Yesterday, Neucoin released a statement that they were closing shop. Their freemium gameplay tactics didn't gain enough momentum to maintain high trading volume & scale to 3rd party platforms. Their model - similar to Steem - seemed to fail when it came to retaining active users. Their utility didn't provide enough activity to fund new platforms that would in turn spark more utility & users.

Platform with utility - like steemit.com - is like an engine. Currency - Steem / SD - is the fuel. If an engine doesn't churn enough fuel through the system, the fuel grows ice cold & undesirable. If abandoned in this early stage, the project will dissolve.

If a single engine can hold it's own long enough, eventually a second engine will be made using the same fuel. If multiple engines are successfully churning fuel, then the pool of fuel will increase its baseline heat, meaning there will be a price floor increase due to consistent demand. Once that momentum loses its single point of failure, critical mass can spark, resulting in long term success looming on the horizon.

Jango

My first encounter with #neucoin was through the use of Radio Airplay. It's the artist's side of Jango, a digital music streaming platforms where independent artists fill their music into popular radio stations instead of traditional advertisement. It was interesting to get paid in crypto currency from those who liked my song (hint hint).

Danial Kaufman

When Neucoin first came out, I heard that Daniel Kaufman was a scam artist & not to be trusted with a scam coin. He had made a lot of money starting a digital advertising company called Direct Revenue which essential froze & shut down computers worldwide with an overwhelming amount of software that was extremely difficult to remove and let to a lawsuit.

If you see this name, run away.

Conclusion

There you have it ladies & gentlemen. Buyer beware. A similar PoS crypto #currency didn't survive the first wave into the second platform creation which would enhance further utility. We need more users on Steem if we are to avoid the same fate. More importantly, we need another platform on Steem that can strengthen the utility by growing unique sign ups and monthly user rate.

To be fair, Steem already has developed steemit.chat, an internal market place & organized distribution of Steem. However, we need to take on the powerhouse corporations ASAP. I'm talking Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pandora & Spotify. As soon as we have one - just one - we will exponentially increase our chance of surviving indefinitely.

I still have my faith in Steem, but we are not out of the cold yet!