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Riecoin: A Cryptocurrency With a Scientific Proof of Work

Posted by timothy on from the slashcoin-is-only-weeks-away dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Enter decentralized, open source mining with the first scientific proof of work. Riecoin is a decentralized (p2p), open source digital currency. Proof of work is about finding Hardy-Littlewood k-tuples. Ultimately miners are verifying the Riemann hypothesis. Unlike for Primecoin the probability of accepting a false positive goes to zero as the network grows. Primecoin uses Fermat Test which runs the risk of accepting so called Carmichael numbers. Riecoin uses a stronger test to ensure correctness."

25 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. How much are they worth? by rossdee · · Score: 2

    In real money

    1. Re:How much are they worth? by jones_supa · · Score: 2, Funny

      Wrong coin, dumbass. Still cool link tho.

    2. Re:How much are they worth? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      You should talk to a psychologist.

    3. Re:How much are they worth? by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "How much are they worth? In real money"

      See, this is a big problem that many people don't understand: the difference between "worth" (or "value") and price. They are not the same things, and that is what has ruined Bitcoin.

      Economically, the intrinsic value of something is approximately: the cost of production + the cost of distribution. Bitcoin was intended to be basically free to distribute. So the intrinsic worth should be approximately the cost of production. (Plus a tiny bit... it's not exact.)

      The reason this is called the "value", is because if the price goes much higher than this, more people will start producing them because there's good profit to be had. If the price drops below that point, people will stop producing them because there's no profit to be had. Make sense?

      Unfortunately, today's stock market all too often ignores value and goes by price alone. That is how bubbles form: the price of something gets outrageously inflated, completely aside from any value. When actual supply-and-demand rear their heads, and the commodity is suddenly associated with that value again, as it eventually must... everybody who bought at that inflated price lose a lot of money.

      This all comes down to one basic point: the current stock market is often irrational, because it has gotten to a point where it completely ignores actual value of something and goes by price alone. This is irrational and leads to all kinds of problems.

      So, keep in mind: if you invest in a cryptocurrency (or anything else, for that matter) at a price that is far above it's "intrinsic value", be careful. You might make money if you know what you're doing, but you could also become the victim of the bubble and lose your shorts at any time.

    4. Re:How much are they worth? by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 4, Informative

      I neglected to mention one important step:

      "... more people will start producing them because there's good profit to be had." ... And THAT makes the price come back down toward the "intrinsic value", because of supply and demand.

      And this is only true because of Bitcoin's dual nature: it is not just a currency, like fiat dollars, but also a commodity that can be produced at home.

      Which is why I say the market for Bitcoin is completely irrational. There is no economic reason for it to bounce all over the place. Investors are being stupid.

    5. Re:How much are they worth? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 2

      Sorry Misses,
      While your first post made sense, this doeas not. In fact it contradicts your first post.

      The concept of "intrinsic value" is central to the whole idea of "supply and demand".

      Certainly not. What has the "intrinsic value" of a fresh baked bread (it can be eaten) to do with its value? Or what has the "intrinsic value" of a piece of coal (which can be burned, and thats it) to do with supply and demand on coal and hence its price?

      Perhaps you want to define "intrinsic value" of a good as the cost of the source materials plus labour to transform it into the good in question. But that is not related to supply and demand, neither to the raw materials nor to the good itself nor to the demand for work (or supply of it) or their costs.

      Prices are defined by one single thing: how much can I make the customer to pay for it (and considering my own production capabilities where is the balance point for the best price), see iPhones.

      Most prices in the world are defined on a take it or leave it base.

      Sure two gas stations from two different oil companies, like Shell and BP (oh did not one of them just buy the other one?), compete with each other. But all people demand oil/gasoline. Their demand does not change at all, regardless of price. There is no real competition.

      The same for Mc donalds or Burger King ... there is no real competition. Some people want to eat junk food, they are to stupid to see they can get real food around the corner (even cheaper). What does that mean? The supplier defines its market. The market is 'just there', the demand adjusts to the suppliers abilities to form that market.

