WeNano, the Pokémon Go of Cryptocurrency Apps
Make Friends, Advertise Your Business, and get Paid to Explore
For most people, even now all the bars are shut, a walk to the local minibus terminal on a cold Friday evening would not be their idea of the perfect date. My girlfriend is not most people, and worse than being an anorak who loves bus spotting, she has an incurable interest in cryptocurrencies.
Like anyone who is constantly reminded that they didn't buy bitcoin, I have been busy burying my head in the sand for the past six months. So I was only half-listening when she proposed we walk to the terminal to collect free Nano, a cryptocurrency with big ambitions, lightning-fast transaction times and no transaction fees.
Unlike the most established cryptocurrencies, Nano does not rely on a mining process to generate new coins. Weirdly all the coins were created at inception and distributed on the basis of how many CAPTCHA questions an applicant for coins could complete. This novel approach provides huge savings to the environment when compared to the energy consumed from bitcoin mining.
Like the game from 2016 that gets you out of the house to catch ’em all, WeNano is an app that not only allows you to store and spend Nano, but it also shows you locations around town where you can grab some for free! The app is fairly new so has some user experience issues (it took me four attempts to sign up) but bear with it because it’s fun and well worth your time.
Like the lures in Pokémon Go that attract people to an area trying to catch the best Pokémon, enthusiasts leave Nano at various locations luring in people trying to nab themselves some free lucre. At the moment this seems to be done by Nano evangelists in order to boost the profile of the coin, but the creator of WeNano has bigger dreams, having launched WeNano Business. This amongst other things provides businesses that have a fixed location a cost-effective way to advertise to Nano enthusiasts and get them to visit their store and pay with the coin.
Although WeNano is available worldwide, given the current global pandemic its the perfect excuse to get out of the house for some fresh air, so I thought I’d give it a go and visit every single spot in Hong Kong…that I could hike to from my flat.
At each spot, you can leave a message to the other people who have visited it in order to make connections and boost the community, or even just to say thanks! So I did just this, using the WeNano chat feature (and some Facebook stalking) to get hold of Rosh Pritmani a man who holds the record on setting up WeNano spots in Hong Kong…
“Download Natrium wallet and send me your address”, he sends the App and Play Store links in the next message, “download Natrium Wallet on your phone, i wanna show you smtn.” To a crypto-virgin like me who never passed second base, this is a little bit scary, all the countless stories of Bitcoin thefts shuttle through my mind. I google “can i tell someone my nano wallet address?” But then I remember I have no Nano to steal.
I’d asked Rosh what motivates him to make these spots and he’d shown me. I sent him my wallet address and instantly a whole shiny Nano lands there. He points out that Bitcoin can take hours or even weeks to arrive if the network is clogged and fees would be deducted “but with nano, it’s instant and fee-less. [fees] not near 0, actually zero.” I promise to transfer this coin to my WeNano account and pay his outstanding generosity forward, and he agrees.
This technology clearly fulfils its use-case, for feeless payment and transfer but why bother leaving spots of free Nano for strangers around Hong Kong? Rosh explains that he wants to make people aware of this great technology available to them, he hopes people take his coins and pay them forward again, in a virtuous circle (so far this hasn’t happened). He’s in it for the long term and “in it for the tech”.
So here’s to you WeNano, an app for making friends, advertising your business & getting paid to explore!
