In 2018, there was a popular infographic that made rounds on social media that listed the top 100 cryptocurrencies in terms of market cap with short descriptions of each project (click to expand):

The author also wrote lists for the top 200 and 300 cryptocurrencies:

I found these lists to be useful because they provided a bird’s-eye view of the cryptocurrency industry at the time. The lists are a bit outdated now because a lot of new projects have appeared since then while others have fallen out of popularity. As a bit of a homage to the original series, I decided to create an updated list for 2024. Due to time constraints, I have shortened the list to include only the top 50 cryptocurrencies:

Here is the same list as a table:

I hope this post is helpful to anyone interested in investing in cryptocurrencies. If you find a mistake then feel free to post it in the comments.

Those who have been active in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency space for a while are probably aware of Primecoin (XPM) – a cryptocurrency that contributes to scientific and mathematical research by searching for primes. There has been a lot of discussion about how wasteful Bitcoin mining is in terms of energy usage and resources and Primecoin’s innovative proof-of-work algorithm is viewed by some in the cryptocurrency community as a potential way of turn mining into something that can be more useful for society. But Primecoin isn’t the only altcoin with mathematical research in mind out there – there’s Riecoin (RIC) too.

While Primecoin and Riecoin have their own independent development teams and communities, saying that Riecoin is Primecoin’s little brother seems like quite an accurate description. Both were developed by pseudonymous developers: Primecoin was launched in 2013 by Sunny King who would later go on to develop the first proof-of-stake coin in the form of Peercoin while Riecoin was launched in 2014 by a developer who went by the name of gatra on the BitcoinTalk forum. Perhaps as a nod to Satoshi Nakamoto, both Sunny King and gatra also stepped away from development of their coins after a few years and handed over the reins to their respective communities.

Both coins are CPU mineable (although Primecoin can be mined more efficiently with GPUs now) which is a bit of a rarity in today’s ASIC dominated world. While SHA-256-based coins like Bitcoin and Namecoin and scrypt-based coins like Litecoin and Dogecoin have been dominated by ASICs for a several years now, coins like Primecoin and Riecoin show that mining with regular home computers is still feasible in this day and age.

In terms of differences, Primecoin has 1 minute blocks, no maximum cap on coins, continuous difficulty adjustment, block rewards that are determined by the current difficulty, and a centralized checkpointing system. Riecoin on the other hand has 2.5 minute blocks, a maximum cap of 84 million coins, difficulty retargeting every 12 hours, and block rewards of 50 coins – halving every 4 years.

Both coins look for chains of prime numbers but Primecoin looks for Cunningham and bi-twin chains while Riecoin looks for chains of primes with minimum possible distances between each other. Primecoin also uses a combination of the Euler-Lagrange-Lifchitz and Fermat tests to prove primality (a faster but less accurate method) while Riecoin uses the Miller-Rabin test to test for primality (a slower but more accurate method).

Market cap-wise, Primecoin is certainly in the lead. As of July 8, 2024, Primecoin has a market cap of nearly $1.4 million while Riecoin’s is only $500,000. Both coins had fair launches with no signs of premines, instamines, ninjamines, and so on that plague the cryptocurrency community (I’m looking at you Bytecoin). From the Riecoin announcement thread:

“Fair launch:

Since this is a new PoW, it is very hard to define a starting difficulty that avoids instamining. To overcome this and contribute to a fair launch, the first 576 blocks will have no reward and the next 576 will linearly increase and reach the full reward at block 1,152, after 4 difficulty adjustments were performed. Besides avoiding instamining, this should allow time for those who want to compile their own clients. Expect the starting difficulty to be hard.

Source code will be provided a few days before launch, but the PoW functions will be replaced by stubs. The idea is that everyone would be able to examine the code and confirm that there’s nothing strange and it is indeed pretty similar to Bitcoin’s. Everyone would be able to compile it, see if they have the correct dependencies, etc. but it won’t run. At launch time, when the final code is released, everyone could easily check that the only thing that changed is the PoW code, so you’d only have to check the diff of a few lines of code and recompile.”

If you are interested in what Riecoin has to offer then I encourage you to visit the official website. It has all of the information you need to download, install, and run the software and guides to set up mining either by yourself or in a pool. There is also a handy link to download the entire blockchain bootstrap so that you don’t have to spend hours to days waiting for the client to sync up with the network.

