A team of developers have made something called PlusOneCoin, a clever cryptocurrency that essentially allows owners to upvote content on two financial sites, ADVFN and Investorshub. The idea — to reward people for accessing content and, more importantly, interacting with it — is something many services like Steemit have tried and failed to pull off.

Created by ADVFN founder Clem Chambers along with blockchain experts Michael Hodges and Jon Mullins, the coin is now listed on many major exchanges and lets you “reward other users and empower a community.”

“This bitcoin-like currency enables content providers and platform owners to monetize their social media sites while giving their audience more power to affect the social media content they consume,” said Chambers. “PlusOneCoins can be bought, swapped, given or mined by users just like Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.”

The thought that a media site needs a cryptocurrency to “prove” that an upvote took place is at once goofy and important. Publishers need a way to monetize content and encourage audiences to visit. A system for “proof of view” is vitally important for the ecosystem, although it might be hard for a financial media company in London to get the groundswell needed to grow general acceptance of the concept.

“PlusOneCoin (PLUS1) is a social media validation coin based on a proof of work, ASIC-resistant blockchain,” said Chambers. “In the future, PlusOneCoin could be integrated into more mainstream social media websites and applications.

Chambers said that his company, a decades old publicly traded media organization, is ready to manage the currency. It is currently trading at 0.077 cents with minimal trading volume.

“PlusOneCoin has a use case beyond the Hodl and transactions application all coins have,” he said. “Coins with more use cases are the ones to watch especially if that use case can grow. PlusOneCoin is also managed by a long established company, which is regulated by a stock exchange not a bunch of mystery folk from who knows where.”