If you're holding Shadowcash (SDC), today's announcement may be a mixed bag of news for you. Today the team announced the end of the Shadow Project and beginning Particl, an open source, decentralized ecommerce platform backed by community, due to launch...soon. If successful, it would be the first completely private infrastructure that would allow individuals or business to take advantage of a suite of encrypted tools to buy and sell globally, with the ability to do so completely privately.

What are they offering?

Need to chat with a buyer? Encrypted. Transaction or payment details? Encrypted. Could the promise of a self-governed, distributed network make Particl the first truly free market on the 'light' net? From their FAQ:

Think of it as going to a local market to buy something you need, from the person who is actually selling it, without a third person as an intermediary.

So think of sites like etsy or e-bay but without needing a third party like Visa or Paypal to complete your transactions, all you need is crypto. But what kind of crypto will Particl accept? Well, the name of the new token is PART, but you won't have to worry about pulling out your trezor, sending btc to exchanges to get some PART to then send it to Particl for use. Instead, Particl is promising to be crypto-agnostic.

Crypto-Agnosticism

What does that even mean? Simply, it means that the Particl team is aiming to get as many cryptocurrencies as possible paired with PART so users will be able to send potentially any coin to the Particl platform for purchases. This could be a major game changer, especially for those who speculate on alt-coins, as it makes all alt coins suddenly practical to use. More information is coming from the team regarding the exchange mechanism that will allow this to function seamlessly in and out of Particl and PART.

How does it stack up

Illegal Goods and Governance

So what's to stop this from becoming the next 'silk road?' There is obviously need for some kind of system to ensure that people aren't engaging in criminal activities. As open source (post beta), Particl seems open to ongoing improvement of the governance model but as of yet have not revealed exactly what it might look. According to their FAQ:

Examples of current governance features we're exploring: Market Reputation Not linked to ID Ability to de-list immediately Key Words Banning Blacklist Voting filter Default Categories

While that doesn't pin down how they will combat illegal activity, it does give us an idea of the variety of options they're considering. I will be hunting down more information about their governance model as it becomes available and will of course share it here.

ShadowProject's Fate?

According to the announcement, what will make Particl unique is the commitment of the entire ShadowProject team as the full-time staff. So ShadowProject seems to be shuttering soon to transition over to this new platform, but when a whole team decides to go along for the ride, the message it sends is a little mixed.

Bye ShadowProject and SDC, hello PART and Particl.

What about your hard, cold SDC??!?

If you're holding Shadowcash (SDC), you may want to hold on to it for a little longer. If you believed enough in the ShadowProject team to hold SDC then having their whole team throw their support at Particl should fill you with terror and awe.

The bad news is that SDC is going away. The good news? You're going to be able to trade your SDC for PART on a 1:1 ratio, so whatever shadow you're holding will translate seamlessly since it's the first token-ticket to the Particl 'Accelerator'. If you believe that the ShadowProject team knows what it's doing then this is a transition to something that will irrevocably alter the landscape of Cryptocurrency.

But wait... there's more! If you're willing to fork over 1SDC+$.15 BTC you'll get %15 more PART. All of this is over a timeline:

To participate in the Particl token exchange, you must have ShadowCash (SDC) tokens. Participants will have two contribution choices and a variable rate added to the bonus after day 3:

Days 1-3:
Donate 1 ShadowCash (SDC) + $0.15 (BTC) = 1.15 Particl (PART)
Donate 1 ShadowCash (SDC) = 1.00 Particl (PART)
Days 4-28:
Donate 1 ShadowCash (SDC) + [variable market-based function] (BTC) = 1.15 Particl (PART)
Donate 1 ShadowCash (SDC) = 1.00 Particl (PART)

Conclusion

After BTC, SDC was the first token I held. I didn't know what I was doing at all then (and not much more now) but when I read what they were doing I immediately bought some with my newly bought BTC.

Full disclosure: I sold that SDC later. But again, I didn't know what I was doing and I don't regret it because I learned something very important from that experience. I bought in at .20 USD and sold at a profit, but not very much. The next morning it shot up to 1.05 USD.

I know I'm not the first person to experience this situation because I've read about exactly this situation through all of the authors on Steemit. It actually taught me a valuable lesson in patience and perseverance that has been very valuable since then. But still, I would've been rich! Or at least completely debt-free for the first time in my adult life.

And when I came to a sort of inner peace about all of this extremely volatile currency stuff, I went back and bought more SDC at a higher price, because I do support a more decentralized world and I do believe that privacy isn't about having something to hide, it's a human need.

This is not intended to be financial or investment advice, it is informational and breaking news. Personally, I will be along for this ride but you'll have to research and make your own investment choices, I just wanted to share what I've learned.

As of this post, SDC is down 48% on Coinmarketcap:

With all these alts being paired with PART, how do you think the value of the actual PART token will play out? Leave a comment and lemme know!

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Image Source: Particl

Happy Steem Price Increase(.00014728)/St. Patty's Day!