Alternatively, if mining isn’t your cup of tea then you can head over to FreiExchange and buy them directly.

So far, I’ve been mining on a mid-range gaming laptop with an Intel Core i7-8750H for the last three hours and it takes little less than a day on average to mine a block. That being said, I don’t recommend mining on laptops for extended periods since their thermal designs aren’t as good as desktops.

If you’ve read my earlier post then you would know that I began accepting Peercoin donations for my blog because I believe the technology of proof-of-stake (PoS) to be interesting and worth exploring. Despite being the first PoS coin however, Peercoin still retained a proof-of-work mining scheme in order to handle the distribution of their coins especially during their initial phase of growth.

Nxt is another cryptocurrency that is interesting to me because it relies purely on proof-of-stake and thus forgoes mining entirely. In addition, it also features a Java-based codebase written entirely from the ground up as well as features not found in simple Bitcoin clones such as a decentralized asset exchange (think of a stock exchange) and a monetary system that allows users to create their own coins and tokens on top of the blockchain:

The official download page for the Nxt client can be found here. Make sure that Java is installed first. If you’re using Ubuntu like me, just enter sudo apt install default-jdk in the command line to install Java. Underneath the download links, there is also a blockchain bootstrap available to speed up syncing with the network.

And finally, if you are interested in helping support my work then feel free to donate some NXT to the following address:

NXT-ZMXT-JGWD-CHSN-8CBSH

A regularly updated list of all donation methods accepted by this site can be found here.

History shows that the cryptocurrency community desperately needs good auditing services. Currently, those who are best equipped to audit businesses such as exchanges are people who have an in-depth understanding of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies – often but not necessarily developers.

For example, Mt. Gox invited Roger Ver (a.k.a. “Bitcoin Jesus”) to audit their reserves in 2011 and again in 2013. In 2014, exchanges responded to the influx of new customers, increased competition, and the collapse of Mt. Gox by taking audits much more seriously: Coinbase was audited by Bitcoin advocate and entrepreneur Andreas Antonopoulos, Bitstamp was audited by former Bitcoin Core developer Mike Hearn, and Bitfinex, Kraken, Huobi, and OKCoin were audited by former Ripple Labs CTO Stefan Thomas.

Sounds great right? The only problem is, those who have the technical skills to audit exchanges generally don’t have the skills to audit the fiat side of things. And the people who have the skills to audit the fiat side generally don’t have the technical skills to audit the crypto side of things, as Mike Hearn explained during his audit of Bitstamp:

“The overlap between people who are traditional accredited auditors and people who understand the Bitcoin technology and things like signing with private keys is presently very small.”

In December 2022, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao also indicated during an interview that traditional accounting firms had difficulties auditing crypto exchanges:

“Audits don’t reveal every problem… Many of them don’t even know how to audit crypto exchanges.”

The fiat side is important because it is possible for a business such as an exchange to make up for a shortage of BTC or ETH by borrowing or buying cryptocurrencies with fiat. In such a case, someone like Andreas Antonopoulos might look at the hot and cold wallets and assume that everything is fine. However, a closer look at the fiat side would indicate that the exchange is actually insolvent.

In fact, during his audit of OKCoin, Stefan Thomas explicitly warned about this possibility:

“Note that there are limitations to this type of audit. It does not verify an exchange’s fiat assets and liabilities or other aspects of their balance sheet. It is also difficult to prove definitively that the bitcoins in question are actually owned by the exchange versus being on loan for instance.”

Of course, there could still be issues even if we had a healthy and competitive marketplace of cryptocurrency auditing services to choose from. For example, Roger Ver had name recognition but his audit of Mt. Gox wasn’t a particularly thorough one and it couldn’t save them from collapse in 2014.

And while cryptocurrency reserves can be proven transparently and in real time, confirmation of fiat reserves cannot be done in real time and companies might not want to expose their financial operations for their competitors to see. Therefore, some degree of trust will probably be necessary in this field.

