Editor’s Note: POW has released an announcement via Twitter and Facebook today. Here’s the text:

POW dev team has made the decision today to temporarily pause the development of our “bridge” functionality in order to address core architectural weaknesses to the POWtoken.com site and service. All access and functionality has been suspended for a period of no less than six weeks, in order to allow this to take place.

We’ll keep the original post intact, and we can refer back to it later…

Original title was “Still Time to Score Some Free POW.”

Hi, crypto fans! We’re working with POW on their token launch – we were calling it “The World’s Largest Airdrop” a couple months ago, and we’ll stick with that until someone trademarks the phrase – and efforts continue to get that token (or coin) to the next phase of its development. But, if you’re not a user or not aware of the coin, here’s more info on it, what they’re up to, and how you can get some for your very own. (AND we’ll even tell you how you can use POW.)

DISCLOSURES: We are linking from our affiliate code – so we’ll be compensated in POW tokens if you use the link to sign up. (We are also compensated by the team for our marketing and communications work with the token.)

POW introduction

POW – pronounce it “pow,” like Batman is hitting a bad guy – is a cryptocurrency that decided, from the get go, to be different. No ICO. Ever. Instead, the idea was to take the very first user to claim tokens at the launch 10 BILLION TOKENS. The next person would get 5 BILLION TOKENS, which was 10 billion divided by their place in line (2). You can see where this goes…the calculation will continue like that, dividing 10 billion by your place in line until all the 231 BILLION TOKENS are gone.

That, you might say, is one healthy supply.

But…but…but…Note in the screengrab above how much of this token is still left! That’s right, only 56 percent of the tokens have been claimed. And if 10,000 people were to claim their POW, if you add in the referral fees, that would only ratchet up the claimed total to 133.4 billion tokens.

They’re playing the long game at POW.

Why It’s Cheaper Now Than It May Ever Be Again

The POW team has been working diligently on something they call “the bridge,” and they’ve been up front on Facebook and Telegram in discussing what that will do and how it’s progressing. The tokens are claimed through the web, and you need to use a Facebook or Twitter account to claim them. (You can do both – here’s that POW link again.) The bridge will let users move those tokens off of the POW website and onto the blockchain. The maximum amount any one user will be able to move is 1 million a day; the maximum the system will release is 1 billion per day. This will help solve the liquidity issue (since traders don’t have many to buy and sell right now on the exchanges), but it won’t create a glut.

Right now, the coin, frankly, is thinly traded. When the bridge launches and people move their coins over from the website to the blockchain, it is expected that there will be some wild swings for a bit, then the price will stabilize, and the next question will likely be…

Can You Use It “In the Wild?”

That has already been happening – but, in all candor, the number of transactions appears to have subsided quite a bit during the past few days, likely due to anticipation of the bridge launch.

We’ve seen days with thousands of transactions – and, since we’ve worked with them (first as “validators,” making sure that users weren’t bots), we’ve seen at least anecdotal evidence of people paying for services with POW (especially in places like Vietnam and parts of Africa).

We’ve thrown some back and forth between friends to test the web-based system, and we even did a little bit of work to help out someone in the cryptosphere and were paid in POW.

Where we think this will grow, though, is in places where phones have leapfrogged other banking services – and where there’s a need for micro-payments for things.

Do Your Own Research, But…

We’re not going to hazard a guess on the price front – that would be reckless, and, since we’re working with them, we don’t want to be seen as “pumping” the value of a coin.

We do like what POW can potentially do to level the playing field globally. It’s not the only solution, but, if you’re unbanked, under-banked, or in an economy with onerous capital controls (like Venezuela), is there value in taking advantage of a crypto like POW? There very well may be.

Again, here’s that POW link. Go get some.

Finally…The McAfee Factor

If you’re not familiar with John McAfee, Google him. He signed up as Chief Advisor at POW at the tail end of 2017.

https://t.co/7IqE8ATVJN is thrilled to welcome @officialmcafee to the team as Chief Adviser! #Crypto #ETH #Bitcoin #Legend pic.twitter.com/Qw5DtjhPu2

— POW (@POWtoken) December 20, 2017

He travels the world, proselytizing about crypto just about everywhere, so getting his imprimatur was a big score for the POW team. His tweets move markets in crypto and he’s had to fight Twitter to keep from the fake tweets and bots making the rounds.

But suffice it to say that if he finds POW compelling, maybe it’s worth looking into?

Soapbox

We’ll get off our soapbox here at HQ, but, really…do you need another excuse to get some POW? Go. Get some.