development to turn things around and want to take the health of the entire ecosystem into our own hands, it is imperative that we begin building out the infrastructure for which early Bitcoiners so fiercely fought. Aside from building out the services and infrastructure needed to bring fiat currency directly into altcoins, we must speak with the people with whom we trade and do business and seek to increase the number of people and businesses accepting altcoins as payment for goods and services.
Virtual Reality and Cryptocurrency
Most of us, especially cryptocurrency fans, spend a lot of time online. One can imagine a scenario, perhaps not too far into the future, where we become so immersed in our online activities that we begin to sense and experience these activities as a separate reality unto its own. In pondering the economic consequences of this scenario, Amanda sat down for an interview with ex-Google employee turned technology blogger Maciej Olpinski who has postulated a variety of scenarios regarding virtual reality technology and cryptocurrency.
Cure Coins
While most cryptocurrencies focus on functioning as a currency, a small sub-sector of cryptocurrencies, cause coins, appeal to cryptocurrency fans who wish to support a specific cause.
GridCoin, launched in late 2013, currently has a market capitalization of 2.7 million USD and functions through something its developers call Proof-of-Research, a rendition of Proof-of-Stake through which stakers provide computational power for the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) and are paid in newly-minted GridCoin generated each block. BOINC provides computational power to universities and institutes who use it for their research in fields such as astrophysics, astronomy, and chemistry.
SolarCoin, launched in early 2014, currently has a market capitalization of 700,000 USD and operates via a Proof-of-Stake protocol with a .5% reserve set aside to pay those running its node infrastructure. The SolarCoin Foundation once every six months pays out SolarCoins to any organization who can prove they are generating solar energy at a rate of 1 SolarCoin per 1 megawatt hour (Mwh) of solar energy generated.
CureCoin, launched in mid-2014, currently has a market capitalization of 260,000 USD and operates via a Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake hybrid protocol. Miners are paid for their hashing power and stakers are paid for the computational power they contribute to Stanford University's Folding@home program. Folding@home is software that applies the computational power of CPUs and GPUs towards generating simulations of human protein folds. Stanford believes the program can lead to a better understanding of human proteins and eventually better treatment protocols for various afflictions like Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and some forms of cancer.
Cause coins with smaller market capitalizations seeking to break into these same markets include EverGreenCoin and FoldingCoin.
The current cumulative market capitalization for cause coins is over 4 million USD. Because cause coins have some pretty significant advantages over traditional methods of funding such causes, namely the ease with which funding can be audited and the voluntary and incentivized participation, the potential for growth within this sub-sector of cryptocurrency is actually quite substantial.