      Back to iPhone again. 50% (or more) of its owners simply phone with it. (Includes me, I send some text messages - 5 to 10 a month, and I hated sending SMS/text messages with my ordinary phone) It has no intrinsic value at all. Supply and demand does not define its price, the price is defined by how much Apple can get away with. There is no market or competition, because either people want a very cheap smart phone, or if they want an expensive one, and in the later case their determination for an Android (or god beware for a Windows one) or an iPhone is already settled. Sure, if they settle for Android they perhaps have the choice and competition between 2 or 3 high priced smart phones, and if they settle for a low priced one they have the competition of a few dozen brands. However: the markt is completely controlled by the market droids, there is no "supply and demand" driven price ... and no intrinsic value to any of the phones involved (or companies).

      And the idea to read a book about macro economics is so 1870ths ... sorry there is no point in it. As we meanwhile live in a 'globalized' world trade and market situation.

      Using the term: 'read something about macro economics, and then come back to me' is a form of the anti pattern Intellectual Violence. Read up about it, then come back to me ;)

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    6. Re:How much are they worth? by hibiki_r · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That idea of value was nice, in the 19th century. While one can come up with a concept of value, that value is not the same for all actors: Value is not really cost of production, but utility. And we also have to consider marginal value: Water is extremely valuable, but we have so much, the marginal value of producing another glass of drinking water is pretty low.

      Many things will never be sold for how much they cost to make, because their actual value, their utility, is far lower than the cost of production. And since values and costs of production change over time, it's not difficult to find items for sale for less than the cost of production.

      Then we have stocks and bubbles. The price of a stock doesn't just reflect how much it's worth now, but how much it's expected to be worth in the future. This does cover speculation too: There is a utility in holding something if you expect to be able to resell it for more tomorrow. So I'd not say that what people call bubbles has that much to do with being far from fundamentals, but with information being propagated that shows that the current estimate of future value is very different from the current price. If a pharma company is on trials to cure a major kind of cancer, its stock will go up. If the trials are unsuccessful, it might go all the way to zero. But that doesn't mean that there was a bubble. This is especially true with stocks, where, if you really think a price is way too high, a hedge fund can make money shorting it.

      So, when calling something a bubble, we have to have some very strong reasons to do so. You could claim that the Efficient Market Hypothesis doesn't hold, even at the weakest of levels, at which point you are very, very far from mainstream economics. You can instead claim that the problem is that the market is being manipulated, and that might be the case with Bitcoin, for instance. Maybe a company is committing major fraud, and most people don't know about it, but you do have insider knowledge. That'd not be much of a bubble, just plain decepcion. You could also claim that there are major amounts of risk baked into the price, so you can expect volatility. Many would argue that the financial crisis, for instance, was really all about the Fed just not making any sense, and not reacting to a sudden increase to the demand of money.

      So when it comes to bitcoin, how do you explain the bubble? My favorite is a combination of price manipulation from actors that control way too much bitcoin for a market to be all that efficient, tied to a high amount of variance in possible outcomes. If through something strange, Bitcoin actually happened to become important, then its current price is very low compared to what it should be. If it is not, then the current price is way too high. So what we see is a market that is mostly known by people who are just spending a few dollars hoping to make millions, so for them, it's a lottery ticket. Buying a lottery ticket, hand having it lose, doesn't mean that there was an asset bubble with the tickets, does it? :)

    7. Re: How much are they worth? by tom229 · · Score: 2

      Very good points you bring up. However I'm not sure it applies to currency. For example, the "intrinsic value" of a 100 dollar bill is far below $100, yet it still retains that value.

      With a currency, worth gets computed as a factor of total amount of assets and production over supply of the currency. This, of course, assumes that everyone participating accepts that currency as valid. This is what is driving the price of bitcoin at the moment: pure speculation of wide acceptance of it as a valid currency. And if that happens the gdp of the entire world divided by a maximum of 21 million bitcoins is far above it's current comparative value of $600 per coin.