Then there’s also the fact that the cryptocurrency industry is much more complex and diverse now. Back in the old days, when nearly all attention was focused on Bitcoin and a handful of altcoins that simply copied Bitcoin’s code, a technically inclined and sufficiently dedicated accountant might have gained a working knowledge of the entire space in just a few months. Now the cryptocurrency space is significantly more complex with multiple layer 1 and layer 2 platforms, NFTs, ICOs, utility tokens, smart contracts, stablecoins, DeFi, DAOs, blockchain forks, airdrops, and DApps.

Finally, companies that enter this space will likely face challenges such as finding sufficiently qualified experts that are respected in the community (who won’t come cheap) and building up a reputation. The latter is unfortunately a catch-22 because a company with little reputation is unlikely to attract clients and their “seal of approval” won’t mean much. But without clients, it would be difficult for a company to build up a reputation.

In conclusion, it seems apparent that there is a large void in the industry for auditing services that team up cryptocurrency experts with fiat experts. Yet, very few startups have expressed an interest in filling it. This is understandable because there are probably far easier ways of making money in the cryptocurrency space that don’t involve dealing with clueless accountants and the legacy fiat-based banking system. That being said, most of the challenges faced by companies that enter this space don’t seem too insurmountable. Perhaps there are more that I might have missed? If you have any thoughts on this issue or know of any companies working in this space (or even wish to promote your own) then feel free to share them in the comments.

The Bitcoin Standard, written by Saifedean Ammous and published in 2018, is a comprehensive and enlightening book that delves into the world of Bitcoin. In a similar vein to The Internet of Money series by Andreas M. Antonopoulos, the book focuses on the “why” of Bitcoin rather than how it works on a technical level. Written from the perspective of Austrian economics, it provides readers with a deep understanding of the history of Bitcoin, its underlying economic and financial principles, and its potential future impact on global society.

The author’s writing style is engaging and easy to follow, making complex concepts accessible even for those who are new to the subject matter. Ammous begins by providing an overview of money throughout human history, explaining how various forms of money such as seashells, rai stones, silver, gold, and fiat money have evolved over time in response to technological advancements and societal needs. This historical context sets the stage for a thorough examination of Bitcoin’s philosophical underpinnings, its unique properties as digital gold, and its potential to replace the current fiat standard.

Ammous also explores the potential implications of Bitcoin on global finance, including its role in international trade, remittances, and as a reliable store of value for those seeking a hedge against economic mismanagement by political entities. Despite the book’s age, the author’s optimism for the future still feels as fresh and relevant as ever, providing readers with a clear understanding of the potential benefits and challenges that lie ahead.

One of the key strengths (and slight weaknesses) of The Bitcoin Standard is the author’s strongly opinionated and confrontational writing style. Ammous correctly emphasizes the importance of sound money as a cornerstone for economic stability and growth, arguing that Bitcoin’s decentralized nature makes it immune to the issues faced by traditional fiat currencies such as inflation and political manipulation.

However, while the book’s aggressive writing style can be very effective at times, it also ends up being a bit of a double-edged sword. Ammous makes it very clear that he absolutely despises Keynesian economics and while I found his criticism of Keynesian economics through its role in funding endless wars and triggering economic recessions to be quite enlightening, his takes on more subjective topics like modern art, popular music, and the rate of technological innovation seemed like a bit of a reach. The fact that he isn’t afraid to hurl ad hominem arguments against John Maynard Keynes and his supporters doesn’t really help the cause either.

That being said, this is a minor issue and I found the value of what I learned to be much greater than dealing with some of the book’s subjectivity. I still highly recommend The Bitcoin Standard as an essential read for anyone interested in gaining a deep understanding of the philosophical foundations of Bitcoin and its implications for global society. With its comprehensive coverage of Bitcoin’s historical context and its future possibilities, this book offers readers the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about their involvement with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in an ever-changing world.

An audiobook version of The Bitcoin Standard narrated by actor and professional narrator James Fouhey was also published in 2018. After reading the book, I listened to the audiobook version and found it to be equally enjoyable. In particular, Fouhey’s narration is refreshingly clear and easily understandable with an air of confidence befitting the book’s ideas.

