NeuCoin Presale Launches

NeuCoin was born out of a desire to make cryptocurrency mainstream user friendly.  Dan Kauffman, co-founder at NeuCoin reports that he had yet to see any killer applications that would attract regular consumers to Bitcoin. “[Bitcoin’s] hard to get and I’d say hard to want,” said Kauffman. “It isn’t fun, isn’t easy, and isn’t social. It’s just a tech niche. For all the buzz, after six years, Bitcoin has gone nowhere in terms of consumer adoption.”

Kauffman believes micropayments may be the killer app that takes bitcoin mainstream. “Micropayments offer consumers and digital content providers a new experience […], like being able to pay 5 cents to watch a video, 20 cents to get rid of all video ads for the day or 50 cents for a micro subscription, or giving you the ability to tip your favorite online content creators,” said Kauffman. “This allows for new digital behaviors and ways to monetize that haven’t been possible before.”

NeuCoin’s micropayment platforms will be powered by a freemium distribution of NeuCoin. Kauffman explains the freemium strategy means consumers will be able to try using NeuCoin for free with zero friction. Fast-growing consumer services like Dropbox, WhatsApp, Spotify or Candy Crush all offer a free, entry-level service to let new users try the service. “In the digital economy this is the key to consumer adoption. And it’s a huge difference compared to tipping with Bitcoin,” Kauffman explains.

NeuCoin’s micropayment platforms are starting with three pilot partners: MondoMedia, the largest animation channel on YouTube; Jango.com, a streaming music service with 8 million monthly listeners; and RadioAirplay, an artist promotion company with 250,000 musicians as customers.

“We’ll optimize the platforms for user experience and monetization and then widely roll them out,”
— – Dan Kauffman, Co-Founder of NeuCoin

The US$2.25 million pre launch VC funding for NeuCoin came from a variety of angel investors, including Patrik Stymne, co-founder at King, Emil Michael SVP of business at Uber, Rob Goldman head of growth at Facebook and Ted Rogers chief strategy officer at Xapo.

Kauffman, explains that they built upon existing business relationships to raise the pre launch funds. “We approached the people in our network who we felt had the best abilities to support the project, forge strategic partnerships and help drive consumer adoption,” said Kauffman. “Like us, they saw the potential for mainstream adoption, by offering an easy freemium model and an actually useful experience, and they were excited to invest.”

The presale is in Bitcoin only and will offer 100 million NeuCoins, at a price starting at 25,000 NEU per BTC. “The target has been an amount equal to $0.01, to raise a minimum of $1 million but, as you know, Bitcoin can be volatile so right now we’re looking at the equivalence of $900,000,” explains Kauffman.

“The main purpose of the presale is to widen the ownership base in the crypto community and get NeuCoins into the hands of as many people as possible. Over 1,000 people have told us they plan on buying so it looks like the presale might sell out very fast.”
— – Kauffman

NeuCoin explained its outlook and approach in a recent release of the strategic plan and whitepaper. Within their WhitePaper they outline their decision to use PeerCoin’s concept of Proof of Stake over Bitcoin’s Proof of Work. The team at NeuCoin argue that Proof of Stake is superior to Bitcoin’s Proof of Work, as it challenges high costs, mining centralization and increasing costs of bitcoin mining software.

Kauffman also explains that Bitcoin’s distribution to miners is a hindrance to mainstream adoption. NeuCoin intends to use coin distribution as a tool for growth and adoption. Kauffman believes that incentivising anyone who helps increases the value and utility of a currency is the key to mass adoption.

“NeuCoin was born — a strategically distributed PoS currency that is easy to use, free to try and actually useful for regular consumers."
— – Kauffman

The whitepaper is designed to encourage discussion and feedback from the community. Anyone can make comments, recommend edits and advise on potential flaws. Incentives comes in the form of NeuCoin bounties, to those who are actively participating.

“Proof-of-stake solves Bitcoin’s main flaws – high costs and increasing centralization. The NeuCoin whitepaper addresses all the cryptocommunity’s ‘nothing at stake’ objections to proof-of-stake and demonstrates mathematically how NeuCoin’s design – with improved security over previous proof-of-stake implementations – foils all attack vectors.”
— – NeuCoin

Over the next 10 years the supply of Neucoin will grow from 3 billion, to 100 billion predominantly from their PoS rewards. “These high PoS rates create high security by motivating miners to operate many nodes and stake large numbers of coins. It also rewards early NeuCoin adopters for acquiring and holding coins,” NeuCoin states.