You may have heard about this new up and coming platform with its own currency called KoCurrency KoCurrency seems to be very similar to Steem - it is a social platform (albeit tightly focused on cryptocurrencies) that has 2 different currencies. It is also a gamble machine, or a paradise for speculators.
You get 1 coin on signup and then can either purchase them (the currency is currently in ICO) for the ever rising price. Currently, it is at 0.6$ per coin.
The user base is fairly small, but growing. The last entry on the site noted a userbase of 200. Nothing to marvel at. Each user pays a bit of a coin (right now it is 0.1 of a CoKoin) to enter a channel of their interest for a month. For example, I paid 0.3 coins to enter NEM, Ripple and Bitcoin. In the channel, you can bid some of your Intelligence (think, Steem power) on whether the coin the channel is dedicated to will reach or not a certain level by a certain time. Losers lose their intelligence points, winners win a percentage of those losses. There is also a reputation system, and people who win often, add more power to the overall predictability power of the poll and also gain more interest from their successful votes (somewhat similar to Steem). You can also earn KoCoins by publishing articles in relevant channels, but those seem to be reviewed before acceptance and have to be quality and longer than 1000 words.
You can either keep intelligence or exchange to KoCoins and then - cash them out.
The idea here is that as more people join, the predictive power of the platform will increase, and with it - the price of each channel and the price of the KoCoin. In other words, the value of the platform is in the value that the channels produce. In other way, the more predictive power each channel has (say, you can have an 80% chance of knowing for sure whether a coin you're interested in would go up or down in price), the more people will be willing to pay for it in KoCoins.
I am torn. I can't quite understand whether it is a good or bad idea. KoCoin doesn't seem to add anything to the world of cryptocurrencies except just another cryptocurrency that is tied to one promising platform focusing on a very specialized topic. There is no indication of it yet, but I assume you will also be able to buy intelligence which if true and uncontrolled undermines the whole point of the platform. That, and it starts sounding like a scam scheme.
On the other hand, the niche the platform covers is novel - I, as a beginner, crave for a platform like that to help me with my investments. The market of cryptocurrencies is growing, there is more and more interest in it from ordinary people, too. KoCurrency may as well take off. What are your thoughts?