I Created My Own Cryptocurrency For Fun (And How You Can, Too)

Before I begin this,

HI BNM! YOU’RE DOING AN AWESOME JOB! BTW THIS ‘CRYPTOCURRENCY’ I DID HAVE NO VALUE AT ALL! ABSOLUTELY NONE! THIS ‘CRYPTOCURRENCY’ IS MORE LIKE A FUN BUCKETLIST PROJECT AND A CREATIVE EXPRESSION RATHER THAN A CURRENCY PER SAY. IN FACT THINK OF IT LIKE TOKENS OR POINTS. I AM A TAX-PAYING CITIZEN!

Okay now that’s done…

Guys, I made SurayaCoin! 1000 of them! And it’s super simple via the Waves Platform – literally just 4 steps! [EDIT 2021: Waves Platform is no longer operational – such is the lifespan of crypto projects 🙂 Anyway the point is, making cryptocurrencies is not a hard process so think twice before being sucked into a token just because its ‘crypto’]

Here’s how to do it, assuming you have bitcoins but have never tried the Waves platform before (ie you don’t have Waves – the utility token for it – yet). If you don’t have bitcoins, yea you kinda need that first. Read my bitcoin guide.

Also, Waves is not the only platform that allow token creation. You can do via any/most blockchain platform that allow dApps (decentralised apps) creation, including  but not limited to Ethereum, NEM, Lisk, Neo etc

Step 1: Create a wallet at WavesWallet.io

Super simple. Go to the address above, type in your email, write down your seed and keep it somewhere safe. The bunch of words like pumpkin lemon ceiling horse – those words collectively is called a seed. You need the seed to recover your account, in case you lose your password.

After you have an account, your main wallet looks like this.

Step 2: Convert bitcoin into Waves

You need 1 Waves to create your own cryptocurrency via the Waves Platform. At writing time, 1 Waves is $6ish. I decided to convert the nice round number of 0.001 bitcoin into the not-so-round number 1.18588263 Waves. So essentially, this project costs me less than RM40, including the bitcoin network fee. That’s really cheap.

There are a few platforms where you can exchange bitcoin into Waves. Personally, I used Changelly (note: referral link) – it took around 20 minutes to arrive. For more places to get Waves, check the Exchanges section at r/WavesPlatform.

Step 3: Make your token

After you have at least 1 Waves in your wallet, you can now make your own cryptocurrency slash token. Select the Token Creation Lab button.

Give your token a name, add a description, decide on total tokens issued and its decimal points. Make one token, make a billion tokens, whatever. It’s the same price – 1 Waves.

You can make your tokens re-issuable or non re-issuable. If not re-issuable, then your cryptocurrency will permanently have that same amount in circulation.

If you’re happy with everything, click Confirm.

Step 4: Token successfully created!

That’s it! You’ll get a notification that your tokens were created. Your wallet will have one less Waves in it.

View your freshly-made cryptocurrency in the Portfolio section.

EDIT: The next day after I made SurayaCoin, I found that people have been sending Waves-based tokens to my address. I didn’t request, they just arrived. Cool. I didn’t know you can earn passive airdrops this way. One of them is a payments token and another one is an ICO.

Final notes

What I said in the above shoutout to BNM is worth repeating here. SurayaCoin has absolutely no value whatsoever. I did it for the kicks, that’s it. Now that I’m done creating it, they’ll probably lay forgotten in my wallet (I’m too lazy to even make a coin design for it).

This point is important to stress, because the idea of having a value-less cryptocurrency is something that many people find hard to grasp, especially crypto-people. Isn’t the point of having cryptocurrency is to let the price appreciate in value, so you can re-sell it for higher amounts?

Naaaaah. For me, this experience is more educational. I wanted to try out a platform that promises token issuance. That’s what it promised, that’s what it delivered. I can technically say ‘I created my own cryptocurrency’ now. Which is pretty cool considering I have almost no technical or coding knowledge whatsoever.

Now that you know how easy it is to create your own cryptocurrency, I hope it’ll make you more sceptical of them as an ‘investment’. Literally anyone can create one and slap some fancy words on it (blockchain! decentralised!) and tell you its valuable, so gimme your money.

So if not for ‘investment’, what are blockchain-based token creation good for? Let’s see..

• For pure fun and experimentation, like an art project (SurayaCoin is for this)
• Use it as a novelty way to raise money for charity
• Turn it into some sort of loyalty points thing for your business
• Make this into a school project where kids can learn about blockchain and cryptocurrencies the fun way (I would personally LOVE to see their coin designs!)
• Probably need a legal hand here, but how about using these tokens as a way to prove ownership over property or other indivisible items? I believe the term is fractional investment, where tokens are representative of a portion of that property (or art, or vehicle, whatever)
• And more

Would you consider creating your own cryptocurrency? What would you name it? What would you use it for? Let me know in the comments section!

P/s – if you’d like a couple of those value-less SurayaCoin, put your Waves wallet address in the comments section. If you have Waves-based tokens to give away (not sell!), let the rest of us know by commenting as well. We can start a crypto-coin collecting group. Like collect Pokemon like that.

My Waves address is 3PLBLwz5X7L5HLgdNVToBQyTHo1hmYLwnuL