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https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-14/insider-trading-and-risk-retention

To participate in the Jesus Coin craze (aka Doge 2.0) visit https://jesuscoin.network/

Blockchain, blockchain, blockchain (Bloomberg homepage, 14th September)


Yesterday I mentioned Jesus Coin ("Decentralizing Jesus on the Blockchain") as an example of a dumb joke cryptocurrency, but then I went and read their (emailed) press statement and it is actually kind of interesting. Not because it is not a dumb joke cryptocurrency; it absolutely is. But it is a dumb joke that has become self-aware. From the statement:

While the founders had hoped for their joke to gain traction in the community and create a buzz, what they certainly did not expect was hundreds of thousands of dollars of transactions to begin occurring as cryptocurrency investors rushed to actually purchase the coin. Soon after things began to get out of hand as the cryptocurrency began approaching a $1m market cap only days into a 60 day crowdsale.

Exactly why this has happened remains a mystery to Jesus and his colleagues, though there are a number of theories. As Jesus Coin is not a security or share, it's actually on far firmer legal standing than the vast majority of ICO's which may run into issues with regulatory authorities. For similar reasons, Jesus Coin is also going to be more easily tradable on the major cryptocurrency exchanges than comparable projects, meaning investors will be able to trade their Jesus Coins for real currency relatively easily. Quite remarkable, the very useless nature of Jesus Coin, accidentally created a currency that's more useful than almost any other.

"More useful than almost any other" is a stretch, but this is a standard story about fiat currency too. Dollars are a better currency than mackerels in part because nobody eats dollars. A cryptocurrency that can be used as a token in a yet-to-be-built cloud-storage system requires some analysis of that system's proposed architecture, of the team's technical capacity, of its smart-contract implementations, of its competitive position in the cloud-storage market. A cryptocurrency that is just a dumb joke is easy to analyze. There is no market-for-lemons problem, no worry that someone else has more information than you. The currency can trade completely information-free, which can make it more liquid and useful than it would be if it were ... useful.

Of course this argument proves too much: By this logic, any dumb joke of a cryptocurrency would be valuable. Uselessness alone can't make a currency; you also need widespread adoption. You need to get people to believe that the useless thing has value. The thing is, though, in the midst of the Great Cryptocurrency Boom of 2017, that's not that hard. Dogecoin is worth $144 million. Novelty and silliness are not barriers to adoption these days, and usefulness is not a prerequisite. Any dumb joke of a cryptocurrency probably will be valuable.