From a piece originally featured by CoinDesk on April 16, 2017Money, when it comes down to it, is a tool for collaboration.Money moves human energy, skills, and time between us, in different “containers”, or stores of value.National stores of value, like the U.S.Dollar, have historically been controlled by governments and distributed by banks.This of course happens with limited transparency, a combined domestic and International monetary policy agenda, and political considerations throughout.Naturally, this model is far more inflexible and inaccessible than newer cryptocurrency solutions, made possible by blockchain database technology, which theoretically enable anyone to issue and distribute a digital store of value.We’re just beginning to see the blockchain ecosystem give rise to these new forms of money that can be issued at little to no cost.Because cryptocurrencies allow us to account and transfer value securely between one another, without the need for an intermediary, such as bank, we can finally join and create local and group value networks that operate reliably, with little overhead or tedious monitoring.

Communities of any flavor can now be empowered to agree on credit issuing policies and governance structures, and enjoy internal marketplaces from which to buy and sell goods or services, without relying on access to national money to fuel commerce.Today’s first use-cases are produced by early adopters, and already we see hundreds, nearing thousands, of cryptocurrencies on the market and counting.But as technical barriers to entry are removed, we are on the precipice of even millions of user-generated currencies, of all shapes and sizes.This is similar to inflection points in User-Generated-Content we saw with the rise of WordPress for blogs and YouTube for video.Similarly, the long-tail of value creation will produce a large variety of monetary diversity and abundance from greatly enhanced collaboration between people.In business, the ‘long-tail’ describes content and products in low demand or with low sales/view volume that, collectively, make up a market share exceeding that of current top performers combined.

Internet history shows us that with the digital long-tail, the accumulation of all niche contributions is actually 2–3 orders of magnitude greater than the hits.bitcoin obsessionThink of all the Instagram accounts after the 1000 most followed, or all the status updates beyond the most viral.ethereum compilerIn cryptocurrency, the long-tail points to hundreds of billions in potential value when combining all small and niche currencies beyond the few largest.My founding team previously built technology for local currency initiatives.bitcoin iso linuxOne of our most successful projects became the largest alternative currency in Israel where it was used.abc bitcoin pool

This community of new mothers issued a currency called “Hearts” and allowed thousands of active moms to buy and sell from each other in a mobile app which combined a currency wallet and trusted P2P marketplace.bitcoin faucet auto collectThe community generated hundreds of transactions every day for years with millions of dollars-worth of value changing hands, including jewelry, apparel, household/children’s goods and lifestyle services.raspberry pi as bitcoin minerOver-time, as other currencies were issued in neighboring communities, it became clear that being able to convert these stores of value for each other would give them even greater usage, as new products and services would be available in other networks beyond yours.litecoin beginnerMany local businesses were eager to offer their products for their customers’ community currencies, which would further enhance product selection, but their inability to liquidate these back to national money was a barrier.italia oggi bitcoin

Even though these currencies were creating real value for their users, they were too small to achieve the trade volume needed for liquidity, which capped their potential.litecoin online shopThis is the main reason we haven’t yet seen the user-generated-currency inflection point.Combined with the technical difficulty still involved in creation a cryptocurrency, what you see today are early adopters limited to crypto startups with deep development expertise and a business strategy for growing beyond illiquidity.When technical barriers are lowered and the liquidity problem is solved, the emergence of the user-generated-currency long-tail may be the greatest long-tail in Internet history.For its combined volume won’t represent the profit or traffic of its enabler (such as YouTube’s ownership of the video long-tail) but rather the collective abundance, as measured by the velocities and market caps of these currencies, accruing directly to their users.

This access to diverse capital may usher in a more even distribution curve of wealth in society.And we will measure that wealth not only in Dollars or Euros or even Bitcoins, but in the transfer of goods and services within each network and community, unconstrained by structural monetary inefficiencies.Bancor is a Swiss-based non-profit, focused on solving the liquidity challenge in asset exchange and unlocking the long-tail of user-generated currencies.The Bancor Protocol provides a standard for the creation of Smart-tokens, which enable continuous liquidity and asynchronous price discovery through their smart-contract, without needing to be traded in an exchange.Smart-tokens can also be used to create decentralized index funds, which provide autonomous exchange services between any of the tokens in their basket.With Bancor’s simple user-interface, anyone can now create and manage a cryptocurrency or basket of currencies without any technical knowledge right from their web browser or mobile messenger.