Video start-up can't outspend YouTube, so it created new currency

The first place the new economy will exist is within Rize, a new live-streaming app that YouNow is releasing in January

Adi Sideman, the chief executive officer of the live-streaming start-up YouNow, spends his days hawking a new form of digital currency. The tokens are called Props — as in what you’re giving when you offer someone a fist-bump — and Sideman wants people who stream video online to accept them as a form of payment. Creating an economy based on Props is the centrepiece of Sideman’s plan to loosen YouTube’s hold on the internet. It’s a hopelessly audacious idea by any standard—except perhaps by the standards of those who trade in digital currencies, where YouNow’s long-shot makes perfect sense.

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