Gambling on a new coin
I’m going to go very niche with my choice of coin. This is partly to keep the article interesting, and partly because the higher risk has the potential for higher reward.
I’m going to buy one coin of OneGram. This is a fairly new cryptocurrency which is currently having its ICO.
An ICO is an Initial Coin Offering where you can buy the coin before it goes fully out into the wild. It’s much like an IPO on the stock market. Essentially, buying during an ICO means you’re taking that early risk to help them get started and you’ll get to buy in for a lower amount as a result.
I chose OneGram because the concept is interesting. It claims to be the first cryptocurrency which adheres to Islamic law. It seems to work by backing its currency with gold and buying more gold as the currency grows. This feels a lot like a regular currency, which makes me a little uncertain whether it will be worth the risk.
On the downside, the stability offered by being connected to gold could drive down my returns. On the upside, there are lots of muslims in the world who might want to get involved with this over the next few years; it has a USP.
For anyone who wants to know more about this coin, you can read the whitepaper. It gives a nice breakdown of the concept, growth, and a bit of theology – because why not? After the ICO, no new coins will be created and that’s when the price of the coin should grow above and beyond the price of gold, apparently.
I’m not suggesting this is a wise investment. But it should cost me about $50, so I’m not too fussed.
Let’s see how it goes.
Here’s my info screen letting me know how much it currently costs and how the sale is going so far:
investing in cryptocurrency onegram
It has sent me to a site called GoldGuard where I have to buy gold and exchange said gold through the same platform for my OneGram Coin (OGC). This is not a normal way of purchasing cryptocurrency…
I may have picked a bad example for this article.
investing in cryptocurrency goldguard
I’ve now created a personal account and confirmed my email address. Apparently, I need to verify my account at some point, but for the time being I’m going to go ahead and try to buy 1 halal coin.
investing in cryptocurrency buy onegram
I’m not going to screenshot my payment screens as you don’t need to see that info. I was given the option of a bank transfer or pay with Bitcoin. The system then automatically allocates you your OneGram coin to what appears to be the nearest 9th decimal place.
This wasn’t really indicative of buying regular cryptocurrency through an ICO, but it does provide an interesting use case to show the expanding world of cryptocurrencies.