Could a cryptocurracy be made, to increase participation?

[retina]

Originally Posted by LaurV

How to call our currency?

If you call it for what it is then: uselesscoin.

But if you want to pretend it is something of value then: primecoin.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by retina

use_less_coin

I try to, but never succeed, I always use all my coin.
Related to primecoin, yeah, but that's ugly too, and kinda too trivial. Maybe "prim", or "primm"? For "prime mersenne". Easy to say, more resonance? dunno..

[Nick]

Once upon a time, number theory conferences, seminars, etc. were meetings for people with a passion for pure mathematics.
Then its applications to cryptology meant all sorts of people started coming who were merely interested in the security industry.
Now, with the cryptocurrency craze, it starts to attract people who are merely interested in the finance industry.

I shall be glad when the craze is over.

[Happy5214]

Originally Posted by retina

If you call it for what it is then: uselesscoin.

But if you want to pretend it is something of value then: primecoin.

Primecoin already exists.

My suggestion is Marin. That is my sole contribution to this thread, as I have nothing to do with cryptocurrency.

[retina]

Originally Posted by Nick

Now, with the cryptocurrency craze, it starts to attract people who are merely interested in the finance industry greedy.

FTFY.

[Zhangrc]

If, very unlikely, that a cryptocurrency were made, I will just quit GIMPS. Mersenne numbers are mathematically beautiful, but making crypto coins from it sounds too greedy.

[LaurV]

Why? It will bring into the fry a lot of "losers" who waste their cycles elsewhere, which will help with the progress towards the goal of finding more mersenne primes, and making some money on the way too, for GIMPS and the coin-founders (like initial stake, at least, not talking about the EFF award), as well as for the people who anyhow like spending their electricity here. I am such a "loser" myself, like 60-70% of my computing power is currently mining ETH, and there was a time no longer than one or two months ago, when the coin was higher, when I had 90-95% of the resources there.

The fact we don't make a coin of it yet has nothing to do with the morals, but with our inability of making a coin of it. Read stupidity, if you want. Math behind of it is not easy, if many bright people here could not come to a common conclusion (beside of "it can't really be done", haha).

[M344587487]

Originally Posted by LaurV

...


The fact we don't make a coin of it yet has nothing to do with the morals, but with our inability of making a coin of it. Read stupidity, if you want. Math behind of it is not easy, if many bright people here could not come to a common conclusion (beside of "it can't really be done", haha).

I believe it's doable relatively easily technically (blockchain, embedded PRP proofs, a transformation based on the previous block to deter hoarding of results, and incentivising other's results to be included in your block so that results that lost the race to mint are not lost), the actual blocker is that no one would use it besides us, and as it'd be less efficient than directly doing PRP not even that.

There is a tangible thing that could give such a coin value, namely PRP proofs have value to us, but we are several orders of magnitude off that actually meaning anything. Without that you're left with relying on speculation, aka just another trash coin in the wind. Nice in theory, dead in practice IMO.