When you look at the complexities that go into making a physical dollar bill its plain to see why most people dont start trying to print a new form of currency every day, but making a new digital currency is surprisingly easy for someone with even basic coding skills. But coding isnt the only step to getting your digital currency off the ground. Here are the five steps you should follow according to the makers of three cryptocurrencies.

When you think about creating a new digital currency it's easy to assume the first step would be to begin coding your coin, but thats the wrong place to start, according to Chris Ellis, a London entrepreneur and a community activist at Feathercoin.

The first step is to find a community and build a currency around them rather than building a currency and expecting everyone to show up, Ellis says. It has to be sensitive to their needs and be relevant to their cultural heritage and background.

Feathercoin was created by Peter Bushnell in April 2013. Bushnell left his job as head of IT at Oxford Universitys Brasenose College because he wanted to start his own currency that put people at the center. This was in response to what he saw as a lack of community involvement and inclusiveness by the existing cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, on the popular cryptocurrency site bitcointalk.org.

Though he had not met Bushnell at the time, Ellis, who had been actively promoting and educating people on cryptocurrencies since last March, shared the sense of alienation and seclusion found on Bitcoin forums.

These forums were very tech focused and not very welcoming to newcomers or minority groups which are often served better by smaller teams, Ellis says. The forums did not make it easy for people to get involved in the development of the coin. Many people on these forums take a backseat and speculate on the price rather than actively getting involved.

Ellis found the cryptocurrency community activism he was looking for in Feathercoin, whose technical development he says benefits greatly from its community activism approach.

For Feathercoin we were a group of crypto enthusiasts, some of whom were new to the scene but who felt shut out from the rest of the space, Ellis says. Everyone at Feathercoin feels its important to demonstrate how a devoted group of people can establish a stable currency, he says. By working together a community of dedicated crypto enthusiasts are much better able to find and address vulnerabilities and security threats, like the 51% attack, which the community of coders at Feathercoin have successfully built protections against.

Building such protections and nurturing the development of your currency give your coin legitimacy and trust in the eyes of the public, something that is hard to do if those involved in the currency are passive spectators looking out for their own interests.

Surprisingly, every single currency developer I spoke with said the same thing: Coding your cryptocurrency is usually the least time-intensive part of the process. Thats because virtually every cryptocurrency on the market today is based on the open source code of Bitcoin or Litecoin that is available on GitHub.

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How To Create Your Own Cryptocurrency

Technology

Devin Coldewey NBC News

7 hours ago

Dogecoin

Reports of Indian athletes short of funds to compete in the Sochi Olympic Games caused an outpouring of cash from an unlikely source: the community around Dogecoin, a 'cryptocurrency' like Bitcoin that started as a joke but soon became popular enough to be worth real money. Within hours, Dogecoin users had raised more than $6,000 to donate.

India is not in the Olympic Commission's good graces: A year ago the Indian Olympic Association was suspended due to a number of violations, and as a consequence the country's athletes are short on cash and, perhaps more importantly, are forbidden to wear Indian insignia or otherwise formally represent India.

Shiva Keshavan, who plans to compete in the luge, has persevered nevertheless, and while his travel and entry costs have been covered by private donations, the same can't be said for his colleagues, Himanshu Thakur and Nadeem Iqbal alpine and cross-country skiers, respectively.

Here's where the Dogecoin community stepped up. Hundreds of users of the virtual currency donated, and while each Dogecoin is only worth a fraction of a cent (unlike Bitcoins, each of which is worth hundreds of dollars), they quickly added up.

Before a few hours were out, more than 4 million Dogecoins were collected, equivalent to more than $6,000 (the exact amount depends on a fluctuating exchange rate) it helped that one anonymous donor gave 3 million of those on his or her own.

Right now the money is still in the Dogecoin Foundation's "wallet," where such virtual currencies are kept, but the people who invented and run Dogecoin assure the community that confirmation of the transaction is forthcoming, as soon as payment details to the athletes can be confirmed.

