit comes from mined Primecoins).

[Ericwt]

Phoenix that would be real cool.

You are to kind. All I did is tell you about primecoins. The miner is simple enough anyone can set it up.

I would be very interested in a cloud service.

Seems Primecoins is motivating me to learn and use Linux.

Let us know.

[todofixthis]

I am definitely not used to how easy this process is.

I looked into mining Litecoins not too long ago, and it was a ridiculously complicated process.

Mining Primecoins is pretty much, "Copy-paste this text into a file located at this path, generate a random username/password, and then run this command."

Now to go rent some hardware to abuse while I mine me some coins

[Ericwt]

Please let us know when you get up and going.

I am real interested.

[todofixthis]

Ok, I got a CentOS 6 x86_64 instance running ppcoind.  That was a heck of a lot of work!

Here's my notes in case you want to try it yourself:

IMPORTANT:  You will need more than 512 MB of RAM available to build source.

Also note that Redhat Linux builds use a crippled version of OpenSSL due to patents and other such nonsense, so you'll need to compile the OpenSSL library from source (included in the list of commands below).

1. yum install git make gcc-c++ boost-devel db4-devel miniupnpc-devel
   
2. curl -OL 'http://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.0.1e.tar.gz'
   
3. unzip openssl-1.0.1e.tar.gz && rm openssl-1.0.1e.tar.gz
   
4. cd openssl-1.0.1e
   
5. ./config --prefix=/usr/local enable-ec enable-ecdh enable-ecdsa
   
6. make && make install
   
7. cd ..
   
8. git clone [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
   
9. cd primecoin/src
   
10. make -f makefile.unix BOOST_LIB_SUFFIX='-mt' OPENSSL_INCLUDE_PATH='/usr/local/ssl/include/openssl' OPENSSL_LIB_PATH='/usr/local/ssl/lib'
    
11. ... wait about 5 minutes ...
    
12. mkdir ~/.primecoin
    
13. echo 'rpcuser=<random username>
    rpcpassword=<random password>
    gen=1' > ~/.primecoin/primecoin.conf
    
14. ./primecoind --daemon
    
15. ./primecoind getmininginfo
    

Generate a random string for <random username> and <random password> above. They can be anything you want; they are used by ppcoind to make it really difficult for someone to hack your system and steal your newly-mined primecoins.

Your primespersec will be 0 for a few minutes while it syncs with the network.

I'm going to let this run for a couple of days and see what happens.

[todofixthis]

I let this guy run for 2 days before shutting it down.  Total income: 0 XPM. Total cost:  US$0.72.  Good experiment; I guess I could have let it run longer, but I think a different strategy is necessary.

Might be worth it to spin up an instance or two to join a pool.  Now that there's a Primecoin mining pool out there, I could give that a shot.  Might also be interesting to try joining a Litecoin mining pool as well.

[Ericwt]

Sorry to hear that.

What I am finding out is it is easier to watch the cryptocurrency trends and buy and sell. Mining does not hold a candle to trading cryptos.

Provided you know what you are doing. If not you will loose all your investment.

In this last few days I have made a considerable return for my bitcoins invested. At the same time I watched others experience a virtual bloodbath on their bitcoins invested.

I let this guy run for 2 days before shutting it down.  Total income:  0 XPM.  Total cost:  US$0.72.  Good experiment; I guess I could have let it run longer, but I think a different strategy is necessary.

Might be worth it to spin up an instance or two to join a pool.  Now that there's a Primecoin mining pool out there, I could give that a shot.  Might also be interesting to try joining a Litecoin mining pool as well.

[de Heydon]

In this last few days I have made a considerable return for my bitcoins invested. At the same time I watched others experience a virtual bloodbath on their bitcoins invested.

I guess it would be considered 'nosy' to ask about the details.

[Ericwt]

I do not mind answering at all.

I went to a newbie exchange. Watched a sheer panic, bought a large amount of Primecoins at .004 btc per Primecoin,went to another exchange and sold it instantly at .007 btc.

Easy money.  

Did the same thing with other cryptos. The new people are not used to huge price fluctuations, which is the nature of the crypto markets.

They panicked and sold. I waited till the right second and bought a large amount.

Like taking candy from a baby. 

I guess it would be considered 'nosy' to ask about the details.

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