It’s hard for altcoins to stand out anymore, as new cryptocurrencies are created every day. And yet even the ones made as a joke find speculators and users.
If Franko has one thing going for it, it’s that it actually sounds like an existing, familiar currency.
Franko was created by a Bitcointalk.org user named Christopher Franko and released on May 10, 2013. In just eight months, it has become an accepted form of payment at a number of pawn shops in Atlanta, and Franko the creator is himself a member of two chambers of commerce.
Franko bills itself as being faster and more fair than other coins, Bitcoin in particular. Transactions are processed every 30 seconds, and the network is rewarded at the same rate with the creation of 0.25 new Frankos, or FRK. The rate of reward is designed to halve every 20 years, and the total possible number of FRK is capped at about 11.2 million, the last of which will become available in just less than 500 years.
“I developed Franko because, at the time, I wasn’t satisfied enough with the alternatives being offered and felt like the world needed something more fair, more rare, and a lot faster,” the currency’s eponymous founder wrote. “Waiting an hour to make a purchase with 1 million coins wasn’t going to cut it.”
Note that despite the sincerity and well-thought out design of Franko, the currency’s website, Frankos.org, does mention something called the Franko High Council, which I can only hope is tongue-in-cheek.