$HUX — A Cryptocurrency to Hug with
For thousands of years we have used money to organize the exchange of goods and services. The basic characteristic of our monetary system is the principle of the zero-sum game: profits and losses always add up to zero — I can only gain as much as others lose. For thousands of years, however, we have also enjoyed using another form of interpersonal exchange that does not work according to the principle of the zero-sum game: the hug.
When you hug someone, it initially costs something. It takes energy to approach someone and put your arms around them. But the crucial thing is that both of you receive something in return. A hug creates added value that exceeds the original cost. Energy becomes synergy — the sharing has paid off. The question now is:
Couldn’t money also be like a hug? Could money also be designed in such a way that people are happy to share it because they both gain from it? What could this gain consist of?
The creation of the $HUX token…to the delight of the bots
To learn more about money and exchange, I created my own cryptocurrency at the beginning of the year: the $HUX token.* With the help of the FA2 Bakery, I created a total of π-trillion tokens on the Tezos blockchain and deposited a total of π Tezos (~ 3 EUR) in a liquidity pool on Quipuswap. This gave a single $HUX token a value of approx. 0.00000000001 EUR, but the financial value of the token should not be the issue.
The first tweet about the launch of the $HUX token was followed by a number of bot-generated tweet comments, but also genuine questions about the project’s roadmap. Since I had no roadmap and no concrete idea yet, I preferred to answer all questions with a transfer of one million $HUX, whereupon more and more questions arose.
In the meantime, two bots had already bought into the currency with a total of EUR 10, causing the exchange rate to rise several times over. In addition, someone had set up a second liquidity pool without my knowledge, where you could exchange $HUX for $CAT tokens…! My $HUX token was still worthless, but expectations were high now.
A few days later, I finally had an idea of how I could use the $HUX token for a kind of virtual hug. The advantage of cryptocurrencies is that they operate as a so-called smart contract like an autonomous program on the blockchain. It is possible to store other smart contracts on the same blockchain that interact with yourcurrency. In this way, any cryptocurrency can be expanded to include additional functions and events. The question is what could happen on a blockchain to have the feeling of a virtual hug.
The launch of $HUX 4 ALL: for sending virtual hugs
Last weekend I launched a first small project to explore what such a smart contract could look like; making money feel more like a hug. In order to find enough players, I first distributed millions of my $HUX tokens to collectors and friends via airdrop without comment. On hux.uzupis.de I published the Netlify-Dapp “$HUX 4 ALL”, with which $HUX owners can use their tokens for virtual hugs. The site is extremely simple:
On $HUX 4 ALL, you simply enter the Tezos wallet address of the person you want to give a virtual hug to and press the send button. After paying the necessary transaction costs of ~0.10 Tezos (approx. 0.10 EUR) per hug, $HUX 4 ALL executes the transfer of 1 million $HUX from the sender to the recipient. At the same time, the dapp creates a “$HUX Memory” NFT for the sender as well as the recipient, which should remind both of them of the transfer forever. This process could be repeated until 42 prepared $HUX memories had been created.
The charming thing about this mechanism is that each hug recipient always receives enough $HUX to send another hug and thus generate new NFTs. I had no idea how the $HUX owners would deal with this. To be honest, I was even afraid that someone would immediately send the million $HUX to themselves 42 times until all the NFTs would be “gone”. But then things turned out differently.
Reactions to $HUX — simply huggable
At first, nothing happened. I posted the link to $HUX4ALL on Twitter and tagged about 20 friends, but no one responded. I watched the collection on the NFT platform objkt.com to be there when the first $HUX memories appeared on the blockchain, but nothing happened there either. Was my smart contract broken? Or did people think I was a scammer and thought my project was just a cutely wrapped wallet-drainer? I couldn’t have blamed anyone for such skepticism given the many Web3 scam attacks of the last few days.
But then, after about 20 minutes, there was at least an initial reaction to my Twitter post. I read a wonderfully liberating “Fuck yeah, why not!”
Then it started: A Twitter crypto artist friend had acquired a billion $HUX tokens in advance and immediately offered to “spam” his friends. I didn’t argue, and a little later 20 of his 42 available hugs were distributed. Many people now noticed in their Tezos wallets an input of 1 million $HUX as well as an NFT with a cuddling cat couple like this:
Slowly, word got around about what was happening and the first cat memes started to gather under the post. I particularly liked the comment from the following user, who was happy that she could make someone else happy with the $HUX tokens.
That comment was a good sign to me that people might see $HUX 4 ALL as more than just an NFT project to dust off free art. Eventually, people might turn this into an opportunity to be friendly to each other in a new way. And it got even cuter.
Most of the people active on launch night started with an average of two million $HUX. The best part was when the first people reported that they no longer had enough $HUX to hug. They were immediately hugged by others to get back into the game. Even when one user was short not only of the $HUX million but also the Tezos currency for the transaction fees, several people wanted to help out and send money.
I’ve never seen that before, where someone is short of money to pay for something and several people shout “Here, take my money!”. The $HUX money seemed to be treated less as private property to be protected but more as a public resource that could be used to achieve more together. Isn’t that cute?
People even started to follow the transactions on the blockchain. They were curious to see who the people they hugged would hug next and what NFTs would be created. It was like putting a good vibe into the world and watching it delight new people over and over again.
Maybe the reason we humans are sometimes so sparing with our kindnesses is because we simply don’t realize how our good vibes keep spreading in the world.
#ShareHUX #HUX4All
[*My token is a purely artistic blockchain experiment without any investment quality. If you are a collector of my works and have not received any tokens, please dm your Tezos address and I will send you enough. Please DON’T try to buy any $HUX tokens on the internet.]
