What is SmartCash (SMART)? And Why I Decided to Invest in It

What is SmartCash?
#SmartCash is a decentralised privacy coin. It uses proof of work (PoW), but when its instant pay system goes live, SmartNodes will validate the blocks to increase speed on the network. As I write it is ranked #143 in the cryptocurrency market with a market capitalisation of $107 million and trades at about 11 cents a coin.

This coin was created from a hardfork off of Zcash. What makes SmartCash different is that it is community governed and how the revenue from block rewards are distributed. 70% of the block rewards go to development teams and into a community project budget that is used to promote SmartCash. Unlike other community coins, everyone who owns SmartCash can make a proposal and vote on it. Of the other 30%, 5% goes to miners, 15% is paid to holders of over 1,000 coins as an incentive to hold the currency, and 10% goes to SmartNode owners. 10,000 SmartCash is needed to run a node.

Here’s a link to their website: https://smartcash.cc/

Why I Decided to Invest
There are a few reasons why I decided to invest in SmartCash. The main reason is that I wanted to run a node. With the payouts in SmartRewards for holders of the coins and to SmartNode owners, investors can currently expect about an 8% return per month. This return will go down over time as the community grows, but after one year the passive income will be quite high. And you don’t need a fancy computer to run a node. The node is hosted with a VPS (virtual private server) which is in the clouds somewhere. It costs only $1100 to purchase the required 10,000 coins to run a node. Compare this to Dash which costs over $400,000. Here’s a website where you can compare fundamentals for coins that use masternodes: https://masternodes.online/ And on top of the passive income I'm hoping that the price of the coin will rise as the community grows and more merchants start accepting SmartCash.

The other big reason is the strong community behind SmartCash. It currently has over 11,000 nodes, which is way more than any other coin. So many people are involved and are working to make this project a success. I've already put forward a proposal to the community to help SmartCash grow which is currently being voted on and it looks set to pass.

Since buying the coin, I now know that its fees are very low at about 100th of a cent, and the transaction time is in the seconds. A SmartCard is due to be released this year which holds SmartCash and will allow instant payment. It will make purchases using crypto cheap and easy. So this coin has a lot of utility.

How to Buy SmartCash
SmartCash isn’t traded on many exchanges. The biggest exchange is HitBTC. I didn’t previously have an account with them, but it was easy enough to open one. If SmartCash gets listed on more exchanges it will give a big boost to the price.

Risks
SmartCash has seen a lot of volatility since it was launched. It’s way down from it’s all time high of $3.45 in January and recently it has been underperforming the rising market.

Up until my investment in SmartCash I have avoided privacy coins. I think that they will receive the tightest regulations when governments around the world finally pass comprehensive laws to regulate crypto. So the price of SmartCash might continue to be volatile in the future.

The inflation rate for SmartCash is currently around 5 per cent per month (although it’s falling quickly to a more stable rate). This is much, much higher than the inflation rate of fiat currencies, however, if you’re running a SmartNode, holding the coin will be very profitable, even if the price of SmartCash stays the same. You might be wondering how the income from running a node (8% including SmartRewards) can be higher than the inflation rate (5%), but only 14 percent of the circulating supply is currently held in nodes. So if you buy SmartCash to run a node, then the inflation rate isn’t a problem.

Last Word
This is all just my opinion. I’ve tried to give a balanced overview. I’m not trying to convince anyone that this is a good project. I just want to inform.

Thanks for reading :)