      --
      If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
    8. Re:How much are they worth? by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 2

      "That idea of value was nice, in the 19th century. While one can come up with a concept of value, that value is not the same for all actors: Value is not really cost of production, but utility. And we also have to consider marginal value: Water is extremely valuable, but we have so much, the marginal value of producing another glass of drinking water is pretty low."

      No, and no.

      As I wrote in another reply: "intrinsic value" has a specific meaning. Different schools of economics might call it by different names, but the concept is present in any free-market economics. Without it, supply and demand would not give any kind of rational price signals. Intrinsic value is a clearly defined mathematical concept in economics. What you mean by "value" here is the subjective value of something to a consumer, which is a completely different thing.

      Here is why it is an important concept: I produce commodity X. (It doesn't matter whether it's wheat or Bitcoins, the concept is the same.) In order to keep producing X, I must make a profit on it, or I simply won't do it. This is basic human behavior.

      In order to make a profit on it, I have to sell it for more than my costs of production + distribution. This is the base amount I have to beat to make a profit.

      If I can sell it for a lot more than that amount (which we are calling "intrinsic value"), then a lot more people will start doing it too. Which drives the price back down toward that amount again. If I try to sell it for my costs or less, then I cease to make a profit and I'll stop producing X altogether.

      That's why it's called intrinsic value. It's a value that the market naturally drives the price toward. (IF, that is, it's a rational free market.)

      But when a commodity starts selling at a price that is completely detached from any rational valuation, you get bubbles. That is what has been happening with bitcoin.

      It might satisfy the "value" that a consumer subjectively attaches to it, but in rational markets that price will always gravitate toward the intrinsic value (but never quite reach it). When it doesn't, trouble is on the way.

    9. Re:How much are they worth? by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Using the term: 'read something about macro economics, and then come back to me' is a form of the anti pattern Intellectual Violence. Read up about it, then come back to me ;)"

      Baldly stating

      "Nothing has intrinsic value."

      as GP did, to an explanation of intrinsic value is also "intellectual violence". Why should I not reply in kind? I reserve the right to defend myself from verbal violence, using verbal violence myself if necessary.

      Speaking of which, you demonstrate the same kind of behavior by making argumentative but unsubstantive comments like:

      "Certainly not. What has the "intrinsic value" of a fresh baked bread (it can be eaten) to do with its value? Or what has the 'intrinsic value' of a piece of coal (which can be burned, and thats it) to do with supply and demand on coal and hence its price?"

      Amusing. You ask me to explain something I've already explained. So please tell me which this is: trolling, or just a failure to understand? If it is failure to understand, then it's fine. If not, then it's just another example of the kind of "violence" you mentioned.

      A subjective concept of "value" to a consumer or end-user has nothing to do with intrinsic value. They are two completely different things. Intrinsic value is a specific and clearly-defined economic concept. It is a number that can be precisely calculated. If, of course, you have the relevant information about costs and so on.

      If you want to know what it has to do with supply and demand, please see my replies to others above.

      "Supply and demand does not define its price, the price is defined by how much Apple can get away with."

      That's because it's not a free market. Only one company makes iPhones.

      On the other hand, it's still not a total monopoly because if Apple charged too much, people would just buy an Android phone, or an Ubuntu phone, or a Firefox phone. In fact, many people have... leaving Apple with far less than half the market now.

      So... nice try, but arguing that supply-and-demand doesn't work for a semi-monopoly is pretty much a non-argument.

    10. Re: How much are they worth? by cas2000 · · Score: 2

      i could make turd sculptures at home too - that doesn't mean they have any intrinsic value. certainly no more or less than the bitcoins i could make at home.

      bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are the ultimate in fiat currencies - there is no intrinsic value or worth in the fact that some calculation has been performed. proof of worthless work is just as worthless as the work.

      they only have any "value" because it's a ponzi scheme of people pretending they have value.

