BASIS: NEW CRYPTOCURRENCY FROM PRINCETON

The team behind Basis says it is designing a "stable cryptocurrency" that will maintain a fixed value and thus be better suited for making purchases. That's in contrast to bitcoin and other popular cryptocurrencies whose wild price swings make it undesirable as a day-to-day replacement for traditional money.

"The price volatility of cryptocurrencies is one of their biggest barriers to widespread adoption," Nader Al Naji, the CEO and cofounder of Basis, wrote in a Medium post on Wednesday announcing the funding.

Al Naji says cryptocurrencies are now used almost exclusively as a means of speculation instead of as a way to buy things, so Basis aims to make a digital token backed by "an algorithmic central bank" that will simulate inflation and deflation to control the price, "just like a real currency."

A company representative told Business Insider that Basis's target market was in the developing world, where even traditional currencies can experience stretches of volatility. Basis believes people could eventually use its tokens even for things like salaries, loans, or contracts.

Basis isn't the only cryptocurrency startup hoping to create a stable token that can be used to buy things — for example, the controversial cryptocurrency Tether intends to keep its price steady by basing its value on the US dollar.

To read the complete article, see:
3 Princeton grads just got $133 million from Silicon Valley's hottest investors for a cryptocurrency that could actually replace money (http://www.businessinsider.com/basis-investment-gv-andreessen-horowitz-lightspeed-2018-4)

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