Maybe There’s a Use for Crypto After All

It’s a tough question to answer, in part because most of the successful (and legal) uses of cryptocurrency so far have been in finance or finance-adjacent fields. There are plenty of crypto exchanges, NFT trading platforms and video games that involve buying and selling crypto tokens. But so far, not many crypto projects have had what Kevin would call “normie utility” — solving problems that exist for people outside the crypto world, that aren’t primarily about buying or selling digital assets and that would be impossible to solve with normal, non-crypto technology.

Recently, though, Kevin discovered one that does.

It’s called Helium. And while it’s not the most attention-grabbing crypto project out there — no cartoon apes or copies of the Constitution are involved — trying it out has helped him understand how crypto can be quite useful in solving certain types of problems.

On a basic level, Helium is a decentralized wireless network for “internet of things” devices, powered by cryptocurrency.

The network is made up of devices called Helium hot spots, gadgets with antennas that can send small amounts of data over long distances using radio frequencies. These hot spots, which cost roughly $500 apiece and can reach 200 times farther than conventional Wi-Fi hot spots, share their owners’ bandwidth with nearby internet-connected devices — like parking meters, air-quality sensors or smart kitchen appliances.

Anyone can use the Helium network, although most of its users so far are companies like Lime (which has used Helium to keep tabs on its connected scooters) and the Victor mousetrap company (which uses it for a new line of internet-connected traps). More than 500,000 Helium hot spots are in use around the world, with thousands being added to the network every day.

Here’s where the crypto part comes in: In addition to transmitting data, Helium hot spots reward their owners for participating in the network by creating units of a cryptocurrency called $HNT. These tokens can be bought and sold on the open market like any other cryptocurrency, and the more a hot spot is used, the more $HNT tokens it generates.

Helium, which was founded in 2013, didn’t start off as a crypto company. Its founders originally tried to build a long-range, peer-to-peer wireless network the old-fashioned way — by persuading people and businesses to set up hot spots and stringing them together. But they struggled to get enough participants, and the network stalled.

Frank Mong, Helium’s chief operating officer, told Kevin that the company was running out of money in 2017 when an engineer suggested, during an all-hands Scotch-drinking session, that more people might be willing to set up hot spots if they could earn cryptocurrency by doing it.

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE FROM NY TIMES HERE AUTHORED BY KEVIN ROOSE