What Cryptocurrencies Pay A Dividend - Part I

Invest in cryptocurrencies that pay dividends and then you can earn money on your money and withdraw it from ATMs like the Hong Kong Bitcoin ATM or with a loaded bitcoin card.

Due to the limited time frame of being able to update posts on SteemIt, a permanent copy of this post is here at What Cryptocurrencies Pay A Dividend and the link on FinTekNeeks will be updated as new we learn about other cryptocurrencies that pay dividends, or as other cryptocurrencies are created that pay dividends to their investors. If you are not familiar with cryptocurrencies, I highly recommend The Beginner's Guide To FinTech to help you navigate some of the terms and technologies.

For the sake of this page, I use the term cryptocurrency above this to also include crypto-asset, even though I recognize these terms are confusing. A crypto-asset is similar to a stock, ETF, mutual fund, or token, while a cryptocurrency is like a currency. Sinopec is a stock (asset), while gold is a money (currency). Some crypto-assets may seem like currencies, but they are not – they fundamentally are investments in a framework, idea, or business model. For the sake of this post only, I’ll use cryptocurrency to mean both currency and asset, but outside of this page, I will separate these terms. Like all cryptocurrencies and crypto-assets, all of these are high risk investments; we do not know the future of this entire industry and anyone who invests with money that they cannot afford to lose faces a high probability of failing. In other words, if you’re going to take a chance, invest with money that you are willing to completely lose.p>

What Is A Dividend?

Be skeptical every time you hear this word in the cryptocommunity because many members do not know what one is or how a dividend functions. For an example, one cryptocurrency that I won't name claims it pays a dividend by issuing more shares of the cryptocurrency, which is actually dilution, not a dividend. This means that the supply of that cryptocurrency increases, devaluing an investor's holdings. A dividend is the opposite of this: it is a payout that increases the value of an investor's holdings either independently of the security (like a stock paying currency dividends), or by increasing the investor's holdings of the security, like dividend reinvestment. To save you from financial pain later, let me reiterate the point above this as there are many scams in the cryptocommunity that claim to pay a dividend when they do not: a dividend is not dilution and an increase in the supply is dilution.

Counterparty (XCP)

Counterparty is a crypto-asset that is the smart contract network (its symbol is XCP). Counterparty is built on top of bitcoin’s blockchain and approaches its dividend in a creative manner, through proof-of-stake. The two things you need to know if you own Counterparty or want to own it so that you can get paid dividends is that its supply is fixed and when a smart contract is created, executed, or when spam is posted to the network, the people doing the creation, executing, or spamming must pay Counterparty, which is where users get their dividends. What the Counterparty system does is destroy the currency that is paid, such as destroying 100 Counterparty paid for several executions of contracts and spam. Sounds complex? Don’t worry, let’s dig into a few examples and check out the numbers:

Think of it this way: suppose that we are Counterparty currency investors and a user Bob pays 100 Counterparty for a variety of contracts and spam. The overall supply of Counterparty is reduced by 100. Remember that this cryptocurrency is fixed in supply (currently at approximately 2.6 million XCP). This means that Counterparty becomes rarer and rarer and thus our holdings of Counterparty relative to the overall supply increases. To think of this latter point, let's pretend that there were only 1000 Counterparty in existence and we held 100 - meaning that we held 10% if the supply of Counterparty. If Bob burned 100 Counterparty, then there would only be 900 in the total supply, meaning that our percent of ownership increased to 11.11% from 10%. If two other users - James and John - burned 100 Counterparty each (200 total) that would further reduce the supply to 700, which means our percent ownership would rise to 14.28% from 11.11% (after Bob's 100 Counterparty burn).

Because the dividend we get paid by Counterparty varies by how much is burned, there isn't a fixed return - this may vary. Just as an example of the rate of Counterparty burn - on July 27th there were 2,625,826 XCP and now there are only 2,624,715 XCP (1,111 burned).

DigixDAO (DGD)

At the current time of this writing, Digix asserts that they will pay quarterly rewards to investors in the DigixDAO. I am a large shareholder of DigixDAO and I remain a little skeptical of this claim by Digix, but am eagerly anticipating how this will work. Digix points out that they make fees from the Digix Gold Token (DGX - tokens that are backed 100% by gold) and that these fees from people holding gold tokens are paid to DigixDAO shareholders. In addition, I suspect that if Digix honors this, that they will also pay out quarterly rewards for other ideas they develop that may have trading fees. At this present time, this is all experimental and to my knowledge, no one has received rewards yet. If Digix Gold Tokens become popular, then DigixDAO could be a huge winner.

The major downside to the company Digix in my opinion is that it has chosen to use Ethereum instead of choosing to be platform independent. If I was advising the company, I would suggest that they work with all smart contract platforms as all platforms will benefit from a digital currency backed in gold. This choice may end up limiting DigixDAO's success.

We will continue exploring other cryptocurrencies that pay dividends for investors who want their wealth to grow.