See original here:
Dogecoin cryptocurrency donors help send Indian athletes to Sochi

By David Z. Morris

FORTUNE -- In a space of two days, one of the largest consumer banks in the U.S. and the state regulatory agency that often sets the baseline for nationwide financial regulation held fact-finding events about the peer-to-peer cryptocurrency bitcoin. Bitcoin has been the focus of intense scrutiny, hype, and fear over the past three months, and the dramatic arrest on Monday of bitcoin advocate and entrepreneur Charlie Shrem on charges of money laundering threatened to cast a shadow over proceedings. Despite this, both meetings were largely forward-looking, and indicate that regulators, bitcoin leaders, and traditional banks are on a path to cooperation.

The New York Department of Financial Services hearings were called by Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky, who throughout the hearings displayed a deep understanding of, and even enthusiasm for, bitcoin and the protocol supporting it. Lawsky opened the meeting by reassuring the room that "our agency approaches the issue of virtual currencies without any prejudgements." The Shrem arrest, though alluded to several times, took a back seat to discussion of more fundamental questions, with Lawsky stating that "no industry should be defined entirely by its bad actors."

Representatives of the bitcoin world generally took the position that while regulations unique to bitcoin and other math-based currencies should be kept as minimal as possible, clarification of reporting requirements and anti-money-laundering standards would in fact be welcome. Many saw the appropriate focus for regulation to be the various points where bitcoins become dollars. Fred Wilson, a bitcoin investor with Union Square Ventures, flatly stated that "we should not regulate how the [bitcoin] system works" internally. But Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of the bitcoin brokerage Coinbase, emphasized that consumer protection in bitcoin-for-dollar sales was essential to broader adoption, and that "[Coinbase] welcome(s) appropriate guardrails to ensure that bitcoin companies handling the money of others are run by reputable individuals and have appropriate practices to create a sound consumer experience."

MORE: Inside the bitcoin confab

The benefits of regulation were highlighted by the testimony of law enforcement officials, whose dim view of cryptocurrency seemed to indicate increased risk for bitcoin operators. Deputy U.S. Attorney Richard B. Zabel equated bitcoin itself with both the unrelated electronic money-laundering service Liberty Reserve, and with Silk Road, the online contraband marketplace that accepted payment in bitcoin. Of course, as Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners had pointed out earlier in the hearing, Silk Road has been shut down quite effectively under existing regulations -- one reason why, as Zabel revealed, the U.S. Attorney's office has become a large holder of bitcoin through civil forfeiture. Even those who most fear bitcoin's potential for misuse, it seems, now have a stake in its success.

Directly after the first round of NYDFS hearings on Tuesday, some panelists headed to a similar meeting hosted by Wells Fargoin New York, though this one was closed-door. Attendees described it as organized but not dominated by representatives from the San Francisco-based bank's merchant services, marketing, and regulatory divisions, who mostly listened to a lineup of speakers giving a crash course in bitcoin. "All in all it was pretty basic, but the panel was insightful for the beginner," observed Rik Willard, who runs the bitcoin startup incubator MintCombine and was at the Wells Fargo meeting.

Wells Fargo (WFC) has a reputation as one of the most progressive large banks in adopting new payment technologies, and though no statements were made about Wells Fargo's plans, simply holding the meetings positions it as a leader in integration between bitcoin services and conventional banking. That process has been slowed by banking compliance officers' nervousness about bitcoin's association with criminal activity, and the scarcity of banking access for American bitcoin services is one of the major reasons it remains difficult to buy bitcoin with U.S. dollars. Currently, Coinbase is the only U.S.-based service that sells bitcoin for dollars and is serviced by a conventional bank, though it has declined to name its servicer. Wells Fargo's seeming openness to bitcoin may signal new opportunities to develop exchange infrastructures, which would in turn greatly ease mass adoption of bitcoin payments.

MORE: What the arrests say about the future of bitcoin

More than anything, this kind of high-level discussion of bitcoin shows that it is being taken seriously by leaders across many sectors, primarily as a promising innovation in payments. But there was little insight to be gained from this week's meetings about what the pace of regulation and mainstreaming will, or should, be. Superintendent Lawsky has indicated his office's intention to propose a regulatory framework for digital currency in 2014, but it is uncertain when those might go into effect, leaving significant time for unfettered innovation and risk.

