Buy Peercoin (PPC) with Bitcoin, No KYC

Peercoin is the coin everybody in proof-of-stake owes a footnote to and almost nobody bothers to read. It came online in August 2012. Its paper, dated 19 August 2012, was signed by Sunny King and Scott Nadal. It was the first cryptocurrency to put proof-of-stake into production. Fourteen years later it is still producing blocks, still shipping releases, and still trading against Bitcoin. That last part is where we come in.

We run a Peercoin / Bitcoin market on AltQuick. No KYC, no fiat on-ramp theater, just a PPC/BTC order book. This post is my operator's-eye view of why the pair is worth keeping and how to use it without hurting yourself.

The coin that started the argument

Before Peercoin, "securing a blockchain" meant burning electricity. The PPCoin paper (the original name; the project became Peercoin later) says the authors realized in October 2011 that coin age could carry an alternative security model. Coin age is coins multiplied by how long they have sat unspent. Proof of work would handle the early distribution of coins, and proof of stake would gradually take over the security job.

That hybrid is still the design. Peercoin's own site puts it plainly: proof-of-stake provides the security, and proof-of-work provides the distribution. The PoW side uses double SHA-256, the same algorithm as Bitcoin, so any hardware that can mine Bitcoin can mine Peercoin. Miners get new PPC, sell it, and the buyers become the next wave of stakeholders. Peercoin calls them minters, not stakers.

Sunny King is a pseudonym, and the same person later created Primecoin.

My contrarian take: Peercoin is the honest version of PoS

Most proof-of-stake talk today is about big validator sets, lockups, slashing and liquid-staking wrappers. Peercoin's own team has pointed out that many later PoS projects dropped the coin-age approach for constant block rewards that look more like Bitcoin's. Peercoin kept coin age because it forces a minter to stay invested for weeks before producing a block.

That's what I mean by honest. You can't rent your way into Peercoin's consensus for an afternoon. You hold coins in your own wallet, they age, and the protocol sometimes picks you to mint. The minting tutorial on peercoin.net lists the rules:

• Coins must sit for 30 days before they can compete to mint.
• Minting weight keeps growing until 90 days, then stops.
• Coin age is capped at one year, so you can't park coins forever and cash in a huge backlog later.
• Coins that mint a block are locked for 520 confirmations (3–4 days), and their age resets.
• Spending or merging coins also resets their age.
• Personal minting rewards are described as roughly 3–5% a year: continuous minters earn toward the top, occasional minters toward the bottom.

Wikipedia sums up the bigger picture: the network targets about 1% annual inflation from PoS, and an individual stake earns more than that because only a minority of coins actually mint. There is no hard supply cap.

One honest caveat. These parameters are being debated in public. Peercoin's forum has proposals to cut the minimum age from 30 to 21 days, halve the block target to 5 minutes, and change the reward split. I am not going to tell you which way that goes. Check the official docs before you plan around any number above.

Fees get burned, and the rate is fixed

Most people miss this part. Peercoin doesn't run a fee auction. Transaction fees are a fixed 0.01 PPC per kilobyte, and since the v0.7 hard fork in March 2019 the minimum is 0.001 PPC instead of being rounded up to 0.01. The fee isn't paid to a miner or minter. It is burned.

The project's "A Smarter Fee" essay argues that the fixed fee is the main anti-spam measure and has kept the chain orders of magnitude smaller than other chains of its age. Some of Peercoin's own writers call the fee "objectively high." But it's predictable, and as someone who moves coins for a living, I'll take a fee I can predict over a mempool auction.

Fourteen years of releases, not fourteen years of hype

Old coins usually die quietly: an abandoned repo, a stale Windows build, a dead explorer. Peercoin's history on GitHub and its forum reads more like a project that kept doing chores:

• v0.6 (2017): the first release from the new team, ending the era when Sunny King developed Peercoin alone. Users could opt out of the original centrally broadcast checkpoints, which critics had attacked since the early days. The release also added CLTV.
• v0.7 (2019): the hard fork that set the 0.001 PPC minimum fee and raised the OP_RETURN size limit to 256 bytes.
• v0.10 "Scarab": rebased on Bitcoin Core 0.20 and removed sync checkpoints entirely, keeping only hard-coded checkpoints.
• v0.13 (2024): rebased on Bitcoin Core v25, with Taproot now standard and minting from Taproot outputs allowed.
• v0.14 (2024): a mandatory upgrade adopting the ASERT PoW difficulty algorithm, plus "PoS only confirmations." PoW blocks no longer count toward transaction confirmations, because they carry no security weight in Peercoin's model. A point release then automated optimal stake splitting (RFC-0028).
• v0.15 (2025): added ANYPREVOUT signature support, per the release notes.
• v0.15.2: published on GitHub in October 2026.

That isn't nostalgia. It's a small team keeping a Bitcoin-derived codebase current, which is what I want on a Bitcoin-quoted exchange.

Why I want PPC quoted in BTC

Peercoin forked from Bitcoin's code, shares its PoW hash function, and follows Bitcoin Core rebases. Its natural unit of account is BTC. Routing a Peercoin buy through a stablecoin and a KYC funnel adds permission layers to a coin whose pitch is that coin owners run the network.

So we keep the PPC/BTC pair. The book won't always be thick. Open the market page and read what is actually there. I won't quote a price here or guess where it goes.

If you like PoS coins with a long history, our Qtum post covers a very different take on staking. For older coins that still do one job well, see Namecoin and DigiByte.

