Crypto Currencies, what's n(e)xt?

Quote from the movie How to Train Your Dragon: "Out with the old and in with the new"

After the success of Bitcoin during the last four years, especially during 2013 a lot of alternative crypto coin, or altcoins have been introduced. Most of these coins have a system that gradually generates new currency during it's lifetime. A process that can cause inflation during this generation phase. For the most common currencies this generation protocol is build upon a proof of work principle. This means that a lot of computing power is needed to generate a new block, and if in the system the amount of computing power increases, the difficulty is raised to keep an predetermined block update rate.
A couple of months ago when the Bitcoin crossed the $1000 value, a mined block could generate a value of $50.000. This generation of money out of thin air seems to good to be true, and when something seems to good to be true is usually is. The cost of estimated power consumption of the worldwide computer network calculating these new Bitcoin blocks was valued higher then $50.000.

This waist of energy does not fit the 'green' concept. So based on a different principle called proof of stake the latest Crypto currency created is the NXT Coin.

Proof of stake has a nice short description on Wikipedia, that is better served with a link then a quote.

In this system the Computers connected to this currency network do not have to compete to find the next valid block, so the total global computing power doesn't have to run full speed. This limits the energy required to keep the network up and running.

So what can be improved for NXT coin?
Currently the source code is not open source, this requires a high level of trust in the developers.
With all coins of this system already in circulation, generated at start-up this raises the question who had these early coins? And the proof of stake looks at the number and age of the coins to grant an online NXT-wallet owner to generate a new block and claim the transaction fees.
The most filled and oldest wallets-owners will profit the most of this proof of stake principle.
It is still a system with an increasing block-chain, that will grow in size over time, in my opinion not suited for mobile phones.
I do think that the proof of stake is a better system with regards to energy consumption and yes, for this currency I also have generated my own wallet..... just in case....

QR Code Trailers.

Quote from the movie A Beautiful Mind: "But on the night, here you are, making a Hollywood movie..."

There are just a few movie poster, or other movie related promotional material that hold QR Codes.
The Iron Man II movie poster contained a QR Code in the Uni-Beam of the Iron Man suit.
This QR Code was linked to a online promotion.
I haven't found a Iron Man III movie poster containing a QR Code, it seems that the usage of QR Codes in relation with movies is not consistent.


In my opinion each modern movie poster should contain a QR Code linking to the trailer. QR Codes target the mobile phone users, and most modern mobile phone have no problem running these trailers.

With just a bit of enhancement effort the QR Code can be graphically linked to the movie.

Here is my Captain America The Winter Soldier QR Code. Maybe Marvel Studio's is interested :-)

Mining for gold.

Quote from the movie Rat Race: "It was the second largest gold rush in American history."

The 19th of December there was a column making a reference that Bitcoin was following a classic bubble progression. I also like the reference to a 'gold rush' behavior.
A reference to gold rushes in Wikipedia states:
"Gold rushes were typically marked by a general buoyant feeling of a "free for all" in income mobility, in which any single individual might become abundantly wealthy almost instantly."

This leads to the question who actually made money during those gold rushes. Sure there were lucky individuals who actually struck a lot of gold, but a job with less risk and more income certainty is to be a supplier for the gold-diggers. The stores that sold the pickaxe's, shovels, food and other necessities for the miners probably made the most profit.
The same can be said for the crypto coin mining. Since everybody can do actual mining, the free for all and instant wealth is very appealing. In order to do some serious crypto coin mining, you require a lot of calculating power, and currently the most mining power can be made when using the AMD Raedon graphical card as the heart of your mining rig.
I would not be surprised if AMD would report a better year than expected, solely due to the increased demand of their graphical adapters for (Scrypt based) mining rigs. Maybe the safest way to also make money on the bitcoin hype is to buy AMD shares :-).

Reality and history will probably tell that the biggest profits have been made by the early adopters, and the market already has been taken over by bigger players.
Being a supplier for the Crypto Coin market is still interesting, that's why I'm selling these Customized QR Code Wallets.

Pagerank Update.

Quote from the movie Double Jeopardy: "Here's your Christmas present..."


In order to check the effectiveness of you QR Codes as part of a marketing campaign the usage of the code must be measured.

This same check also applies to websites in general. The most common way to measure the quality of a website is  the Google Page-rank.

There are several SEO (search engine optimizing) techniques to create a higher pagerank score. But in order to be sure Google actually needs to update the pagerank.

The update rate used to be about 4 times a year, but in 2013 the first pagerank update was in February. From about May a second update was expected, but it was postponed.

Up to a week ago it was expected that a second pagerank update would not happen in 2013 anymore, until suddenly an update was rolled-out on the 6th of December.

With my QR Code website going from PR1 to PR3 and my blog from unrated to PR1, I cannot complain with the results from this update.
I consider this new rating as an early Christmas present.