Sure, BTC-e has by far the most PPC liquidity. My point was that when exchanges take a chance on offering PPC for trading and it makes them money, it makes other exchanges want to do the same. Also, after seeing Mt. Gox play a role in the BTC meltdowns in 2011 and 2013, we want to make sure PPC isn't dependent on one exchange (BTC-e) like BTC used to be dependent of Mt. Gox because of its very high market share.

I would encourage those who are attacking Burnside with anger to turn their attention to the "regulators" that are apparently threatening to bring force into a situation that is peaceful and consensual. It's hard to do this because we don't know exactly who they are. We do know that they feel they can't compete in a free market unlike Burnside who eagerly endeavored to do so. They feel they must threaten force to maintain their position instead of enticing people to cooperate as Burnside has. For this reason I wish the best for Burnside and the worst for the aggressors.

We should take our emotions regarding this failure and channel them into a sustained effort to architect a better securities exchange system. Bitcoin has worked so well because the architecture was decentralized and Satoshi was anonymous. We need apply these principles to the development of a more resilient securities market.

I am pleased to see Crypto-Trade added a PPC/USD trade pair today. Thank you Crypto-Trade. I completed the first trade on the pair. Fun.

Buying at their own exchange would only change an accounting entry in their database. In order to get real blockchain PPC (that they can allow customers to withdraw) they must buy it at another exchange.

To give BTC-e a way to short sell it, essentially increasing the number of PPC beyond what's in the blockchain, which in turn reduces the value of all PPC.

I agree with previous posters that POS minting could tie up some coins and cause delays, although they shouldn't be minting with a large portion of the coins to make them reliably available for withdrawal.

However, I still find the trading activity at Vircurex very hard to explain as rational by any actor other than BTC-e and I'd like to hear what other think of that.

Here’s an image of their one month price and volume chart as well as the total number of 24 hour trades made in each coin: http://imgur.com/obNtcyv

Does anyone else find it strange that the PPC/BTC trade pair regularly has more trading volume than all other trade pairs at Vircurex combined? Why would someone who wanted to buy 20,000 to 50,000 PPC most days choose to use the very illiquid Vircurex market instead of the liquid BTC-e market? They end up overpaying by raising the price as their large market order is filled. The only way I can explain it as rational behavior is to suggest that it is BTC-e covering their short position.

I’ll like to remind you all that there is reason to be suspicious:
“balthazar (novacoin dev) sent btc-e a 100k bribe to accept the coin. btc-e provided proof that they destroyed the coins though, yet they still keep nvc on their exchange.”
http://www.reddit.com/r/ppcoin/comments/1chzq8/does_novacoin_pose_a_threat_to_ppcoin/
BTC-e has had and might still have a very large stake in NVC, which is the primary competitor to PPC. This gives them a motive to suppress PPC through short selling.

Anyhow, as a result of these regular buys the Vircurex market has responded by placing lots of sell orders on the order book, so that in recent days Vircurex has become fairly liquid. I would encourage you to move your trading there or to Crypto-Trade so as to avoid leaving deposits of PPC at BTC-e. I still believe it’s likely they have short sold the PPC market on BTC-e and will be forced to cover their shorts if people withdraw their PPC. It can’t hurt to try it and find out if the price reacts.

The present rally in PPC can be easily sustained as long as people continue to withdraw PPC from BTC-e.

I believe BTC-e has very few PPC on hand, maintaining only a small fractional reserve relative to its deposit liabilities.

Here is the evidence supporting this claim which I would describe as compelling but not conclusive:

1.   I have requested PPC withdrawals several times in the last week where the withdrawal shows as completed in my Transaction History but doesn’t show up on the blockchain. I contact BTC-e support, and they have sometimes credited the PPC back to my account and other times pushed it through the blockchain in delayed fashion. The pattern is not consistent with a hot wallet being drained that is then quickly refilled from cold storage because I have had repeated failures extending beyond 48 hours.
2.   If you were BTC-e and you needed to acquire PPC right away to fulfill withdrawal requests, how would you do it? You would buy at another exchange, such as Vircurex. During the last month there has been a buyer on Vircurex purchasing 20,000 to 50,000 most days in one single market order, causing the price to rise momentarily as much as 33% as they tear through the sell order book. This is not rational behavior for a normal PPC buyer that could easily purchase the same PPC in the much more liquid BTC-e market and pay less. However, if that buyer is BTC-e trying to acquire PPC to meet demand for PPC withdrawals on BTC-e, then it makes perfect sense. In recent days there has been a PPC rally and these mysterious purchases have been stepped up on Vircurex – in the last day there has been 125,000 PPC purchased there in three large buy orders.
3.   There are indications that BTC-e has a large stake in NVC, so they have the motive and the means to suppress the price of PPC through very low fractional reserve.