I’ve been using an altcoin exchange called FreiExchange for a while in order to trade some obscure altcoins that can’t be found elsewhere. This is my review of them:

Founded in 2016 by a Norwegian dude, the website looks like something straight out of the late 90s but is surprisingly functional and responsive – using modern technologies like Flexbox. The color scheme is a pleasant dark grey with hints of red, green, and blue and is a welcome change from the usual corporate look of other exchanges as well as being easy on the eyes.

The name of the exchange comes from an old cryptocurrency called Freicoin. Released in 2012, Freicoin was unique among cryptocurrencies in that it discouraged hoarding and encouraged spending by causing a portion of one’s coins to slowly disappear over time. It was an interesting economic experiment that failed to attract significant investment for obvious reasons and is relatively unknown today. FreiExchange is the main exchange to buy and trade Freicoin, although the exchange features over 100 other pairs including popular coins like Litecoin, Dogecoin, and Monero.

Registering an account is a simple process that takes less than a minute. There are no KYC requirements which given that there are no fiat currencies being traded, is really the way things should be. Additionally, FreiExchange supports and encourages its users to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) to add an extra layer of security to their accounts. Both deposits and withdrawals were generally fast and easy, although sometimes they can take several hours due to the need for additional network verification:

Given that many of the coins on FreiExchange aren’t super popular, lack of liquidity and volume can be a real issue however. 24-hour trading volumes for most pairs tend to be quite low (<0.05 BTC) and spreads between buy and sell orders can also be a bit high at times.

FreiExchange also doesn’t support trading in units smaller than one satoshi. This can be an issue for coins with high supplies or low prices. FreiXLite is a sister exchange of FreiExchange that uses Litecoin instead of Bitcoin which helps mitigate the sub-satoshi issue but a quick look at their markets shows that their trading volume is very, very low.

A unique aspect of FreiExchange is its lack of trading or deposit fees. Instead, the exchange makes money solely through withdrawal fees. Bitcoin withdrawals also come with a 0.0006 BTC processing fee (about $35) and the minimum withdrawal limit of 0.0025 BTC is quite high (almost $150) so I wouldn’t recommend withdrawing Bitcoin too often unless the high costs don’t bother you. Fortunately, withdrawal fees and limits for other coins are far more reasonable.

Another unique aspect of FreiExchange is the option to invest in FreiXShares (FXS) as a way of making some passive income on the side. According to their official description, these aren’t securities and don’t represent ownership of the exchange. Instead, they entitle you to a cut of the profits of the exchange taken from users’ fees. Just out of fun, I decided to purchase 0.1 FXS (worth about $8.60) and sure enough, about $0.10 to $0.15 worth of dust spread across Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Namecoin as well as a handful of coins with names like MotaCoin and Riecoin started appearing in my account every Sunday. FreiXShares can be traded on FreiExchange just like any altcoin but they aren’t a cryptocurrency and don’t have their own blockchain. Therefore, if FreiExchange goes kaput then any FXS tokens would cease to exist.

All in all, I’m pleased with FreiExchange. It’s not perfect but it does fulfill a unique role in the cryptocurrency space. According to their website, there are no listing fees for a coin to be added to the exchange and many of the coins featured would otherwise have no other place to trade, making it a much-needed sanctuary for older and less visible coins.

Passive income is one of my interests so putting some money into a proof-of-stake (PoS) cryptocurrency like Peercoin (PPC) and setting up a full node by letting the wallet run on my computer to collect staking rewards seemed like a very interesting idea.

According to the official website, the ROI on staking Peercoin is 1% per year so in order to make $1 a day by staking peercoins, I would need to make $365 worth of peercoins a year. Since the annual ROI is 1%, I would need an initial investment of $36,500. That works out to about 91,250 PPC at current prices which would also make my address the 59th richest PPC address on the blockchain.

And that’s not including the fact that like nearly all cryptocurrencies, the price of PPC is very volatile – e.g. it was trading at $0.60 per coin just two months ago. Because of this, small price shifts up or down can make the rewards from staking seem pretty irrelevant.

So there goes that idea…

Now, if I wanted to make e.g. $10 a day instead of $1 then I would multiply my initial investment of $36,500 by 10. If a coin had an annual ROI of 2% or 3% instead of 1%, then I would divide my initial investment of $36,500 by 2 or 3, respectively.

