In 2009, Bitcoin was ushered in as an alternative to fiat currency, promising to revolutionize the future of peer-to-peer spending. Since then, it has spawned scores of other cryptocurrencies with various value propositions and potential.
The meteoric growth of cryptocurrencies underscores the role of tech innovation in fueling the future of value exchange. Now, there’s talk of a new era of blockchain tools to assist individuals in creating their own digital coins. Users would then have the ability to transfer or exchange these coins for other cryptocurrencies they find valuable.
One startup endeavoring to make a mark in this space is Minter, a blockchain network that allows people, projects and companies to create, manage and exchange their own coins in a cost-effective way, all with instant liquidity.
Fueled by the blockchain community DeCenter, Minter is heavily influenced by the ideology of Nobel Prize economists like Friedrich von Hayek and John Maynard Keynes who touted the importance of minting new currencies for future economies. It is supported by a vast community of over 250,000 members who are currently active on DeCenter sites, channels and groups on Telegram.
Minter aims to assist businesses and individuals in capitalizing on “long tail” solutions that foster cryptocurrency advantages over fiat.
The Minter Value Proposition
As a startup entering into a space that includes the likes of Ethereum, NEO and Waves, Minter believes it can capitalize from the following strategic advantages:
Speed: All transactions are processed rapidly, every five seconds. The engine layers are tied to the delegated-proof-of-stake (DPoS) consensus algorithm.
Flexibility: Coins on the Minter ecosystem can be exchanged for one another as well as for bitcoin, ether and USD.
Freedom: Users can create their own coin and establish a price for it.
Reliability: The DPoS consensus algorithm engine provides high reliability, allowing both validators and delegators to profit from their contribution to the network.
Volume: Thousands of transactions per second can be delivered with no delays or additional confirmations needed.
Value-based options: A wide swath of application options, including wallets, fully-fledged cryptocurrency exchanges and other exchange services.
Resources: A comprehensive documentation and open-source software package.
Global presence: A large worldwide community of users and developers.
Low cost: Transaction fees never exceed $0.01, regardless of the exchange volume or transfer operation.
Bold Aspirations
Driven by its native coin, BIP, Minter aims to fulfill real-world demands by providing users with lightning-quick settlements and low transaction fees. A healthy supply of 10 billion BIPs is available, 100 million of which will be airdropped to early adopters.
All coins within the Minter ecosystem can be exchanged both within and outside the network. Furthermore, all of the income plus transaction fees will be passed on to validators and delegators that support the Minter network. Because the high network throughput inherent in the system enables thousands of transactions per second, validators can create meaningful earnings even at low commission fees.
“Money is the most undisrupted space the world has seen in the past 40 years,” said Eugene Gordeev, product owner of Minter and a passionate Bitcoin evangelist. “Today, people are so well-connected to the P2P economy through stand-alone, self-employed businesses like Airbnb hosts, Uber drivers, YouTube bloggers and Etsy crafters, to name a few. Now, the only thing missing is private money issued and managed by those who want to make their products and services even more special.”
The Minter team is composed of 20 people — many of them accomplished blockchain developers, designers and iOS/Android experts. This talented community is key to fulfilling the aim of pursuing creative, sophisticated applications for mobile users.
“We have been closely watching various technologies and blockchains for the past few years and waited carefully for the moment when we could definitively solidify what we believe and with whom we would like to integrate,” per the project’s white paper. “Our choice is the Telegram Open Network (TON).”
It’s here where Minter endeavors to become the world’s first-ever project to achieve the exchangeability of its native digital coin with TON’s base coin (GRAM). Minter also became one of the first projects to have integrated Telegram’s latest identity verification service, Telegram Passport, for conducting its know-your-customer (KYC) procedure — a fact that the popular messenger app highlighted on its official blog.
“We are linking our future to TON and believe that with this network we’ll be able to implement all of our ideas to the fullest,” Minter’s white paper says.
Minter’s efforts at fostering an innovative model for cryptocurrencies is evident in a number of development milestones, including the Console, the iOS wallet, the Android wallet and the Telegram bot wallet.
In the meantime, Minter has launched an early access campaign that will conclude on October 31, 2018. With over 500 BTC having already been raised, Minter will deliver the largest airdrop in Telegram’s history — with users who sign up before October 31 set to receive BIP and other Minter-issued coins valued at almost 1,000 BTC.
“We couldn’t even imagine possibilities like this even 10 or 20 years ago, and now we have distributed ledger technologies of every form and shape,” Gordeev concluded. “It’s just a matter of time before individuals will use their money in the next-level communication between all parties without intermediaries.”
