I have been preparing this article about Blackcoin for a long time but as the news and updates come out quite often it made me update and reedit this article couple of times. It seams that Blackcoin community is so active that, by the time this article gets published probably many new things are gonna come that are not covered here.

First of all lets look at some general facts and figures. Blackcoin was launched at the end of february as a pure proof of stake coin, except stage of initial distribution, when it was mixed PoW and PoS coin. It was the initiator of proof of stake system and after Blackcoin have hit the markets many new copy coins were born, all trying to copy Blackcoin PoS system. BlackCoin’s protocol makes it much more energy efficient compared to other digital currencies and the BlackCoin Foundation is part of a vibrant community that supports the value and mainstream adoption of the currency.

It’s small annual interest rate of 1% makes it quite unique as it provides small compensation for staked coins but this limited small inflation is also good for keeping the value of coin as there are no new coins that people are dumping on the exchanges. Another fact that makes Blackcoin interesting is short stake age which means you do not have to have your coins in a wallet for a long period of time before they start staking and paying interest, only 8 hours.

On the other hand Blackcoin block time of 60 seconds makes it fast and reliable. Much better then some other coins but together with PoS innovation this is not something that can make a coin be the best coin. Much more is needed and I hope to cover in this article as much as possible so you can make your own conclusion on the future of this coin.

At the moment of writing of this article Blackcoin had 74,543,764 coin minted with $ 11,791,206 market cap. This puts Blackcoin on the 9th place by the coins market capitalization.

Multipools

Blackcoin was the first coin to implement multipools that mine currently most profitable alt coins and then exchange them to blackcoin that are paid to miners. At this moment one can mine via any algorithm and be paid in blackcoin and this made Blackcoin multipool innovation really significant. Since this was quite an innovation in the alt coin world many later coins copied multipool from Blackcoin and made their own similar multipools. But if we look at the numbers we will see that Blackcoin official multipool at the moment of writing of this article have more then 3.000 users combined, reaching an average of 5 GH/sec (normalized). Large number of multipools and miners should not be underestimated as they provide great support for the coin on exchanges and make Blackcoin price quite stable when compared to other coins traded on main exchanges.

Branding & Community

Probably one of the biggest Blackcoin strengths is in its community. Blackcoin community is becoming so large that its almost impossible to follow important updates on the main forums as there are so many people posting and replaying. Blackcoin on reddit is probably one of the most active reddit alt coin communities out there but there are things that make Blackcoin brand really unique except active community. One of the most important and lucrative moves of Blackcoin community is surely cooperation with professional tech PR firm Max Borges Agency, that was hired by Blackcoin community. Max Borges Agency, a top tech PR firm in North America, received BlackCoin digital currency as a part of its client retainer. With this move, Max Borges Agency becomes the first company in the public relations industry to join the alt coin market and Blackcoin, first ever crypto currency to hire professional PR service.

As with many other things like PoS and multipools this PR experiment is also something that Blackcoin is pioneering and I am very interested to see what this might bring to Blackcoin and it’s wider adaptation. Although I do not expect it to move the mountains this PR campaign might bring some serious attention into Blackcoin and these things need a long time to provide some results.

Exchanges & Price

Blackcoin is currently traded on basically all the major exchanges but what is important is that it only took couple of days after launch for Mintpal to enable Blackcoin trading while Cryptsy on the other hand was almost a month behind. What one can conclude out of this is that Mintpal obviously saw something very interesting in this coin right at the launch. This something was surely not the trading volume as there was no actual volume in the days right after the launch, but was probably attracted but initial PoS innovation.

As I said, Blackcoin is listed on all the exchanges that are used today, where you can exchange it for Bitcoin but also you can trade Blackcoin for fiat currencies on couple of exchanges like Bittylicious, Bter, Vault of Satoshi, Prelude and Litebit. This is something that is great potential for many investors and merchants as it allows them to invest fiat directly in Blackcoin without messing with Bitcoin while merchants can accept it and exchange it directly to fiat. This makes Blackcoin very unique compared to other alt coins.

Regarding every day trading and volumes it is hard not to notice that Blackcoin have continuous volumes on major exchanges (Mintpal and Cryptsy) making it one of the most traded coins in a long period of time. This high volume is probably driven by multipools as there are no miners that are dumping the coins on the exchanges but this also makes Blackcoin price stable when comparing to other crypto currencies. You can hardly find coin with such a big volume in such a big time frame. I am talking about hundreds and thousands Bitcoins traded daily for a long time. This off course does not have to mean a lot but my personal opinion is that Blackcoin is very interesting mid to long term investment, not so much for day traders and pumpers-dumpers.

Blackcoin centric exchange is one of the innovative exchange projects currently under development. It will have a feature rich real-time GUI similar to MintPal and will focus around Blackcoin instead of Bitcoin so you will be able to trade all the alt coins directly into Blackcoin. This realtime trading engine has been rebuilt, and when it launches it will have a fully functional trading API with websockets and push notifications. The developers are currently working on an open-source trading software to be released with the exchange to allow multipools and independent miners to easily use exchange to quickly and cheaply convert their gains into Blackcoin with minimal fees.

