How we raised $3.500 to create our own smartcoin

Bitshares is a digital platform which can be used to create market pegged assets for various major global currencies and commodities. One of those market pegged assets is now BitARS.

BitARS is the first Argentine Smartcoin, is a digital asset which works just like Bitcoin, secured by a peer-to-peer ledger called a blockchain, but the value is tracked by a price feed and backed by 200% collateral.

But BitARS is also a great example of how you can crowdfund your own project on the Bitshares platform and create something useful.

The idea

For a while, the argentine “Crypto-Nerd” community was thinking of having their own smartcoin, after all Argentina has the biggest Bitcoin Community in Latin America, we also have one of the largest Bitshares Meetup Groups in the world. We were sure that this high level of interest in Cryptocurrencies together with the economic potential of being the third economy of the region were reasons enough to create BitARS.

There was of course one small problem, creating a three letter smartcoin like ARS costs 1,174,107 BTS, which is equivalent to 9.27 Bitcoin or 4,173 U.S dollars.

Getting funded

Luckily for us, Bitshares has a great feauture: workers!

Workers give the community the opportunity to fund projects or get paid to develop Bitshares enviroment:

With Bitcoin, all newly available coins are automatically spent on paying a decentralized network of ‘miners’ to secure the network. However, with Bitshares, the flow of new funds can be directed to whatever the Bitshares ‘shareholders’ want, creating a type of collective hive mind that governs the growth of Bitshares.

Once we got our two more skilled developers (@elmato & @rnglab) to create the worker we set out to convince the shareholders of the benefits of having an argentine Smartcoin.

We talked to everyone and anyone who would listen to us on the Bitshares community: Committe Members, Chinesse whales, Bithsares-Munich, programmers, fans and even trolls.

The worker started on Sunday 1st of May, yes ironically on Labors day (this was by either coincidence or maybe due @elmato being superticious). We got the votes needed and anxiously stared at our screens for 11 days while we got a little over 1.000.000 BTS.

So, what happened to the rest? well no story is perfect and due to a small error code the worker finished 1 day short of reaching the target!, this was nothing but a tiny bump, not even a bump it was actually kind of funny to me the way we were all celebrating and waiting for the funds to arrive and then it suddenly just stopped one day short LOL.

Before I could even read our telegram group someone had already transfer the remaining funds needed to create the coin (Gracias Eti for saving us!), so I didnt even get a chance to worry about the issue.

Creating the first argentine smartcoin

With the funds on our side, it didnt take long for our developers to create BitARS, it was like taking a stroll down the park for them, it was done in a couple of hours.

Before I could get a chance to open my browser and visit the exchange someone had already beaten me to it, orders were already in place. I did want to make sure I was the first to actually execute and order so I went ahead and sold 10 BitARS for 191.14832 BTS (wohooo to me!).

What lies ahead

Creating BitARS was only the first step for what we actually have in mind and don´t get me wrong, when I say we I dont mean a company, a bank or even a registered institution, we are just a group of crypto-geeks who meet over the internet and want to build cool stuff on the blockchain, non of us has gotten rich from it and there is no possible technical way we can profit from BitARS trades. So, what we have in mind, what we want and really hope for: is developers and crypto aficionados using bitars to build incredible cool stuff with it, from social payments to gambling apps and ultimatly blockchain banking.

Special Thanks

This project could have not been possible without the help and assitance of:

@bitcrab
@xeroc (and all his proxy voters)
@elmato
@fran2k
@ettiene
@rnglab
Everyone who voted for our worker.

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