
SolarCoin cryptocurrency pays you to go green - rukshn
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25010-solarcoin-cryptocurrency-pays-you-to-go-green.html
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Tloewald
There's this other thing you can get in exchange for generating solar power
that's fairly popular and can be used to purchase goods and services. I can't
remember it's called, but I think it's fairly popular in places like the USA,
Burma, and Tibet.

Oh and you can keep it in a physical wallet, it doesn't require an internet
connection, transactions using it are almost untraceable, and it comes in a
wide variety of sizes and colors.

~~~
Jtsummers
Sadly, where I live, I'd have to move at least 40 miles away to fall under a
power company that would pay me for my excess production. IIUC, they have some
percentage they have to meet for various stuffs (tax credits?, funding?), once
they met that, they stopped taking new customers for the program.

~~~
Tloewald
My sarcasm aside -- this whole idea is idiotic. Power has a market value. If
the solarcoins aren't worth as least as much as the cash you can get, no-one
will take them. If they're worth more, then whoever is giving the solarcoins
out will be annihilated by arbitrage. And that completely leaves aside
verification issues. It's a damn silly idea.

~~~
lukifer
Devil's advocate: In a technological civilization, it makes more sense to back
a currency with energy than with any other commodity. (USD is already de-facto
backed by oil [1].) In a sense, BitCoin itself is also energy-backed, as the
mining yield these days is roughly equal to the cost of electricity.

That said, while a distributed currency that is miraculously 1:1 exchangeable
with energy would be pretty neat, SolarCoin doesn't seem to be that. If
anything, it would make more sense to just pay people in BitCoins for
contributing energy back to the grid, or to mine BitCoins in a carbon-neutral
fashion.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar)

~~~
dllthomas
_" mine BitCoins in a carbon-neutral fashion."_

That is a very interesting notion. I'm not sure how you'd implement it,
particularly with different amounts of carbon emitted from different means of
generating power, &c.

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lukifer
I was thinking carbon-neutral for the individual miner, not for the whole
network. The latter would be a very ambitious project.

~~~
dllthomas
Do you just mean individual miners individually going out and purchasing
carbon credits? What would motivate that, when the thing they're producing is
fungible (and thus it can't strengthen their brand, &c)?

I'd applaud it in any event, but it seems like something that can't really be
enforced and is unlikely to be widespread without enforcement as I have no
real means of converting my approval into anything tangible or even directing
it where it belongs.

~~~
lukifer
I'm thinking something far simpler: solar panels hooked to a battery, which is
hooked to a minimalist mining rig that runs as often as it's able. Self-
powered mining, other than the minimal amount used for passing network
traffic, and whatever's used by the pool.

~~~
dllthomas
Ah, also interesting, though I'm skeptical about it recouping investment in
reasonable time.

If it actually became common, it would mean mining would move East-West with
the day, and North-South with the seasons.

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terabytest
Doesn't this break bitcoin's concept of no central issuer? If you have to send
stuff to the organiser, that's somewhat of a central authority, isn't it?

~~~
dijit
yes.

sidenote: please stop making coins.

it sort of defies the point of it being a currency of any kind if there are
millions of different yet indistinguishable ones.

~~~
IgorPartola
Why? A new blockchain is no real threat to any existing and established
altcoin such as BTC or LTC. On the other hand, it's possible that someone will
come up with either a technical improvement over the established altcoins, or
die trying.

Now, what would be really helpful is a wallet app that lets you have all
different types of coins in one place. That way you wouldn't have to run 17
different clients for 17 different coins. It would also help you lose all your
altcoins in one place.

~~~
jkarni
It is a threat! If a there are a thousand indistinguishable block chains, it's
(arguably[1]) as if the number of coins on a single blockchain were much
bigger, which drives down the price. Since there's an infinite supply of new
blockchains at more or less any price point (again, arguably), the price
should be driven down to zero.

[1] Arguably, -there is, for instance, the question of whether arbitrary
differentiators such as "being the first blockchain" suffice to make the
blockchain market not perfectly competitive, - but this point needs to be (and
as far as I can tell hasn't really been, here on HN) argued about. See
[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/12/on-...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/12/on-
the-future-of-dogecoin-bitcoin-and-other-cryptocurrencies-of-the-non-
realm.html) for some references, though.

~~~
dllthomas
Not much more than different currencies or different goods devalue others as
stores of value in general.

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jkarni
I think you're wrong, but am willing to be told otherwise. Here's why: one
currency is not (generally) legal tender outside its country of origin, so
there's an exchange rate determined roughly by the trade balance between
countries etc. If all currencies were legal tender _everywhere_ (a much more
analogous) situation, the exchange rate would _not_ be determined by the same
factors, since the currency would in no way be pegged to the nation.

Then the question becomes: what _does_ in fact determine the exchange rates?
I.e., would one currency be "infinitely valuable" compared to all others?
Which one? The first? Or would all of the stabilize at the point where 1 of A
is always worth 1 of B, because that's easiest to work with?

~~~
IgorPartola
The value of an altcoin, the true market value, is in my mind determined by
two things. First, how many different ways can I spend it reliably? For
example, I can spend BTC on goods on Overstock.com. I can spend Dogecoin on a
tip for a comment on Reddit. BTC is already more valuable to me than Dogecoin.

