MonaCoin’s History
MonaCoin is a cryptocurrency that was developed in Japan, being currently backed by one of the world’s most active communities. The coin was first introduced to the world on Japan’s 2channel mega-forum, one of the most popular sites in the country, with more than 600 active message boards.
MonaCoin was invented by a mysterious “Mr. Watanabe”, whose identity has yet to be revealed to this day. That may sound familiar since the most popular cryptocurrency in the world, Bitcoin, has an equally publicity-shy creator that also uses a Japanese pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto.
MONA is now a well-established altcoin, but unlike other altcoins that have emerged, it continues to persist only as a cryptocurrency. By remaining a cryptocurrency, it raises a lot of tax implications, which is exactly why most ICOs today are based on tokens. Since Bitcoin has not caused as much hype in Japan as it has in other countries, MonaCoin was created to supply the need for the country’s own personal version of the cryptocurrency.
Block halving and block reward
Forked from Litecoin in 2013, MONA has a total circulating supply of 62,032,750, with a mining difficulty that is re-targeted every block, making use of the Dark Gravity Wave difficulty algorithm. Thus, MonaCoin has a reduced inflationary mining system that features halving once every 3 years. The block time is relatively short (1.5 minutes) and the reward per block is 25 cents.
MONA was not pre-mined and the team that was in charge of the coin’s development did not receive coins during the Initial Coin Offering.
Worth and market cap
This Internet meme-based cryptocurrency has a market cap of $86,984,202, despite estimates saying that 90% of its user base is located in Japan. At the time this article was written, one MONA had a worth of $1.40 USD.
Where can I use it?
Some online and physical stores from Japan have already accepted the use of MonaCoin and the number of stores, websites and services willing to make the change increases every day. The currency is traded on five exchanges: three in Japan, YBEX from China, and the Allcoin.com platform.
The main downside of investing in MonaCoin is that it only has value locally, with little relevance elsewhere in the world.
MonaCoin has been recently attracting a lot of attention and this is mainly due to Japan’s lenient and open-minded attitude towards cryptocurrencies. The government of Japan has opened up new opportunities for cryptocurrencies and crypto-related ventures when it accepted digitized currency as being a legally viable payment method.
On the other hand, China and Vietnam have taken an opposite stance, and tried to block off and suppress the use of cryptocurrency. Having more than 125 million citizens and a thriving digital payment marketplace, Japan is seen as a perfect environment where new cryptocurrencies can emerge and strive to be adopted by businesses and institutions.
Monacoin has benefited from this and has seen an uptake in investments and real-life usage as a digital currency. With the public’s support and mass adoption, who knows what many good things the future has in store for MonaCoin.
