On Thursday evening, I was invited to give a brief talk at the meetup for a new cryptocurrency, YoCoin. I was first introduced to the group by happen-stance, when two locals from the marketing team for YoCoin came in to make a Bitcoin purchase. I’ve had the good fortune in the intervening time to get to know them and investigate the cryptocurrency they’ve been working on.
Initially, I wasn’t particularly interested in yet another alt-crypto. There are so many of them out there, it’s impossible for even someone who monitors the alt world full time to keep track of much more than their names. I did go and check out YoCoin after they told me a bit about their business during one of the times they came in to buy from me, and I discovered that while it was a mostly unremarkable scrypt currency algorithmically, the adoption curve was quite impressive.
YoCoin launched around the beginning of the year, and has shot up from a couple pennies per coin to a peak of over $.30 per coin a few weeks ago (it’s now around a quarter).
What piqued my interest is why it shot up so high, so I talked to Bruce and Sam, the gentlemen marketing the coin locally. The thrust of their approach has to do with focusing on merchant and user adoption outside the bubble of crypto and finance geeks who usually go in for these things. That’s interesting to me, because that’s essentially what’s been cryptocurrency’s biggest issue: they’ve usually a rock solid technology-base, but no way to market it to people who aren’t crypto-anarchists or grey-market enthusiasts.
In a world with thousands of scrypt-coin clones, what’s interesting about YoCoin is it’s team and their commitment to market smarter (read: outside the bubble) and develop better UX and UI than what cryptocurrencies are generically known for.
I’ve been hoping for local Dallas action in the crypto space, and now we have it. I’ll be watching YoCoin closely to see how it evolves.
[Disclosure: YoCoin is in talks with Barista Ventures (where I’m a Venture Partner) to execute an app development deal. YoCoin is also a frequent buyer of Bitcoin from Roger Wilco, my new content marketing startup.]
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