Penguincoin: New crypto currency with Tux as its mascot!

Hello everybody, I would like to bring to attention a new crypto currency to the Linux community. I know I am a new user and I hope this is not viewed as spam or anything of the like but I feel that the Linux community would like to know more about this. Penguincoin (PENG) is a recently created cryptocurrency (altcoin) that is based of the scrypt cryptography algorithm. The main thread on bitcointalk.org is here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=442876.0
and the coin specific forum is located here http://www.penguincoinforum.com/
I have been supporting this coin since about its launch day and I believe many members of the Linux community would be interested in this. The coin's logo features Tux the penguin on it and it has an active developer and community. Currently promotions of the coin are focused on contacting different penguin charities with the hope to make donations to adopt a penguin/penguin family. I would love to see the Linux community joining with this coin to put it to good use, as I know from past experience that there are many technologically savvy people in this community. Feel free to ask me any questions or come on over to the bitcointalk forum. Thanks for your time!
CryptoCartel

P.S. There are already several Linux users in the Penguincoin community and more would be welcome! A Linux wallet is available to compile and there are directions for that on the forum.

Everyone is jumping on the cryto-bandwagon, now aren't they, just as the wheels fall off of bitcoin?

I wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot pole or a twelve-foot Hungarian, because I can spell p-y-r-a-m-i-d.

There is a portion of the geek community that thinks that, because it can be done on a computer, it should be done on a computer. I remember a "start-up" during the dot-com boom in the 1990s that was all about ordering groceries on line. The big minds behind it thought that, since persons could order groceries on-line, persons would order groceries on-line.

As the song says, it ain't necessarily so.

Well, persons didn't order groceries on-line just because they could. They ordered groceries on-line because they were disabled and can't leave the house (I have known folks who do this). The rest of us still went to the grocery store.

You can do lots of wonderful things with computers. Creating a legitimate currency is not one of them, not least because it excludes everyone who doesn't have or doesn't use computers, but still needs access to currency. It is elitist, exclusionary, and ultimately destined to /dev/null.

The problem is not that it excludes people without computers, but that it has no secure backing. Old currencies were backed by real gold. Modern currencies are backed by functioning governments; which is why we prefer pounds, euros, or dollars to dongs and colons. There is nothing and no-one reliable behind the bitcoin and its like.

Interesting name you have. Are you the head of this cartel ?

This thread is outside the realm of technical linux discussion, so I'm moving to the main General forum where it will be more on-topic.

Also, isn't Tux a registered penguin ... I mean, trademark ... in the United States?

My favorite quote from the article cited:

BitCoin, the currency and world of and for well-to-do libertarian tech trolls, beings so much smarter than the rest of the rusty old world. [...] What does it mean for a currency when the person who has the most reserves just hoards it? It is a dick-headed thing. Ponzi Planet BitCoin likes to think it's beyond intervention by its "lessers."

ROTFLMAO ... but then this author concludes by eloquently summing up the human issue here:

It was a lead-pipe cinch BitCoin altar boys would start throwing money at BitCoin Elvis. In all tribes of the Culture of Lickspittle you will find those who immediately wish to give money to people who probably already have a ton of it. Those who make and run [Bitcoin's] infrastructure are equally plagued by human frailty. One such frailty is the always on attitude that they have none as the soldiers in the front lines of the battle to bring on the future.

He's a good writer, hitting squarely on the head why the Bitcoin Con is already dead. (It hasn't quite stopped wiggling yet, but it's close.)

Anyway ... What people should be doing right now, is studying these technologies very closely to assess their cryptographic underpinnings, the manner and risks of compromise, and the possible settings -- (which do not include "being a currency") -- under which they could, in fact, be useful to business, or to something else. This is, arguably, an interesting and novel application for cryptography! It's just not useful as a "coin." Is there some way, for example, to apply these ideas to improvements in the present [non ...] security of a credit card? It would be very useful, indeed, to have a very difficult-to-forge credit card that could be at least partially validated off-line.

No, I'm not suggesting the direct renaming of "bitcoin" as-it-is to "credit card." Instead, I'm suggesting that this technology or some offshoot of it "sniffs" to be the basis of a badly-needed security improvement to that existing and well-entrenched system. We lose millions of dollars a day to credit-card fraud and most of the time we have no choice but to "eat" the loss because the laws (rightly ...) say that the consumer doesn't lose. So, we need an idea here. If we did away with the magnetic stripe, embedded a chip that would of course have more storage-space ... then we could put a bitcoin-like code on that. (Yeah, we'd have to replace millions of "swipe" terminals, but we can do that.) Could it be used to make an automobile door-lock? An identification badge that's really suitable for Top Secret grade applications?