I encourage BTC-e to post what their PPC reserve ratio in this thread. I think we will get silence from them.

So in conclusion, if you have PPC on deposit at BTC-e it is your best interest to withdraw it. Doing so will cause BTC-e to purchase PPC on another exchange such as Vircurex to provide your withdrawal and that will boost the market price of your PPC.

Longer term we need to develop liquid PPC markets at other exchanges and stop using BTC-e for PPC trading if we want the PPC price to be high.

pankkake,

Good point that it is possible that long term Bitcoin could have lower inflation. If this occurs it will most likely be at least seven years away (after two more Bitcoin halvings) -- so the poll is intended to address the shorter term. It is also possible that PPC will always have lower inflation than bitcoin after initially dropping below it if you take transaction fees (which are destroyed in PPC) into account when calculating inflation.

If we want to get Mt Gox to add PPC, the best thing to do is demonstrate they could make money doing so by actively trading PPC on the exchanges that presently offer it. Vircurex has its highest volume on the PPC/BTC pair and this is sure to catch the eye of exchanges that do not offer trading in PPC. In recent days the PPC/BTC pair at Crypto-Trade has frequently been the second highest volume pair there.

I propose we focus on building liquid PPC markets on Vircurex and Crypto-Trade.

One important fact about the proof of stake inflation model that PPC employs is that it does not transfer wealth from holders of the currency to others who are creators of the currency like government money does. With PPC, you can only create the currency in proportion to how much you hold. It is best that the holders of the currency control the protocol and the chain, unlike proof of work coins where there can be a conflict of interest between miners and users. As the BTC block reward goes down, miners will want substantial transaction fees, but users will not want to pay it. The miners will decide what fees to charge, not the users. With PPC, miners do not receive transaction fees (they are destroyed, which is deflationary), so they will have no reason to try to extract larger fees from users. There is only incentive to make the transaction fee high enough to protect the network from spam, which is as it should be.

Finally, very soon PPC will have lower inflation than BTC as you can see here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=288386.0

Currently PPC has 19.3% annual inflation compared to Bitcoin's 15.1%

Yes, PPC is not well understood at this point. I didn't understand it until a couple months ago, so there is hope for those who don't get it now. I believe that soon people will begin to understand that it is very scarce because the inflation will actually be low. It's biggest advantage over Bitcoin however, is that it offers much better security at a much lower cost. I believe the limitations of proof of work security are also becoming more apparent, but at a slower pace. It may take some time, but PPC will be recognized as a great improvement over Bitcoin someday.

In order for the correct answer to be "Never", PPC difficulty must stop rising. We could predict this would occur if the PPC/BTC exchange price falls faster than BTC difficulty rises. So if the BTC difficulty doubles every month, the PPC/BTC exchange price would have to drop in half every month to halt a rise in PPC difficulty.

I just posted a fun poll that asks:

When do you think the inflation rate of PPC will decline below the inflation rate of BTC?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=288386.0

Hopefully it will stimulate discussion about PPC scarcity, which is poorly understood at present.

Based on coins mined from August 5th to September 4th the annualized inflation rate is 19.3% for PPC and 15.1% for Bitcoin.

d5000 did an inflation study showing that in the month preceding June 26 the PPC inflation rate was 22.2% annualized while Bitcoin’s annualized rate was 14.2%: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=227395.0

If trends continued we could expect PPC inflation to fall below that of BTC’s on November 21 of this year. Of course, there are a number of variables affecting the inflation rates that are in constant flux. Let’s examine what these variables are:

1. PPC difficulty: The proof of work inflation in PPC (responsible for all but 1% of the total PPC inflation) is cut in half every time there is a 16X increase in difficulty. This fact brings us to the question of how quickly the PPC difficulty will rise, which is linked to the deployment of ASICs.
2. Rate at which new ASICs are deployed: If the PPC/BTC exchange price (0.00149) remained constant we can project that the PPC/BTC difficulty ratio (0.0152) would also remain nearly constant, so that PPC difficulty would rise in proportion to BTC difficulty. Some are suggesting that the total terahashes of all deployed ASICs will double monthly for several months while others think it will grow more slowly.
3. PPC/BTC exchange price: A doubling of the PPC/BTC exchange price should bring a doubling in the PPC/BTC difficulty ratio. This is the hardest factor to predict and brings considerable uncertainty as to when and if the PPC inflation rate will fall below that of BTC.
4. Rate at which BTC difficulty rises: If BTC difficulty stopped rising , BTC inflation would drop by several percent.

