Disclaimer: The author of this interview owns a few PesetaCoins.
Many of us saw this coming: local cryptocurrencies. Following the steps of Auroracoin and Mazacoin, here comes PesetaCoin, the Spanish crypto (pesetacoin.info). With 6 million unemployed, youth unemployment over 50%, booming debt, rampant corruption, oppressive laws and an economy predated by bankers, Spain is not looking good. However, Spaniards are amazing fighters. And CryptoMP is one of them. He’s the father of this new cryptocurrency.
Néstor Romeral Andrés: Who is behind PesetaCoin?
CryptoMP: The design of the currency as such, the first coin, the first services and some other things are my creation, but this coin has come where it is now thanks to the community that has joined the project and taken all the necessary roles to make it happen: developers, miners, forums, translators, business that have accepted it as payment…
NRA: What is your goal?
CMP: We wish it to be the most widely used cryptocurrency in Spain, even above Bitcoin. Not only for online payments, but also in brick and mortar stores. Globally, we want it to be used and respected. But we know Bitcoin is the king.
NRA: What are its specs and why?
CMP: PesetaCoin is a Scrypt algorithm coin that generates blocks every minute. The value of the block is 166,386 PTC and difficulty is adjusted automatically each block using the famous “Kimoto Gravity Well”. There will be a total of 166 million PTC in circulation and the block reward halves every year. Some of the most notable advantages over Bitcoin: Difficulty setting is more advanced which prevents instant mining by large MultiPools, transaction confirmation time is much faster: 1 minute (Bitcoin is 10 minutes) and, at least by now, it is resistant to ASIC so it cannot be mined with massively specialized chips, making it accessible to the general public.
NRA: What was the spark that ignited the idea?
CMP: In December there was an explosion of new coins that continues these days, but must of them are just pump and dump scams. I thought it was time to start a slightly different project that wouldn’t seek an explosive coin, but a modest currency that slowly finds its way into the community.
NRA: Is there a distribution plan? Which population groups are expected to adopt the currency in the first place?
CMP: A few coins were distributed in the early days through “give-aways”. They started at 50 PTC, but they’ve now dropped to 1 PTC as we’ve run out of funds. Early adopters were mostly people related to the crypto community, but we’ve managed to catch the attention of other sectors and groups of users that had no previous contact with this technology and have evolved into experts in GPUs, servers, exchanges and other aspects of this the crypto world. Most of these users are members of the ‘Forocoches’ forum. Our next target is the e-commerce sector, that we hope to engage soon thanks to the tools that are being developed at this very moment.
NRA: Why the rush on mining? Why not pre-mine more coins before the launch?
CMP: Releasing a coin without pre-mining ensures that the distribution will be fair right from the start. If you’re one of the thousand early-miners then you’ve earned a good amount of PTC on your own merit, hardware and energy spending for creating something valuable.
NRA: Is it similar to other local cryptocurrencies such as Aurora or Mazacoin?
CMP: It’s been designed to be a local cryptocurrency. But the similarities end there. Its main difference is pre-mining. Aurora’s idea is innovative and apparently altruistic, but it arises many questions. Are all Icelanders going to receive their coins. What about the unclaimed coins? An advantage of cryptocurrencies is decentralization. If we put 50% of the coins in the hands of a single person then it is not decentralized and it’s more similar to FIAT. I believe that adoption must come from the knowledge of how scarce and hard to get a coin is. If you’ve got it for free then is very hard for it to gain some value (beyond the speculative value, as we’ve seen lately).
NRA: What is your opinion about SpainCoin? A possible rival? The website is not even in Spanish.
CMP: SpainCoin looks like a classic pump-and-dump scam. A few people will make a bunch of money in the early stages. Then bye-bye coin.
NRA: What are your estimations for the short and long term?
CMP: In the short term, in about two months, with the creation of payment services and tools for sellers, we believe we can get to be about 100 or 200 shops accepting the coin (websites and brick and mortar stores). In about 12-18 months with more stable price, we expect that online stores not accepting it will be a minority.
NRA: What are your thoughts about a more than possible regulation by the government in the short term?
CMP: We must see the contents of that regulation first. I believe there is no need for any regulation. Maybe only for the exchanges in order to protect customers. We know that in Spain banks are politicized and corrupted. I’d ask them to keep on stealing money by the regular channels, but leave cryptos alone.
Editor’s Note: There is another Spanish cryptocurrency called SpainCoin with a launch plan similar to Auroracoin.
