The Governor is contemplating starting his own brand of crypto currency. So many questions. Where do I begin? Do I need programming skills? How long does it take? What does it cost? How do get the word out?
Where do I begin? Well, a quick search on Google yielded some very interesting articles.
At FastCompany.com , we read "virtually every cryptocurrency on the market today is based on the open source code of Bitcoin or Litecoin that is available on GitHub". So, the answer to "Do I need programming skills" to start a crypto currency is "probably not". The article on the FastCompany website is dated 01.29.14, over three years ago, so there maybe more open source projects on GitHub now.
In the same article, Peter Otterback of Coino (which appears to be defunct) says that the creation process does not take long, perhaps only a day. Gee, another question answered.
If you can't do it yourself, the article, How Anyone Can Make Their Own Digital Currency mentions two coin creation services that can do it for you. The two companies are CryptoLife or CoinCreator. I found CryptoLife to be the best, but I am sure that there are probably more companies that could help you.
As of May 16, 2017, the CryptoLife site says that they charge 0.15 bitcoins for their basic service. At today's exchange rate, that's about $250. Wallet services for Android and Electrum are 1.5 and 2.0 bitcoins, respectively, a bit more pricey. As to whether these services are needed at coin startup is unclear to me at this time. I will report back as soon as I find out. Be sure to shop around for the prices and services that meet your needs (and budget).
As for the last question, "How do I get the word out?", I'll answer that later. But first, I want to create the coin ...
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