    11. Re:How much are they worth? by kasperd · · Score: 2

      Money has intrinsic value.

      The intrinsic value of money is less than the value of the paper it is printed on. The real value of money is entirely due to the number of people who accept it as payment. Most countries' currencies are accepted as payment by more people than bitcoin is, which is why the value of bitcoin is still quite uncertain. There may be cases where the population of a country do not accept the official currency of that country as payment. But when that happens, they tend to choose using another country's currency as payment rather than something like bitcoin. That may change in the future, but for now I have yet to hear about any person who could handle all his income and expenses in bitcoins.

      --

      Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
    12. Re:How much are they worth? by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 2

      "Here's one economic definition of intrinsic value:"

      Neither of the definitions you give are the "intrinsic value" I was referring to.

      The first one is not in the context of macroeconomics. It is a business definition. The second definition is the concept of a "value" that some good "intrinsically" has, which again is not the same thing. The "intrinsic value" to which I referred is neither of those things. It is an abstract economic concept. Technically, it is a cost.

      I have explained this many times already, but I'll do it again: the term "intrinsic value" is unfortunate because strictly speaking, it does not reflect the "value" of something either to a producer or a buyer. The "value" of a loaf of bread may be different for you than it is for me. That's entirely subjective, and a different concept. Similarly, "intrinsic value" is not something that is "intrinsic" to the product in the usual sense of the term. It has to do with outside factors that aren't inherent or "intrinsic" to the product at all.

      The point I'm making here is that it is not what it sounds like it should be. It is not a "value" in the usual sense, and it is not "intrinsic" in the usual sense. But I did not make the name up. It is right there in my macro econ book.

  2. Re:What we're really going to need ... by NFN_NLN · · Score: 4, Informative

    What we're really going to need, and soon, is a program to know what all these *coin currencies are, and maybe some exchanges to change your Xcoins to Ycoins to dollars. Maybe even a consumer report on the issue: "We recommend avoiding FraudCoin as a poor value."

    https://www.cryptocoincharts.i...

    To be honest though FraudCoin was kind of a dead give away just by the name.

  3. Re:Fools by SpankiMonki · · Score: 4, Funny

    The inability to intelligently regulate the value of the currency in accordance with the economic needs of the society is a bug, not a feature.

    Mod parent up, please! It's a good thing that government issued currencies are intelligently regula....oh wait...

  4. Time for an ecologically sound cryptocurrency by spasm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Can we please have a cryptocurrency that doesn't very rapidly involve burning vast amounts of electricity to perform calculations that have no other purpose than creating the currency? This just seems like a grotesque waste of resources. If there's no way to make a viable cryptocurrency other than performing long calculations, at least find a way to make the calculations have actual utility - incorporate foldingathome into it or something so at least you're curing cancer while generating the currency.

    1. Re:Time for an ecologically sound cryptocurrency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Look up CureCoin.

    2. Re:Time for an ecologically sound cryptocurrency by kenshin33 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      what's wrong with finding primes ?

    3. Re:Time for an ecologically sound cryptocurrency by pjt33 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Ah, Slashdot at its best: comments by people who haven't even read TFS.

    4. Re:Time for an ecologically sound cryptocurrency by spasm · · Score: 2

      Yes.

      http://pando.com/2013/12/16/bi...

    5. Re:Time for an ecologically sound cryptocurrency by TsuruchiBrian · · Score: 2

      I'm sure most money made from mining gold, goes into buying gold mining equipment... It's kinda lame, but it's not novel.

  5. Re: Fools by AudioEfex · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The argument that government backed currencies are so faulty is, well, faulty.

    Do certain countries have piss poor systems set up that can make their money worthless, overnight? Yup, that's why folks don't invest in them.

    The dollar, the euro, etc. may fluctuate, but there are as reasonable safe guards against them going flat as is currently possible that are what make the world go 'round.

