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Following Bitcoin’s explosion in value, a wide range of alternative Crypto-Currencies have sprung up to create the first free market in banking and currency. Regardless of ones opinion on the subject, it is an interesting experiment to see everyday people creating their own currencies at a rate that has never been seen before on this planet. 
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Cryptocurrencies were created by and for people who have simply had enough. They’ve seen the way the world is going and rather than grumble or pretend it’s not happening, they’ve decided instead to make a new one, in their own liberty-loving image. It’s a world where, by and large, Big Brother has no place — which is why, for example, it’s so popular on the black market.
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GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) is the free/open version of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the gold standard in secure email and other kinds of eavesdropping-proof, authenticated, private storage and communication. The GPG project relies on donations and voluntary subscriptions to keep up-to-date and support new platforms. They’re running a crowdfunding campaign that’s shooting for €24,000, which they’ll spend on rolling out an all-new site (with Tor access!), as well as GPG 2.1, tutorials, subscription management, material for people throwing Cryptoparties (security-training events) and many other laudable goals.
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The Mastercoin Foundation plans to let people create their own virtual currency using the existing Bitcoin protocol.
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Last week, an op-ed that I wrote for The Baltimore Sun prompted a lot of very strong reactions, both positive and negative. I argued that efforts to make Bitcoins functionally anonymous are very dangerous, because money laundering is inherently very dangerous.
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 PeercoinPeercoin Central bank None. The Peercoin peer-to-peer network regulates and distributes through consensus in protocol.[1] Date of introduction 12 August 2012, 17:57:38 UTC User(s) International Inflation Limited release rate plus 1% decentralized inflation due to the proof-of-stake system.[1] [2] Subunit 0.001 mPPC (millicoin) 0.000001 μPPC (microcoin) 0.00000001 Smallest unit Symbol Ᵽ, PPC Nickname Peercoin, PPCoin, P2PCoin, PPC Plural PPC, Peercoins Peercoin (code: ), also known as PPCoin and Peer-to-Peer Coin is the first cryptocurrency based on an implementation of a combined proof-of-stake (PoS)/ proof-of-work system (PoW).
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BOINC is an acronym that stands for (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), is an open-source computing grid where scientists, universities can create their own research projects to host on the client and have volunteers contribute processing power. BOINC takes unused clock cycles from your CPU and, depending on what platforms a particular project is coded in, your Nvidia and AMD graphics cards.
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I’ve just finished a lecture tour of Australia on Bitcoin. I’ve been working on currency innovation since 2010, but it’s the rise of Bitcoin that has generated far greater attention, with my recent lectures even making national news. But Bitcoin is only a small part of the story. There are now over 140 adaptations or forks of the Bitcoin open source code to create new “coins.” Every week new ones are released. Some appear to be interesting innovations, some seem more like get-rich-quick schemes, and others may even aim at debunking the whole idea of cryptographic currency. The recent BBC article on a coin idea that would borrow rap star Kanye West’s name does seem like an attempt to lampoon this area of innovation, as there is no news value in that one idea amongst over 140 cryptographic currencies.
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Just when you thought you were getting the hang of this bitcoin thing, the market has created a few dozen alternatives. The good news is that while you were likely late to the bitcoin phenomenon, both with your investment dollars and your suggestions for how the protocol and ecosystem should function, “altcoins,” or the ecosystem of alternative digital currencies, will give you another shot. And several of these altcoins are now riding high on bitcoin’s rising tide.
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Bitcoin may get the most attention, but several merchants are beginning to accept a digital currency called Litecoin, the second largest digital currency by market capitalization.
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The cryptocurrency Bitcoin has been in the news lately with a sudden surge in value followed by aspectacular crash – not to mention the unfortunate tale of $US4 million in bitcoin on a hard drive that was accidentally dumped in a rubbish tip. Bitcoin was the first widely used cryptocurrency, but few people know it is not the only one. So how do the top five cryptocurrencies bycapitalisation compare?
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Bitcoin is based on the “proof of work” principle, which means the more computer power you apply to the problem, the more likely you are to get rewarded. This leads to a computer power arms race, as Bitcoin “miners” need to heavily invest in both hardware and electricity to constantly run it, where “… as of April 2013 the generation of Bitcoins was using approximately $150,000 USD per day in power consumption costs.”
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The most recent is Asicoin, born on Sept. 11. It's advertised as a coin designed just for ASIC-mining hardware. ASIC chips are the most efficient types of chips for mining Bitcoin, and top of the line miners can retail for tens of thousands of dollars. So in theory Asiccoin is designed to equalize the mining playing field.
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Bitcoin's rapid rise in value and profile has spawned over 60 different 'altcoin' digital peer-to-peer currencies
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Alternative currency is on the rise, and peer-to-peer is becoming an increasingly important way to go about things, whether banking, lending or just paying for your cup of coffee at your local! Very much responding to the financial crisis, alternative currency is about removing the financial authority or bank from the process of making transactions.
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