Difference between revisions of "Crypto-currencies"

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*[https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com Crypto Coin News]
 
*[https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com Crypto Coin News]
 
*[http://globalcryptonews.com Global crypto news]
 
*[http://globalcryptonews.com Global crypto news]
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== Proof of work ==
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This is the original method of securing blockchains introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto and is explained in detail in the [[Hash]] article.
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== Proof of stake ==
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As mining became more and more resource intensive and centralised, other means of securing the blockchain were being sought, and eventually the proof of stake methodology was created (I think PeerCoin was the first).
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*[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake Proof-of-stake on Bitcoin wiki]
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*[[Wikipedia:Proof-of-stake|Proof-of-stake on Wikipedia]]
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*[http://bitcoinmagazine.com/6528/what-proof-of-stake-is-and-why-it-matters/ What is proof-of-stake and why it matters]
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*[https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-love-weak-subjectivity/ Proof-of-stake: How I learned to love weak subjectivity] ''- Vitalik Buterin''
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*[https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/01/10/light-clients-proof-stake/ Vitalik explains light-clients and proof-of-stake]
  
 
== Proof of retrievability ==
 
== Proof of retrievability ==

Revision as of 14:18, 10 January 2015

Crypto-currencies are digital online currencies that exhibit that use cryptographic algorithms to control the supply to create "virtual scarcity" and to overcome the counterfeiting and double spending problems. The first was Bitcoin, and then many more began to arise with their own unique properties, strengths and weaknesses such as Namecoin, Litecoin and Ethereum. Crypto-trading is now becoming very popular which is the idea of making money by transferring value between the various crypto-currencies as their value changes with respect to one-another. Usually Bitcoin is used as the base currency since all exchanges that offer multiple crypto-currencies allow them all to be bought or sold with Bitcoins.

Exchanges offering multiple crypto-currencies

Decentralised exchanges

Sites with charts/stats/info for multiple crypto-currencies

Interesting cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrency news sites

Proof of work

This is the original method of securing blockchains introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto and is explained in detail in the Hash article.

Proof of stake

As mining became more and more resource intensive and centralised, other means of securing the blockchain were being sought, and eventually the proof of stake methodology was created (I think PeerCoin was the first).

Proof of retrievability

This is an awesome idea! Permacoin solves two major problems with bitcoin in one elegant solution. The problem of the huge waste of resource that mining occupies, and the problem that the bitcoin network has no mechanism for large-scale data storage.

Permacoin flips the mining paradigm on its orthogonal axis by saying that instead of time=money (i.e. processing power to mine coins with proof of work), they make space=money! "Miners" offer space to the network in a proof of retrievability system resulting in a usable distributed storage system instead of teraflops of unusable processing :-)

This effort is backed by Microsoft so may end up with some closed-source soul-selling strings attached, but the idea of proof-of-retrievability is sure to be an up and coming concept in the crypto future!

About mining

Regulation

No wonder a bunch of bitcoin companies are bailing from NY! (BitLicense) but the reality is that this kind of heavy-handed "regulation" is likely to spread more as the fiat system declines and crypto becomes more popular. But this has a good side as well - it will help to speed up truly anonymous solutions and fully distributed organisations (DAO's / DAC's).

News & views

See also

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