It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows yours truly that Stephen King is one of my all-time favorite authors. Well, he’s kind of my spirit animal, to be exact. So much so that I would be hard-pressed to find a tweet of his I disagreed with — or a book of his I wouldn’t recommend to anyone over the age of twelve. (What? That Kingdom Hospital show? No. Doesn’t exist. Nope. No sirree bob!)
But between his doorstopper Under the Dome standalone, the massive recent success of the revived IT franchise — and, of course, the iconic Dark Tower / The Stand tour de force, it is Needful Things, the dog-eared copy of which I had first borrowed from my high school library, that stuck out with me the most.
It really defined in my then-young-adult mind what it was people view as “needful” in their everyday lives. And today, when it struck me that I am yet to talk about why we consider the Knish token the most useful thing to hit the global ICO market since… well, the previous most useful thing to hit the global ICO market, one of Mr. King’s darker and most undervalued novels popped up as a great framework.
The letter for what is useful is really in the eye of the beholder — in our case, that of the SEC and its international counterparts.
But the spirit of being able to transact with, change for, buy with, and assign value to has been with us since we have bartered sea shells for a mammoth’s left thighbone. And it is in keeping with that spirit — as well as the Howey test framework as interpreted for the cryptocurrency environment — that we have shaped our marketing material.
Yes, I say “marketing material”, because in our eyes, the WishKnish currency has always been something we intended to use to reward people for their participation, something they in turn could use to reward others, and buy goods and services for. Something, in effect, that could circulate through our ecosystem, and boost its own usefulness the more our customer base came to rely on its features of gamification and social reward.
Something, in other words, that was “useful” and didn’t rely on us to give it its purpose and weight. No, that dirty job would be all on YOU.
Of course, coming in as “noobs” in this blockchain business, we really had no idea that this kind of thing wouldn’t be as self-explanatory to others as it was to us, and one of the earliest and most seminal pieces of advice we have received was from a veteran in the field who impressed on us that yes, we HAVE to show this. We HAVE to demonstrate usefulness — or we’re an equity, and our compliance and KYC (Know Your Customer) requirements would get shot through the roof.
We think we have followed his advice. And we think the whitepaper we are counting on publishing this week will demonstrate as much.
Still, we invite you, our more-experienced brethren and possible future users, to poke holes in our logic — if only so the SEC doesn’t have to.
Do it for the sake of the SEC! :)
