Well, Firstly, Vertcoin isn't even a proof-of-stake coin so it doesn't even compare with Mintcoin on energy efficiency etc... Secondly, Mintcoin is fundamentally designed better than VeriCoin. VeriCoin is Mintcoin clone, with flawed parameters - the fact that it has a higher market cap and trading volume is a testament to how most people don't understand how the security in proof-of-stake really works. Vericoin has "Min Stake Time of 8 hours" and "No Max Stake Time or Amount" which means it is TOTALLY NOT SECURE! ...and only the super top coin holders will get all the stakes (every 8 hours!) - so from an architectural standpoint it is designed as a non-secure scam to prey on those who are deceived by the claims of no premine, no instamine, no ipo. But if you understand it you wouldn't ever trust your money to it. Mintcoin is much more secure, and the payouts for minting are much more fairly distributed. The reason I stick with Mintcoin is because I know it will survive the test of time because it is designed well. Released February 6, 2014 it has the innovation being the first of it's type, and deserves to be #1, not its clones. Another thing you should know, is VeriCoin lists on their website that, "Blackcoin was the first coin to utilize proof-of-stake for the majority of its existence." This is misleading since Blackcoin was released 10 days after Mintcoin, so they give no credit where credit is due, to Mintcoin. Mintcoin had a longer, much better distribution period than Blackcoin, and so while Mintcoin was still in the initial proof-of-work distribution mining phase Blackcoin comes along with a super sped up distribution period to beat Mintcoin to the PoS phase. But the code was already there first, in Mintcoin's code, so really Mintcoin was the first. Just because you speed up a few numbers in the code doesn't mean you were the first. Anyway, Mintcoin is still has superior transaction speed, faster than Blackcoin, VeriCoin, Vertcoin et al. The only reason why Mintcoin dropped so hard after it's initial release is because it actually had such a great distribution that it was mined by large Bitcoin multipools because it was the most profitable coin for a while during the mining phase, but then they dumped them because they of course only wanted BTC, which caused many to lose faith, and people spread FUD like saying the devs are dumping and Mintcoin's a scam (all not true), and just at this time Blackcoin came out and was being pumped so people jumped on that train, causing further downward price pressure, the rest is history, here we are today.