Another interesting project is off course Bithalo (http://www.bithalo.org). DzimBeck, a BlackCoin developer has been developing a solution that will will decentralize Blackcoin to Bitcoin trading and transferring. This project aims to alleviate the stress and hassle of moving coins around in centralized exchanges like Cryptsy, MintPal etc. Current implementation feature list:

The inclusion to create Smart Contracts right from the software

Benefit of decentralized Blackcoin/Bitcoin/Cash markets

NO THIRD PARTIES. 100% free (no fees)

Multi-Signature Wallets

Anti-Malleability Protection

2 Step Sending

Joint Accounts

Hack Resistant Security Features

Contract Bridges

Encoded BlockChain Messaging

Bitmessage

This will without any doubt be very significant innovation and project in crypto currency world and what is even better the project is already in beta phase! Developers want to get this off the ground and into the hands of the public as soon as possible and they will be taking the donations and will escrow the bounty, wherein payment to the developers will be issued once the project is up and running. The escrow service will be done by Maarx, one of the board members of the BlackCoin Foundation. Complete white paper and documentation regarding Bithalo project can be found on webpage (http://www.bithalo.org)

Can it purchase goods or services?

At this moment you can actually spend your Blackcoin on many different products and services. You can find many merchant services and products on Blackcoin directory (http://blackcoindirectory.com). Some of the sites accepting Blackcoin are actually Blackcoin projects accepting only Blackcoin and not other crypto currencies but there are some very interesting things about to happen. On the 1st of June Coinkite, will add Balckcoin to its services. What is Coinkite? you may be asking yourself and, more importantly why is it important? Coinkite boasts three main services: Web Wallets, Debit Cards and Payment Terminals (also known as Point of Sale devices). In one fell swoop Coinkite will make BlackCoin available on a secure Web Wallet service, add BlackCoin to Debit Cards and, most interesting, get us accepted in actual Brick & Mortar shops. This means that you can ask you favorite shops locally to start supporting BlackCoin with just simply getting a Coinkite Point of Sale device. Not only will they be able to accept BlackCoin, but also Bitcoin and Litecoin are available on these systems. BlackCoin community is extremely excited to have Blackcoin added to Coinkite’s services. This is the first ever pure Proof-Of-Stake coin to get added to a Point of Sale service and that affiliation with Coinkite can only make it grow bigger. BlackCoin is only couple of months old and already to be on Point of Sale systems is really great success! If you want to support BlackCoin, go to your favorite Brick & Mortar shop and talk to them about accepting BlackCoin. With Coinkite it will be as easy as it can be for them!In order to get added to Coinkite Blackcoin had to comply with an ISO 3 letter ticker symbol. Although BC is unique it may be confusing for customers down the line. This is why developers have chosen to use BLK as addition to the current BC symbol. Both are officially accepted as ticker symbols for BlackCoin. Developers are also in conversations with a national sales team leader that worked for a very large visa/mastercard point of sale company. He will lead Blackcoin national introduction to merchants on accepting Blackcoin through Coinkite and through a yet to be announced Blackcoin wallet system.

Let me also say couple of things about Blackcoin card, another innovation of community. The BlackCoin Card is a new approach to storing and transporting your valuable BlackCoins safely. It is a chip card intended to be used as a wallet. By inserting this card into card reader connected to Windows comatibile PC you are able to transfer your Blackcoin to the card and take it with you. This product is developed by a third party and some practical usage is yet to be seen but this only shows how diversified Blackcoin community really is. There are many people developing independent product and services for Blackcoin and this is not something you see very often in alt coin world.

Other projects and developments

Full-node Android Wallet for BlackCoin is being developed also. There are still some issues to be solved but you can download it from here https://www.dropbox.com/s/l54un8usi7h00gj/BLKICE-00a.apk. Testing and reporting will be greatly appreciated by developers.

Some work is also being invested on a new privately developed BlackCoin wallet. As developers have said this wallet will introduced an exclusive anon and multi signature feature. Also along with that some more features that are yet to be announced but will be revolutionary. The wallet is Code named “Legionaire”.

Dzimbeck, an external developer, is working on a system that will bring smart contracts, decentralized cash/btc/blk markets, anti-malleability and other features.

Conclusion

What one can see from all of this is that Blackcoin is really an innovative coin and it has probably the most innovative community. There are many things that Blackcoin started first and that were copied later by so many different coins and projects. Let me remind you about couple of them. Blackcoin was first proof of stake coin. It had first ever multipool that mined most profitable coins and payed in Blackcoin. Blackcoin community is the first to hire professional PR company. It is the first crypto currency besides Bitcoin and Litecoin to be added by Coinkite to their services. Bithalo and Blackcoin centric exchange are two projects underway that will again bring unique products and services to Blackcoin community and so much more is underway.

After all that is said it’s obvious that Blackcoin can have great future if community and developers continue to solve everyday problems in making crypto currencies adoptable by average user. So many things have been done in last couple of weeks and I am really looking foreword to see how is all that gonna influence wider adaptation and value of Blackcoin. As far as trading and price is concerned I believe that Blackcoin is about to see uptrend with all the projects coming out but as I said above I do not consider Blackcoin to be day traders coin, more of a mid to long term investment.