Trust in Bitcoin may be low following the collapse of its biggest currency exchange, but a new virtual currency has an extra draw. Riecoin is designed to help solve a mathematical mystery involving prime numbers.
As with Bitcoin, Riecoin users "mine" virtual coins using a program that solves a difficult mathematical problem. But with Riecoin, this mining process also finds clusters of consecutive prime numbers.
These "prime constellations" provide a way to test the Riemann hypothesis, which is one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems designated by the Clay Mathematics Institute in Providence, Rhode Island. A proof of the hypothesis is worth $1 million.
Riecoin can't find a proof, but it might find an example of a constellation that doesn't fit with Riemann and so offer clues as to how to disprove it – although most mathematicians expect it to hold.
Riecoin is the second currency based on primes, after Primecoin, which was launched last year.
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