    Comparing major real-world currencies to "crypto" currency is like comparing a child's pretend store to Wal-mart. Sure, if you convince enough kids that the pretend stuff in your pretend store is worth enough, you can dupe them into giving you their money. You might even make a few bucks before people catch on, and if you have a large enough supply of dumb kids in your neighborhood that fall for it and believe a baggie of dirt you sell them is magic dirt that will someday turn into gold or candy.

    But it ends when the real world gets involved - because the real world doesn't buy into your pretend.

    Repeatedly solving equations on a computer does not actually do anything valuable. It simply controls the output. But if what is behind the output of nothing is still nothing, it's simply an age old money scam where the new folks pay to get in by "investing" so the early adopters make money, but eventually the pyramid falls when everyone realizes that it's all based on...nothing.

    BitCoin "investors" try so hard to make it all "real" and will quote you academic papers and media curiousity stories and "conferences" of folks who get together to debate all this, but it's just because they want folks to keep believing that some type of alternate currency is just going to sprout up over nothing. Nothing backing it, nothing being produced but virtual money that has no true value except to speculators who depend on additional folks speculating to make their pile of nothing have the perception of being something.

    It's all rather insane, but it breeds on basic human hopes for wish fulfillment - the wish to get rich quick. I have no doubt BitCoin has made some folks very rich - but those very rich people became rich because they cash out their hauls into real dollars which can then be used in the real world. Cashing out by selling to folks who come in at the bottom of the pyramid.

    I said this elsewhere and was pummeled by a bunch of believers - but you cannot pay for any of the necessities or luxuries of life with BitCoin. They retorted about debit cards and BitCoin ATMs - but missed the point, which is that they had to cash out those BitCoins into real world currency to make it useful. Once folks stop buying into the bottom of the pyramid, hoping to get rich, and the jig is up - they are worthless.

    In the future, folks will look back at this as a large experiment gone wrong and marvel at how some of the smartest folks got taken in by this. Scams usually prey on the old and weak, yet you have some otherwise brilliant people who fell for this hook, line, and sinker by the lure of getting rich quick out of nothing.

  6. Re:If we make it we can break it by SpankiMonki · · Score: 2

    Always?

    Yes!

    And even then, it was only valued as art because it was effectively money

    No! Gold was valued as a pretty thing/art medium before it came into use as a currency. In fact, all commodity monies arose from physical goods that had other non-currency uses.

    Some folks really really want bitcoins to be a commodites because of their ideological disposition, but in reality they're nothing more than bits 'n bytes representing ledger balances.

  7. Proof-of-Wasted-Work vs. Useful Work by billstewart · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Most of the proof-of-work systems out there are really demanding that you waste some amount of money, time, or both, to prevent people from just generating arbitrarily high numbers of coins (as opposed to the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy use of leaves as coins.) Bitcoin number-crunching is purely wasteful potlatching. Dogecoin is such wow, so calculation!

    At least this one is doing a kind of work that's potentially valuable to the world, assuming the system collects all of it in a way that can be used to contribute to mathematical knowledge. (Yeah, yeah, this is /., and I'm commenting on the article without reading it :-) There may be other kinds of calculations that are both useful and verifiable out there. Unfortunately, protein folding and most other non-mathematical real-world applications probably aren't easily verifiable except by having N people redo the same calculation, which is a problem for currencies that need to prevent double-spending. (I ran Folding@Home for a while, as well as the GIMPS Mersenne Prime Search. For SETI@Home, which for some years was a far larger supercomputer than anything on the Top-500 list, sure, you can contend that there really aren't aliens in the chunk of sky your system was testing, but that's not the kind of verification we're looking for...)

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  8. Re:Waste products from mining by OneAhead · · Score: 2

    Wow, that's impressive! Being a bitcoin miner and telling yourself you're trying to live in a sustainable way sounds like an olympic-grade exercise in self-deception. And look at these marvelously contrived arguments in favor of it! If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded "Born to Self-deceive", you would have been on the album cover.