From this little mental exercise, it seems apparent that the equation to find out how much of a cryptocurrency (in $x) needed to make $y worth of it per day assuming an annual ROI of z% is x = (36,500y)/z. Neither market cap nor price per coin factor into this equation.

Here is a table that shows several PoS coins, their approximate average annual staking reward rate, and the amount of money that would need to be invested in order to make about $1 a day rounded to the nearest dollar (note that some of these coins might have other requirements for staking such as a minimum balance and coin age):

Back in the mid 2010s, there was a coin called HyperStake that promised extremely high staking rewards of up to 750% per year. As long as the price of each coin remained the same, an initial investment of less than $50 would have yielded a $1 daily return!

Of course, the high inflation rate meant that the price had to fall – HyperStake (now rebranded as Element) is down 99.8% from its all-time high. To prevent this outcome, most PoS coins like ReddCoin, Navcoin, Emercoin, and Neo have less extreme returns of about 4 to 10% per year. However, the prices of many of these coins have fallen by over a third during the past couple of months which goes to show how easy it is for potential returns from staking to be completely overshadowed by price volatility.

If you know of any coins with good potential for staking then feel free to share them in the comments.

Just-Dice.com is a cryptocurrency gambling site, or more specifically a dice site that has been running continuously since June 2013. That’s almost an eternity in the cryptocurrency space so you can feel safe knowing that they’re unlikely to run off with your coins. On Just-Dice.com, players can make bets on dice rolls and the site makes money by giving the house a slight edge of 1%. While gambling is very unlikely to provide a consistent profit in the long term, investing in the site’s bankroll for others to bet against means that the odds will be in your favor.

Originally, Just-Dice.com used bitcoins but due to concerns about government regulation, the site owner dooglus switched to an altcoin called Clams (CLAM). The initial distribution of Clams was quite interesting – a snapshot was taken of the Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin blockchains on May 12, 2014 and all addresses containing non-dust amounts of BTC, LTC, or DOGE at that point in time were given 4.60545574 CLAM for free. The intention was to make the distribution of the coin as fair as possible. If you held coins during the snapshot, you can claim them directly from Just-Dice.com. Just type /dig in the chat and it will give you the directions. Clams can also be bought and sold for BTC on YoBit and FreiExchange.

If you decide to invest in the site’s bankroll, some weeks will be more profitable than others because big wins will reduce the site’s profitability and big losses will increase it. Larger investments will tend to produce greater profits and the appreciation or depreciation of the price of the Clams cryptocurrency itself will also affect your profit in dollar terms.

As of July 2, 2024, 1 CLAM is worth about $0.20. I have almost 60 CLAM invested in Just-Dice.com worth about $12 in total. In order to give you a good idea of what you can earn, I have decided to share a table of my earnings over the past 12 months (click to expand):

As you can see, I was able to turn 55 CLAM into almost 60 CLAM in 12 months. This represents an annual return of about 9%. Just-Dice.com will also stake your coins for you since Clams is a proof-of-stake (PoS) cryptocurrency similar to other PoS coins like Peercoin and Nxt. In order to pay its expenses and make some money for itself however, the site also charges a 10% commission on investment and staking profits when profits are divested or at the end of each week – whichever happens sooner.

I hope this post has been helpful to anyone interested in investing in cryptocurrency gambling sites to make some passive income on the side. If you have also invested in Just-Dice.com or a similar site and wish to share your own experience, feel free to post it in the comments.

Bitcoin is great but there are concerns about its environmental impact. Even if you don’t care about the environment, traditional proof-of-work mining consumes a lot of energy that could be directed towards other uses. Therefore, I’ve decided to add a Peercoin (PPC) donation option to my blog. Peercoin is a newer cryptocurrency than Bitcoin that uses both proof-of-work to distribute the initial coins as well as an innovative consensus mechanism called proof-of-stake that requires far less energy to maintain because it doesn’t rely on power-hungry mining equipment to secure the blockchain.

On their official website, you can find more information about Peercoin, news and updates, discussion boards, wallet downloads, and links to exchanges that trade Peercoin.

If you are interested in helping support my work then feel free to donate some peercoins to the following address:

PALEXrBdE9eyEKZEJPBoEJwT3gUaK5NGEo

A regularly updated list of all donation methods accepted by this site can be found here.