Multi Cryptocoin Payments has just opened a new poll asking which coins users want them to support. They say they will support 5 or 6 of these and PPC is currently tied for 7th place in the poll.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=286120.0

Don't know who is buying the PPC but I know why:

1. It is not yet widely understood that the inflation rate of PPC is dropping very quickly. Annual inflation in coin supply is now under 18% compared to Bitcoin's 14%. PPC inflation falls with a rise in difficulty and difficulty is rising very quickly because of ASICs. This means the inflation rate of PPC will probably fall below that of Bitcoin within a few months, and then continue to plummet, making PPC very scarce.

2. PPC uses Proof of Stake for security which is simultaneously orders of magnitude cheaper and orders of magnitude more secure than the Proof of Work.

I'm wondering if BTC-e is maintaining a low fractional reserve ratio of PPC because yesterday I tried to withdraw PPC from BTC-e and only got 60% of what I asked for. The transactions all showed as completed in my account history so I opened a ticket with support asking that they process the withdrawals and they credited PPC back to my account. Today I tried to withdraw the remaining 40% and received an additional 10%, with the remaining 30% showing as a completed withdrawals in my account history but there is no trace of them on the blockchain.

This makes me suspicious that BTC-e doesn't have the PPC available and is employing a low fractional reserve ratio on PPC. Given their known interest in the PPC competitor Novacoin I wouldn't be surprised if they are doing this to increase the PPC supply beyond what exists on the blockchain to depress the price.

Have any of you had trouble withdrawing PPC from BTC-e? I'd love a response from BTC-e as well about whether they only maintain a fractional reserve of PPC and other coins.

Finally, if they are out of PPC and a bunch of us try to withdraw PPC now they will need to buy PPC and raise the price to induce deposits to fulfill the withdrawal requests

I am likewise puzzled why you would support coins with a $6,000 market cap (KGC) and $36,000 market cap (BQC) while discontinuing support of a coin with a $3,600,000 market cap (PPC). If you hadn't supported it already and couldn't prioritize the development time that would be understandable, but just dropping it after the implementation is complete doesn't compute. Makes my mind grasp at conspiracy theories: were you threatened to drop it? Paid to drop it? Probably not, but there is more to this than what I can see and understand.

My funds in my BTC-e account have been unavailable for withdrawal for 11 days. I have contacted BTC-e through the ticket system, email or Skype nearly every day during this period to try to resolve the situation. Almost all of my messages and attempts to contact support have been ignored. On two occasions in the last ten days they have not been ignored and communication from support has consisted of a request that I contact BTC-e support via Skype. I have dutifully done so many times at many different times of day. Every Skype call has been ignored. The problem is relatively simple yet no progress is being made toward resolution despite my persistent efforts. I need a little help from BTC-e support.

The problem is simply that I am unable to withdraw funds from my account because withdrawal requires confirmation by email but my email account is not receiving the confirmation emails as it used to, as I have demonstrated with screenshots from my email account sent to support. I have all my account authentication information: username, password,  google authenticator passwords, ApiKey, Secret as well as complete control of my linked email account. I should be permitted to withdraw funds.

BTC-E SUPPORT PLEASE CONTACT ME!!!!! You can PM me here or use my email associated with my BTC-e account (you can discover this by looking up my BTC-e tickets numbers:  WLT-779-99672, WBB-493-84674 and BLN-211-57991). I’m willing to talk via Skype, have a remote desktop session with you to demonstrate what is happening, message using my BTC-e account, or any other medium or channel you would like (which we can arrange the specifics of in private communication). What I am not willing to do is be ignored and have my funds eternally locked and forfeited to BTC-e. That is unacceptable.

Let’s talk. You have proposed Skype. What specific time would support be available to answer a Skype call?

Update: Finally resolved by BTC-e support on July 15th. I realize BTC-e is struggling with tremendous growth and English support is not their best language, but trying to solve a basic problem nearly every day for over two weeks makes for a pretty bad customer experience.

Yes, you go long or short, but TorBroker trades the securities in the real world, which is a traceable activity not amenable to anonymity.

An excerpt from the original post:

4. Pick a security to long or short. At the next market opening, we will mirror your position on the real market.
5. Exit the position. At the next market opening, we will exit our position on the real market and credit your account with the resulting gains or losses.