oday, Numerai issued 1,000,000 Numeraire crypto-tokens to our existing 12,000 data scientists based on their past performance in Numerai tournaments. There will be no crowdsale. Numeraire can be earned right now by competing in Numerai’s data science tournaments. In a sense, Numeraire is mined by data mining Numerai’s data, and submitting predictions is the proof of work. With 1,000,000 Numeraire now issued, the data scientists on Numerai will all prefer those tokens to be worth more rather than less money. They are all incentivized to make them worth more. But a cryptocurrency without a compelling use case is merely a souvenir with no economic value. Numeraire’s economic value comes from its use inside Numerai.

https://medium.com/numerai/a-new-cryptocurrency-for-coordinating-artificial-intelligence-on-numerai-9251a131419a#.wwgeertrl