Read the original:
Bitcoin gets two hearings - and steps closer to acceptance

By David Z. Morris

FORTUNE -- In a space of two days, one of the largest consumer banks in the U.S. and the state regulatory agency that often sets the baseline for nationwide financial regulation held fact-finding events about the peer-to-peer cryptocurrency bitcoin. Bitcoin has been the focus of intense scrutiny, hype, and fear over the past three months, and the dramatic arrest on Monday of bitcoin advocate and entrepreneur Charlie Shrem on charges of money laundering threatened to cast a shadow over proceedings. Despite this, both meetings were largely forward-looking, and indicate that regulators, bitcoin leaders, and traditional banks are on a path to cooperation.

The New York Department of Financial Services hearings were called by Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky, who throughout the hearings displayed a deep understanding of, and even enthusiasm for, bitcoin and the protocol supporting it. Lawsky opened the meeting by reassuring the room that "our agency approaches the issue of virtual currencies without any prejudgements." The Shrem arrest, though alluded to several times, took a back seat to discussion of more fundamental questions, with Lawsky stating that "no industry should be defined entirely by its bad actors."

Representatives of the bitcoin world generally took the position that while regulations unique to bitcoin and other math-based currencies should be kept as minimal as possible, clarification of reporting requirements and anti-money-laundering standards would in fact be welcome. Many saw the appropriate focus for regulation to be the various points where bitcoins become dollars. Fred Wilson, a bitcoin investor with Union Square Ventures, flatly stated that "we should not regulate how the [bitcoin] system works" internally. But Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of the bitcoin brokerage Coinbase, emphasized that consumer protection in bitcoin-for-dollar sales was essential to broader adoption, and that "[Coinbase] welcome(s) appropriate guardrails to ensure that bitcoin companies handling the money of others are run by reputable individuals and have appropriate practices to create a sound consumer experience."

MORE: Inside the bitcoin confab

The benefits of regulation were highlighted by the testimony of law enforcement officials, whose dim view of cryptocurrency seemed to indicate increased risk for bitcoin operators. Deputy U.S. Attorney Richard B. Zabel equated bitcoin itself with both the unrelated electronic money-laundering service Liberty Reserve, and with Silk Road, the online contraband marketplace that accepted payment in bitcoin. Of course, as Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners had pointed out earlier in the hearing, Silk Road has been shut down quite effectively under existing regulations -- one reason why, as Zabel revealed, the U.S. Attorney's office has become a large holder of bitcoin through civil forfeiture. Even those who most fear bitcoin's potential for misuse, it seems, now have a stake in its success.

Directly after the first round of NYDFS hearings on Tuesday, some panelists headed to a similar meeting hosted by Wells Fargoin New York, though this one was closed-door. Attendees described it as organized but not dominated by representatives from the San Francisco-based bank's merchant services, marketing, and regulatory divisions, who mostly listened to a lineup of speakers giving a crash course in bitcoin. "All in all it was pretty basic, but the panel was insightful for the beginner," observed Rik Willard, who runs the bitcoin startup incubator MintCombine and was at the Wells Fargo meeting.

Wells Fargo (WFC) has a reputation as one of the most progressive large banks in adopting new payment technologies, and though no statements were made about Wells Fargo's plans, simply holding the meetings positions it as a leader in integration between bitcoin services and conventional banking. That process has been slowed by banking compliance officers' nervousness about bitcoin's association with criminal activity, and the scarcity of banking access for American bitcoin services is one of the major reasons it remains difficult to buy bitcoin with U.S. dollars. Currently, Coinbase is the only U.S.-based service that sells bitcoin for dollars and is serviced by a conventional bank, though it has declined to name its servicer. Wells Fargo's seeming openness to bitcoin may signal new opportunities to develop exchange infrastructures, which would in turn greatly ease mass adoption of bitcoin payments.

MORE: What the arrests say about the future of bitcoin

More than anything, this kind of high-level discussion of bitcoin shows that it is being taken seriously by leaders across many sectors, primarily as a promising innovation in payments. But there was little insight to be gained from this week's meetings about what the pace of regulation and mainstreaming will, or should, be. Superintendent Lawsky has indicated his office's intention to propose a regulatory framework for digital currency in 2014, but it is uncertain when those might go into effect, leaving significant time for unfettered innovation and risk.

Read the original here:
Bitcoin steps a little closer to acceptance