streulpita

Oh I do think the currencies should be used for exchanging things. I mostly meant that they shouldn’t be viewed as an investment or a way to make money. More as an actual currency.

The most direct answer is that we’re providing ease of use and helpful tools. I guess you could argue that it’s easy or hard depending on the person. We plan on making money from paid features later on, like automated token distribution hooked into API’s, and smart contracts that can easily be hooked up to your token.

Perfect example of the downsides. The next thing for us is deploying the token for you automatically, so that you don't need to deal with MetaMask or worry about gas price.

Yes, that's usually about right for most exchanges. But if your coin isn't popular enough, they usually will not add it.

However, there is a protocol for decentralized exchanged called 0x. Any tokens on Ethereum can be traded on this protocol, using websites like Radar Relay.

Yes, totally valid point. The difference I see is that we're focused on functionality that goes beyond selling / trading. I know there are quite a few options for "Do your own ICO" and stuff like that, which is not that interesting. We're deliberately avoiding things like ICO's and trading right now. Our focus is on making tokens usable today, and consistently improving the ease of use for someone that wants to use a token for something real.

We're going to keep developing features that make tokens easier to use, especially at a larger scale. We'll charge for premium features later down the road, but those features aren't set in stone yet. We have a few things planned already, things like automated token distribution (without needing MetaMask) and smart contract integrations.

Kind of. I don't know that much about Chain, but it seems like they are building private blockchain infrastructure for payments. Our tokens can obviously be used for payments, but the angle right now is not that this is faster and easier (because at this point in time, it's not). It's more that this lets people explore new concepts with tokens, and we give non-technical people the tools to try those concepts out. And also make it fun.

In total about 4 months. Before getting into YC we had a an Ethereum developer tools project. It had pretty low traction at that time (a handful of dedicated users, but now many). But we had built other Ethereum projects together before. That developer tools project eventually transformed into Hexel, which is now consumer facing.

Hey, they are pretty standard ERC-20 tokens, so they technically can be traded on an exchange. However, right now all of the coins have pretty low volume, so most exchanges probably wouldn't list them. A decentralized exchange built on 0x would work though!

Yeah, I think MetaMask is definitely the smoothest way to integrate any kind of Ethereum apps at the moment. I use it as a temporary wallet just for when I need to use dapps like this. Just send in a small amount and use it for whatever you need to do.

I guess it could be used as a serious wallet though. They give you a recovery seed so even if your computer was destroyed, you could get the backup. The only concern would be if someone got your laptop and cracked your passcode, they would have access to your funds.