SafeMoon Crypto Raises $700,000 for New Exchange With Sights on $1m

The team behind a new cryptocurrency known as SafeMoon claims to have raised over $700,000 from donors to help build a new token exchange.

A fundraising page on the project's official website says the goal is to reach $1 million to create a new platform known as the SafeMoon Exchange—expanding on the concept that people who choose to hold onto cryptocurrencies earn rewards over time.

SafeMoon is a new token, launched in early March, that aims to incentivize buyers and penalize sellers, with the idea being that doing so could help drive the overall value "to the moon," a phrase used online to describe a price surge.

It remains to be seen how that will work in reality but the SafeMoon Reddit community has been eager to capitalize on the sudden successes of dogecoin, a token that was started as a meme in 2013 but has recently been gaining widespread attention.

SafeMoon has been at the center of some online speculation but very much remains a little-known token. As of Friday morning, it was priced at $0.00000133, according to CoinMarketCap. For perspective, a single bitcoin was priced at $61,000.

The team has said 5 percent of all SafeMoon trades are redistributed to holders and that it will be working on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the future.

In a video on the SafeMoon site, SafeMoon's CEO John Karony claimed the exchange would expand on the concept of holding to users' other crypto-coins.

He explained in the video: "SafeMoon exchange allows all of our users on our platform to enjoy the same benefits they enjoy with SafeMoon—but across all their cryptos.

"Users holding on our platform will receive static reflection through all transactions, meaning when you hold your BTC, or bitcoin, you will receive more bitcoin."

The SafeMoon team acknowledged the flurry of donations in a tweet posted on Friday, writing: "We've already started building off our own backs but we really can't tell you how much this helps speed to process! Thank you for all your generous donations."

Broadly, cryptocurrencies are valued at whatever costs users are willing to trade for, so their pricing remains highly volatile. The value of a crypto-token is based on a variety of factors, including supply, demand, mining rewards, competition and hype.

Broadly, cryptocurrency advocates urge other people to hold—often written as hodl—to avoid causing short-term price fluctuations. Pricing, they claim, will rebound.

SafeMoon has not been around long enough to determine if it will be a success. It has said on its Reddit that it requires help fundraising because the team does not have the capital to fund the entire concept, but notes people are not forced to donate.

On the subreddit r/CryptoCurrency, members urged caution when dealing with new tokens. In a SafeMoon thread, one user advised: "Who knows, this may be the next big thing, but be cautious, you shouldn't invest more than you can afford to lose."