Imagine a new cryptocurrency; a gratitude token designed to be distributed to people serving the public good. Imagine that this token was administered by a corporate entity, and could be traded on the Bitshares DEX or Waves DEX.
It has been just over a year since Insight Green, LLC (@insightgreen) imagined such a token into existence. And though I recently resigned as Insight Green, LLC's CEO, I still really like the token we developed, which is called Rstory.
In part, Rstory is interesting because it has no decimal place. This makes it possible to keep track of it in novel ways. Rstory tokens are also interesting because they have zero value until entered into price discovery procedures. The big idea is that these tokens can be used to store social capital -- the social capital of everyone holding such tokens as a consequence of their work in service to the public good.
I still find these ideas compelling, but the last year has revealed a few major barriers to Rstory's success. The biggest barrier to Rstory's success is that the demand for Rstory is low. It is low among servants of the public good who are entitled to free tokens as a result of their good works. It is low-to-nonexistent among market participants on exchanges. Since more than a year has passed with fewer than twenty people claiming their Rstory tokens, it is tempting to consider this project a failure. But I prefer to think of it as an experiment that has just been very slow to get started.
Last I checked, RUSTY (the Rstory Bitshares variant) was trading on the Bitshares DEX at about $0.10. Although there is probably little demand for it at this price, I do wonder what this coin could become if it began catching on.