| Online Broker | Minimum Deposit | PPC Trading Platforms |
|---|---|---|
| IC Markets | $200 Minimum Deposit | MT4, MT5, cTrader PPC Trading Platforms |
| FXOpen | $1 Minimum Deposit | MT4, MT5, TickTrader PPC Trading Platform |
Peercoin - Proof-of-Stake Minting
Peercoin (PPC) is a cryptocurrency. PPC CFDs may be traded at some brokers.
What is Peercoin ?
Peercoin emerged in 2012 and differed from Bitcoin in that it utilised Proof-of-Stake versus Proof-of-Work to establish consensus. The underlying structure for these cryptocurrencies is the blockchain. This is a distributed electronic ledger, without central control.
Bitcoin uses proof-of-work mining which allows it to let anyone plug into the network and process transactions. Miners compete to process blocks of transactions, consuming power and resources as they do so. Part of this process is solving a problem, which is resource intensive but not particularly hard (for a computer). Success in the competition to mine a block of transactions, is the proof of work. Peercoin does not use this method. Rather it lets Peercoin owners (the stake holders) produce new blocks (hence the concept of proof of stake).
Coin owners are selected to mint the next block (minting is to describe this process as mining is used to describe proof-of-work). Coin owners are selected based on a concept called coin age, which is a figure derived from multiplying the number of coins a minter has by the number of days they have been held in their wallet. However to this is added randomness, thus a minter with high coin age has a higher probability of being selected, rather than a certainty.
There are other rules which help ensure that a monopoly on minting does not develop. One way of seeing off attackers built into this process is that an attacker would have to have a significant holding of Peercoin before they could attack (and thus potentially damage the worth of their holdings).
In Bitcoin speed wins, and this is function of computing power and resources, which can tend to centralisation. With Peercoin, processing power does not win, and it lets minters process blocks on a wider range of devices. Just as miners receive Bitcoin, successful minters receive Peercoin.
Peercoin itself is used to make peer-to peer payments (like Bitcoin), which is the data being processed by minters to be recorded on the ledger. The cryptocurrency has the ticker symbol PPC and is traded on cryptocurrency exchanges. When trading a CFD (Contract for Difference) the trader does not own the market being traded, thus when a trading a PPC CFD, the trader does not own any Peercoin. However they can go long or short, use leverage (increasing leverage increases risk and cryptocurrencie are extremely volatile) and do not not need a wallet.