How to buy Peercoin with Bitcoin on AltQuick

AltQuick is a peer-to-peer, crypto-to-crypto exchange. We match real users' bids against real users' asks. We don't sell you coins from a house inventory, and we don't ask for your passport.

Trading on the book

1. Create an account on AltQuick. No personal information is required.
2. Deposit BTC. Per the FAQ, Bitcoin deposits need 1 confirmation and carry a 0.0002 BTC deposit fee.
3. Open PPC/BTC and place an order. Use a limit order if you care about price. Market orders take whatever is on the book.
4. Withdraw PPC to a wallet you control. The FAQ currently lists a 0.01 PPC withdrawal fee. Peercoin deposits need 2 confirmations and carry a 0.01 PPC deposit fee.

Trading fees are 1% maker and 1% taker on trades over 100 satoshi. Tiny trades follow a separate satoshi-level rule listed in the FAQ. Fees can change, so re-check the FAQ before you move size.

Swap, no account

Swap lets you send BTC and receive PPC at an address you control, with no signup. Set an emergency address while you're at it. Swap uses AltQuick’s own books. Review the current FAQ and use Simulate on the Swap page’s Trade step to check the estimate before sending; confirm the applicable trading and withdrawal costs. If the book is thin, a resting limit order will usually serve you better than a big market-style swap.

The part where I tell you to leave

Our FAQ says it plainly: AltQuick does not credit stakes. A Peercoin balance on AltQuick does not earn you minting rewards. Coin age belongs to an unspent output, not to an exchange-account balance, and it can accrue under any custody. An ordinary withdrawal, however, creates a new output in your wallet, and that output starts its own 30-day wait.

So the right move if you want to mint is still clear. Buy here if you like, then withdraw to a wallet you can operate for minting. Time spent as an AltQuick balance should not be expected to satisfy the age of the coins you receive. The official Peercoin wallet runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and peercoin.net has the download and the minting docs. Get it from the official pages only.

We also don't credit forks. If Peercoin's parameter debate ever turns into a contentious split, you want your own keys, not an IOU.

Risks, without the sales gloss

• Thin books gap. Use limits, and expect your order to sit sometimes.
• Reorgs happen on smaller chains. Our FAQ says plainly that a reorg attack could cause losses, and that we're not responsible for them. Research before you buy any altcoin.
• Protocol changes. Minting age, block time and rewards are being openly debated right now. Read the official announcements.
• Address mistakes are final. Withdrawals to the wrong address can't be undone, so double-check the coin and the address.

This isn't investment, legal or tax advice. Nothing here promises a return.

FAQ

Can I buy Peercoin with Bitcoin without KYC? Yes. Trade PPC/BTC with an AltQuick account, which needs no personal information, or use Swap without an account when the book can fill your size.

Was Peercoin really the first proof-of-stake coin? Yes. Peercoin launched in August 2012 and is widely credited as the first cryptocurrency to implement proof-of-stake. Its paper is by Sunny King and Scott Nadal.

Does Peercoin still use proof-of-work? Yes, for coin distribution. It uses double SHA-256, the same as Bitcoin. Since v0.14, only PoS blocks count toward transaction confirmations.

Will AltQuick pay me minting rewards on PPC I hold there? No. The FAQ says AltQuick does not credit stakes. Withdraw to your own Peercoin wallet if you want to mint.

How long before my PPC can mint? Under the rules in Peercoin's minting tutorial, 30 days of coin age, with full weight at 90 days. Changes have been proposed, so check peercoin.net.

What does it cost to withdraw PPC from AltQuick? The FAQ currently lists 0.01 PPC. Peercoin deposits need 2 confirmations.

Sources

1. AltQuick Peercoin / Bitcoin market — https://altquick.com/market/peercoin-bitcoin/
2. AltQuick FAQ (fees, confirmations, stakes, forks, reorgs) — https://altquick.com/faq/
3. AltQuick Swap — https://altquick.com/swap/
4. Peercoin official site — https://www.peercoin.net/
5. PPCoin whitepaper, King & Nadal, 19 Aug 2012 — https://www.peercoin.net/papers/peercoin-paper.pdf
6. Peercoin — Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peercoin
7. Peercoin Minting Tutorial — https://www.peercoin.net/blog/peercoin-minting-tutorial/
8. Peercoin Inflation Adjustment — https://www.peercoin.net/blog/peercoin-inflation-adjustment/
9. A Smarter Fee (Peercoin blog) — https://www.peercoin.net/blog/a-smarter-fee/
10. Peercoin v0.7 Released — https://www.peercoin.net/blog/peercoin-v0-7-released/
11. Peercoin v0.6 Release — https://medium.com/peercoin/peercoin-v0-6-release-2831fb4394ad
12. Peercoin v0.10 (Scarab) Released — https://talk.peercoin.net/t/peercoin-v0-10-codename-scarab-released/15370
13. Peercoin v0.13 (Anisoptera) Released — https://talk.peercoin.net/t/peercoin-v0-13-codename-anisoptera-released/16237
14. Peercoin v0.14 Released — https://talk.peercoin.net/t/peercoin-v0-14-released-upgrade-by-june-3rd-2024/16283
15. Peercoin v0.15 Released (APO) — https://talk.peercoin.net/t/peercoin-v0-15-released-apo-peercoins-layer-2/16548
16. peercoin/peercoin releases on GitHub — https://github.com/peercoin/peercoin/releases
17. Changes to Proof-of-Stake Inflation and Rewards (Peercoin forum) — https://talk.peercoin.net/t/changes-to-proof-of-stake-inflation-and-rewards/16574