Second, is the size and composition of the specific altcoin network. For
example, lots of new altcoins use central checksumming during the early stages
to prevent early market manipulation. This is bad, since the coin is then for
a period of time controlled by a central entity. BTC and LTC are mature enough
to not have this problem anymore.

In other words, sure bring on more altcoins/blockchains. I don't care. Let's
let the market decide that. In the end the total market cap of all these coins
will converge and the more coins are created every day the more we approach
the point of people starting to be able to tell the difference.

~~~
dllthomas
That determines your subjective value for the coin. Market value depends on it
only to the degree that the subjective value others place on the coin mirrors
yours.

~~~
IgorPartola
Of course. Naturally, everyone places different value on these things.
However, I have several reasons to believe that my criteria has some merit.
Specifically, look at the reverse of each of the two criteria: imagine a coin
with a very small network and a very young blockchain. This means that a
player with lots of computing power can at least mine a huge amount of the
coin, or even carry out a "51% attack" and double-spend.

Also, imagine a coin which you cannot spend on anything. You can mine it and
send and receive it in a vacuum, but you cannot derive any other value out of
it. Is such a coin in any way more valuable than a coin which lets you buy a
cup of coffee, a car, or a house?

~~~
dllthomas
I certainly think that those both deserve to be important considerations, and
probably most others assessing will think so as well, so they will certainly
affect things. But there will be lots of other factors, individual
(diversification, speculation) and collectively (amount of currency
available), so I feel that "determined by" is too strong. I also didn't really
like the "true market value" wording, but I'd have let it slide if that was my
only concern.

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dllthomas
I don't think it's fair to call it a cryptocurrency if it relies on something
that can't be visible to the network without reliance on single trusted party.

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VMG
It technically still is a crypto-currency, just not a decentralized one.

~~~
wlievens
Oh, like PayPal?

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VMG
No, PayPal controls the complete funds of every individual. Even with a
centralized crypto-currency, only those transactions are valid that have your
cryptographic signature. The centralized trusted third party only decides on
the order of transactions.

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graeham
I've always thought "proof of work" in cryptocurrencies was a bit of a
misnomer since the the "work" is useless.

Could resources be used for productive work instead, for example distributed
computation? I'm thinking something similar to SETI@home, but with currency
rewards for work done.

Perhaps this would also require a central issuer.

~~~
GavinB
Making a monetary system function is important work. From the Federal Reserve
chairman to the sysadmins running wire transfer servers to the crew running
the printing presses to the security guards who transport cash, there's a huge
amount of work involved in running current fiat money systems.

You can dislike cryptocurrencies for all sorts of other reasons, but that fact
that some resources are consumed to keep it running really is going to be a
feature of any sort of monetary system.

~~~
mushishi
Could you give some estimates how much energy is spent on having current fiat
currencies, and how much energy would be spent if similar amount of
transactions were used for cryptocurrency. I always wonder why people don't
discuss this, or when do, no estimates are given.

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GigabyteCoin
The title sounds awesome, and then I read that it's being created by a
centralized company that's organizing the entire thing.

I'll bet they're organizing a hefty personal profit into their ploy as well.

~~~
ZenoArrow
"I'll bet they're organizing a hefty personal profit into their ploy as well."

Yes, I'd say they are. From the FAQ (Bitcoin section)... Largest holder of
reserve currency: SolarCoin Foundation

Sounds like they've premined it.

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driverdan
> Bitcoin has been accused of wasting energy in the past because of the
> computing power it takes to mine coins, but Gogerty says that SolarCoin is
> 50 times more energy-efficient because its algorithm allows the total number
> of coins to be mined faster...

That's not how crypocurrency mining works. Mining more coins in a shorter
period of time does not make it more efficient. It just means the coins are
worth less money.

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mmcclure
"While most cryptocurrencies are just themed copies of Bitcoin – Dogecoin,
based on a famous internet meme, is a notable example"

I could be mistaken, but I was under the impression that almost all of these
themed currencies such as Dogecoin were based on Litecoin...

~~~
acangiano
Correct. The writer doesn't really know what he is talking about or is
oversimplifying. Litecoin clones are scrypt based. Bitcoin clones are sha-256
based.

~~~
benajnim
Litecoin itself is a clone of the first scrypt based coin, Tenebrix.

~~~
mmcclure
Today I learned...

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jerf
And who is going to _take_ a SolarCoin in return for goods or services? And
what would then do with such a coin if they took one?

Issuing currency is not the challenging part.

~~~
andyjohnson0
The same objection was once made to bitcoin.

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ck2
Darn it, I had this idea last year and was going to call it GreenCoin.

Oh well, laziness wins again.

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andrewfong
On encouraging decentralized home-based solar power in general, wasn't there
an issue with the grid not being optimized for this sort of thing? Has that
changed?

~~~
zimbatm
No necessarily. It depends if storage is done by using batteries installed at
the person's home or by sending the current back into the power grid.

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trickyhero
That would be great but can I only mine if the solar panels are working? That
would not work out here in Michigan, atleast during this winter.

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TrainedMonkey
While a laudable initiative, this looks more like a way to get new
cryptocurrency in the market by riding on solar community good will.

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wyager
So the people who made this coin have the ability to mint an arbitrary amount?
Seems legit.

