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Electroneum (ETN) aims to take cryptocurrency to the masses – to make crypto easy to trade, easy to transact, and even easy to mine (sort of). This is attractive to an investor as it will obviously apply a strong pressure to the demand for the coin… if it works.

The Electroneum team is heavily focused on mobile / cellphone tools to allow users to transact easily and safely. Their mobile mining application enables users with no technical knowledge to participate. However, the mobile mining is only a simulation; the phone is not actually performing hashes to secure the network.

Perhaps that’s an excellent approach to bring new users into the world of cryptocurrencies. Many potential users are likely sitting on the sidelines uncomfortable with the thought of putting their credit card number into Coinbase or wiring money off to an unknown bank.

Electroneum Product

Let’s try out the App. After connecting the app to a wallet generated ahead of time, I merely hit the “START MINING” button and I’ve begun “mining.” The threshold at which mined funds move to the wallet is currently 5ETN. My pending balance is now above this… so maybe this is one of those bugs they have to work out.

Users can transact among each other easily through the app – the app displays a QR code allowing another user to read it with their phone’s camera. This will prevent any typographical errors from the entry of an invalid personal address.

The blockchain is based on CryptoNote which is also used by Monero and Bytecoin. As with the privacy coins, transactions on the CryptoNote blockchain cannot be followed to reveal the senders and receivers. This algorithm is also resistant to the development of ASICs with the intention of keeping mining accessible to the users rather than mass farms.

Electroneum Market Strategy and Competition

The two markets the team is focused on are computer gaming and gambling. Many of these games rely on credits to run their own internal economies. The game creators often have difficulty securing their in-game credits and can fall victim to problems such as black-market farms, which sell game commodities for cash. Electroneum aims to become a standard across all types of games.

Another benevolent effect they intend is the addition of unbanked users in emerging economies to their own crypto economy. The income mined from the Electroneum app may be small, but possibly quite substantial to citizens of countries that subsist on extremely low income. Adoption of mobile phones continues to increase in these regions.

There are several competitors aiming for the gaming market such as:

Enjin Coin (ENJ)

GameCredits (GAME)

Nexium (NXC)

BitCrystals (BCY)

Electroneum Roadmap: Partners And Progress

Through Electroneum had tech difficulties after the ICO, they do appear to be progressing. Early problems with stuck transactions on the blockchain were mostly resolved. They are currently working on gaining agreements with major global telecom companies and payments networks to allow users to pay for their service in ETN. Currently, multiple agreements are allowing access to ~130M users.

On February 1st, 2018, they announced a membership to the GSMA. This organization represents the interests of mobile network operators worldwide.

On March 5th 2018, they officially released the mobile miner for Android phones. The Apple iOS version is also complete but has not yet been approved by Apple for the store.

For Q2 2018, their website lists these goals:

2m live users.

Continue to grow team.

Increase global user reach.

Develop commercial relationships.

Enhance app capabilities.

Kick off vendor integration platform.

Their GitHub repositories were most active prior to the ICO. There is not a significant amount of activity shown on GitHub right now. Note that this is not a strong indicator of progress; they may be working on code that is not managed through GitHub.

Investor Report On Electroneum Price & Market Cap

Relative to final ICO prices, the coin has increased 6.5x. Early ICO participants were able to receive a bonus rate of 50%, which would be 150 coins per USD, yielding a 10x return. Following the correction of January, Electroneum has held up fairly well. It may have its own pocket of investors that are mostly holding it long-term.

They are still falling short on exchange listings. The predominant exchange they’ve been accessible on is Cryptopia. This can be a bad sign as other large exchanges have standards that may not have been addressed yet. However, the market cap they have achieved through Cryptopia is quite impressive, at just under $400M at the time of writing.

On January 5th, Electroneum released news of their first telecom & payment MOU with Xius. This drove the price from 0.09 USD up to 0.22 USD the following day. Since then, the coin has corrected back down to a price of 0.065 USD. Subsequent MOUs with telecom & payment companies did drive a new spike.

#Electroneum has just signed an MOU with Telecommunications & payment giant XIUS. You can check out the full statement on our blog. #PressRelease #Cryptocurrency #Blockchain https://t.co/t1B48ncmcp — electroneum (@electroneum) January 5, 2018

Verdict On Electroneum (ETN) Progress

Electroneum appears to mostly stand as a triumph of their marketing. They made excellent choices in product design, such as the mobile miner, and ASIC-resistant blockchain – these traits really make it a “power for the people” coin. They resonate strongly with their target market of users and have built a vast and loyal community.

Their ability to gain deals with telecom giants does add credibility for the project. Initial versions of their products were especially buggy, but they did recover fairly well.

However, their tech does not appear to be completely revolutionary and may not present a strong barrier to entry for a competitor. The tech may well be adequate for their goals – it doesn’t always have to be difficult to be successful, and their ability to gain early adoption will be key to their future success.

We feel that Electroneum has performed better than expected, and must be continuing to please users and investors alike.

Date today: March 7th, 2018

ICO Completion Date: October 20th, 2017 ICO final coin price: 0.01 USD Current price: 0.065 USD (650 Satoshi) Low/High (6mo): 0.023 USD / 0.24 USD Current Market Cap: ~0.5B USD