In short ... we should be putting on our thinking caps. (And watching attentively to invest in companies that are doing this, methinks, when they quietly go public.) How could the underlying ideas be put to good use?

Originally Posted by frankbell I wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot pole or a twelve-foot Hungarian, because I can spell p-y-r-a-m-i-d.

There are lots of people who don't understand bitcoin that love to guffaw and deride when the subject comes up.

Many of these same people have confidence in Social Security, a bona fide government-backed Ponzi/Madoff scheme.

Many also accept that gold is as solid a basis of wealth as you can get, even though gold lost 19% of its value in this last year alone.

Why does bitcoin have any value? Because its users say it does. And there are strict, mathematically-enforced rules about the creation ("mining") of new bitcoins.

What rules does the federal government obey about printing more fiat dollars? Don't they just print as much as they feel like?

Yes, bitcoin value has been falling lately, but then currencies and commodities are known to be volatile.

People can decide for themselves. I just hope they do their research first. There's plenty of articles on slashdot about the recent goings on with bitcoin exchanges. People are free to do what they want with their time and money, but I do hope the gov't takes some action to protect the more foolish ones from themselves. I don't know if they care enough anymore tho.

Anyway, I've had enough of this discussion, so go ahead and invest in what you will.

Hijacking someone else's mascot to add legitimacy to your venture is not going to win many friends.

Well, I'm pretty sure that this point the "crypto-currency scam" idea has run out of steam on all fronts. To proliferate, it requires a large supply of geek suckers with a fair amount of available cash, no spouses (who would of course see righ through it), and who do not talk to one another on the Internet nor read any articles other than ones who tell them how smart they are.

A scam like this needs – a tulip.

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs Well, I'm pretty sure that this point the "crypto-currency scam" idea has run out of steam on all fronts.

You didn't mention if you are talking specifically about the OP's penguincoin or cryptocurrencies in general.

I don't know anything about the former, but if the latter, you remind me of Marshal Foch who after WWI declared something to the effect that aircraft were an interesting novelty but they would never be a serious weapon for warfare. And I wonder if you said a similar thing about the internet in the 80's (if you're old enough)--many smart people did.

There's an awful lot of millions of dollars being invested in cryptocurrency infrastructure (startup companies finding ways to spend and accept cryptocurrency in new ways), both in the US and around the world in free countries. A lot of financial types are on board, not just "geeks".

I welcome any and all suckers to dive right into that pond, with my blessings. I'm sure you have indeed invented the warplane, and that y-o-u (whoever you are ...) are, by god, so much "smarter than the average bear" that the rest of us will soon be working throughout the night, trying to calculate numbers fast enough to become just as insanely-wealthy as you are . . .

Please, please, please, and with my blessings. "True believers" in anything will throw their money away until the whole thing (whatever it is, this time ...) has finally run its course. (And then, spend the rest of their days confirming their beliefs and pointing at their missed-op and/or bad luck.) That's mass psychology 101.

Still a classic, and still in print after several hundred years: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness Of Crowds. Yeah, there's a reason for that.

I have an acquaintance who believes he understands part of cryto-currency's fascination for a certain element of the computer literati.

I offer one of his posts here without endorsement.

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/?p=16901

What I find curious about bitcoin afficianados is their eagerness to opt out of the social and economic structure which has given them the means and ability to accumulate bitcoins in the first place, as well as their disdain for the multiplier effect.

[i]"Say! I've been quoted!"

The people who are attracted to the bitcoin scam are among the most comfortable members of our society, thanks to our society, which has among other things bequeathed them enough Dollars to buy expensive machinery and to pay big power-bills in a starry-eyed effort to calculate numbers to get rich in terms of something that isn't Dollars.

This scam doesn't pander to the reality that these people live in (and that has done so much for them). It panders to what Billy Joel referred to as "the angry young man." It panders to their frustrations, and to the universal of human greed.

Bitcoin is based on some extremely novel applications of consumer-grade cryptography, and I am sure that we will see more of it. (For instance, the intrinsically-insecure "credit card" system, magnetic-stripes and all, costs billions of dollars each year in losses due to tokens that can effortlessly be forged, and which can only be validated using a real-time connection. Bitcoin-like technologies could revolutionize that system, although not used as coin.) But first, we have to let the "get rich quick" scams run their course ... and, inevitably, to lead to criminal prosecutions. Which certainly will happen and are happening. Only after the illusions of easy-money are dispelled can we hunker down and figure out what to do with this novel cryptographic application.