“Gems” wants to pay its users in Bitcoin

A new social messaging platform aims to reward users with Bitcoin for spending time on it.

Most social networks and messaging platforms make money from selling information about their users to advertisers. That’s what Gems – the world’s first social currency network – wants to do as well. But instead of keeping all the revenues for itself, it’ll share some with its users, since it’s their information that’s being sold.

“Everything we do on Facebook or Whatsapp, [the companies are] making money out of it. They’re using our information, they’re selling it to advertisers and we don’t see anything out of it. We think that the users should be rewarded much more for using the application. So anything that we can do to incentive people, we do it with Gems,” Daniel Peled, lead developer for Gems said in an interview.

On Gems’ website, the social network explains why it wants to reward its users and how it’ll go about doing so. It’s very simple – the more you use the site and recommend it to your peers, the more you’ll be rewarded for your efforts. So the more successful Gems becomes, the richer everyone will be.

Gems will be available for download as a free app for iOS and Android. Each user, upon registration, gets his or her own wallet which is protected by a passphrase chosen by them. The user’s profile name also serves as the alias to their Gems wallet, making Bitcoin transactions between users easier. The service is powered by Counterparty, which is a platform for free and open financial tools on the Bitcoin network.

Gems features unlimited messaging, users can be anonymous if they please, communications are always encrypted, and as stated earlier, if a user can refer their friends, he or she will be rewarded.

Messaging between friends is free, but to send an unsolicited message or advert it will cost you ‘Gems’ to do so. Those users who decide to view the ads will be rewarded with some of these Gems, which can be exchanged for Bitcoins whenever they want to cash out.

Peled believes that Gems will be stronger than other altcoins, as the strength of the service will be determined by the number of users.

“There are two things that will give real value to Gems, one is the users, 40% of the Gems are going to be distributed in a couple of years for inviting people in the network,” Peled said. “The second thing is we’re trying to build a social network that is more fair for the user.”

Gems hasn’t yet launched, but its creators are promising it will be available “very soon”.