Recently I've been drawn more towards cryptocurrencies with a low circulating supply. Coins like Melon, Dash and Decred. A low supply isn't inherently indicative of value; but it's often part of it. If you look on Coinmarketcap.com and sort by: "circulating supply" this is often where you'll find the highest-priced altcoins.

One coin stands out...

This coin is PART the currency of the the Particl.io project. It stands out firstly, because it's quite new. However, it also stands out because among these low circulating supply coins, it's among the cheapest. It's also just launched a new wallet last week.

So what is it?

From my research, it's actually a fairly risky coin to buy into, but one with a huge potential. It's from the team behind Shadowcash, which is a failed project. If you listen to FUD monkeys on BitcoinTalk it was a scam (they use that word very liberally). In reality it was just a failed project that the devs are no longer working on. Businesses and ventures fail all the time (in fact much more often than not they fail) but try explaining that in a grown-up way in some crypto circles and you're likely to be called a "shill". They did offer SDC holders a chance to use SDC to buy PART, but the whole thing could have been handled a little better, that doesn't make it a scam though.

Nevertheless, a failed project has to be accounted for when looking into Particl. It definitely increases the risk for anyone buying PART even if it's not quite the end of the world.

Another risky part is what they're actually trying to do...

Which is something that's already been tried (kinda) with limited success.

At the risk of getting an @cheetah comment by using long quotations, I'll let the devs describe it:

"Particl is an open source, decentralized privacy platform. Built for global person to person and business to person eCommerce.

"Particl is a privacy platform by design. The native marketplace, currency tokens and suite of encrypted communication tools offer unfettered access between buyers and sellers worldwide or just down the street.

"Our privacy tools allow two parties to interact in complete anonymity without the need for any 3rd parties."

Taken from: https://particl.io/

So, it's pretty much a wallet that will have a decentralised marketplace built-in. I like that the dev is savvy enough to push the legal ecommerce aspect rather than advertise it as a Silk-Road-style app. Personally I'm hoping I could one day buy weed on there but I'd strongly advise the devs not to make any overtures in that direction, not unless they want to become the next Ross Ulbrict.

Some of you may have noticed a similarity to OpenBazaar. Meaning it will probably have some of the same problems, the main one being attracting enough merchants to sell cool stuff on there. If they can pull it off though it could be awesome. Imagine being able to instantly purchase a gold bar or a hand-made guitar through your wallet.

But, hours after OpenBazaar went live this happened...

Which is fine by me, but any devs looking to avoid becoming roomies with a 300lbs monster and forging a shiv from a toothbrush just to preserve anal integrity should push for legit businesses to use the market. But with it being private and decentralised, hopefully that's enough for there to be no legal liability, no doubt the devs have sought advice from legal professionals.

Even if the marketplace doesn't get off the ground, I could see this coin doing well as a privacy coin, the market would just be a cherry on top. So buying and using the currency makes sense to me, even if that's all it ever is.

The wallet itself

For now the wallet looks pretty and is functional but the main features are still in the future. I usually like to use a coin in the wallet before writing about it but having bought 3.65 PART I saw the TX fee to withdraw it from Bittrex was 0.1, a bit steep for such a small amount so I'm waiting until I've bought more. This is a Bittrex problem though, not a Particl.io problem.

I can tell you that I've installed the wallet on Android and it looks nice but that's about it. I can also tell you that it's based on Bitpay's open source Copay wallet.

Here's the link because it's a pain in the arse to find on Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.particl.copay&hl=en_GB

TL;DR

At it's current price of over 7 dollars it's very attractive for a coin with a low circulating supply and possibly a very promising future. A price which would go up massively if they can successfully integrate a decentralised dark-market into the wallet but even without that the privacy features may be enough to ensure success for the currency. It's definitely a risky project, but which crypto isn't?