JaroCoin experiment: one year later
One year ago my personal cryptocurrency JaroCoin came to the daylight. I issued first time emission (ITO — Initial Time Offering) and printed out 21 million token-seconds. Also, I made a promise that until my birthday in December my services would be available only by burning JARO (it was impossible to pay for my services by dollars or even bitcoin).
Essence of the JaroCoin is that this is cryptocurrency that is 100% covered by time and one JARO (JaroCoin ticker) meant one second of my life which at the time of ITO was equal to 0.00001 bitcoin. If someone wanted my time for advice, consultation, coding and etc., first they had to get JARO.
Part of JaroCoin emission was reserved for my sleep and personal needs. Another part was put aside for my family and my wife was in control of it ;)
Current balance
At the time when I am writing this post, less than fifteen wallets own JaroCoin. Most of JARO is already used, there are only around 3 million seconds of my tokenised time left. 85% of it is owned by two people/enterprises, 10% is in my sleep wallet.
There are about 10 wallets which own from 10 hours to 10 seconds of my time. Most of these people I do not know and I don’t know how they are planning to use my time but further I will mention about few owners of my time.
Was an experiment a success?
No doubt! It was a perfect prank. I enjoyed hearing people‘s reactions and their thoughts about how they might use my time. Moreover, all the token emission was successfully distributed.
But if to talk more seriously, this experiment showed how complicated (technologically and in the sense of mentality) it could be to make payments using tokens and that it is far simpler to sell my services for fiat or bitcoins.
My project had a hidden dose of sarcasm. I wanted to show to what absurd can lead ICO boom with worthless utility tokens. If we try to tokenize almost everything, so maybe we can do it with time either?… It is unbelievable how many people took this idea seriously, encouraged to further develop this project, start a time market and believed that it could become an interesting alternative.
As far as I know, besides me at least two people in the world tried to tokenize their time: one of them was investor from Russia who tokenized part of his time and devoted it to consult startups and the other was one of the celebrities.
When comparing my JaroCoin with other ICOs which fell in value by 99%, it was at least covered by real and tangible value that is my time compared to abstract promises of other utility token issuers to conquer the world, to revolutionize, to beat the Google and etc. I wanted to tease the market and provide some insights into the future, and I hope that I could succeed. Some people of insight could understand this prank and jokingly responded by buying a minute of my time.
One JARO still give you one second of my time! So it’s most stable token in existence :P
Less than a year has passed and almost nobody is talking about ICOs with utility tokens anymore. Hurray! Victory of common sense!
Educational value
For me personally JaroCoin was not only a prank but also an educational project.
An example. Here comes a potential client who wants to order ICO technical feasibility study. He, of course, wants to create his own platform and allow payments with his own utility tokens. I say, “Ok, but you will have to pay me by JaroCoin”. He looks at me surprised. “What is that?” “It’s my private currency” Eyes become round. “Where can I get them?” (…) “And what about you, did you think how your customer will get utility tokens? Where they will store them? How will they make payments?…”
Finally, that client did not issue an ICO …
The other client, despite the fact that he bought JARO during ITO, could not make payment for consultations with it. His argument was, “I already bought your tokens, what else you want?”
Problems of tokenization
From my personal experience, tokenization has two problems.
First, most popular wallets do not support rare (exotic) tokens which consist the majority. The wallet must be specifically configured and one needs special technical knowledge for that.
Second, in order to make payment by tokens in the wallet there must be some amount of ethereum to pay for the ethereum network resources needed to proceed token transaction. It is impossible to send a token unless you have ethereum.
There isn’t existing developed technological infrastructure to make possible simple token trade.
More than a year ago I became very skeptical about the idea of tokenization. I think, that those who accept payments by utility tokens, in the future will have to accept payments by fiat or bitcoins as well.
Utopic society
I was asked not once if I don’t plan to make something larger out of JaroCoin, i.e. create a system where people could trade and share their time.
No, I am not planning. For me it is part of utopic society.
On the other hand, one tokenized year of my life was an interesting personal challenge and I have a good story to share with my son when he will grow older. Similarly to that when people challenge themselves not to eat sweets for one year or make particular number of steps a day
Conclusion
With this blog post I want to conclude JaroCoin experiment and there is no new token emission in my plans. But if you consider to accept own tokens in your own platform, first ask yourself why not simply euros or bitcoin?
P.S. If you bought JaroCoin, do not worry, I will be accepting them for more than nine years as it is stated in the smart contract.
