The presence of OmiseGo CEO Jun Hasegawa as an advisor and investor to the project is also a positive addition. If you believe (as I do) that OMG will perform well this year both in terms of price appreciation and product adoption then it is not a stretch to think that the link with OMG will lift ELEC up too. I invested initially solely because of his presence (and the dip in price post ICO) as the attention it brings is invaluable to the lower cap projects. Electrify are also building their solution on top of OmiseGo and, judging by comments from co-founder and COO Martin Lim, are being given access to OmiseGo’s current work and developments.

Electrify’s partnerships extend further than just the crypto world; a piece of news that initially went overlooked (at least price wise) was the Memorandum of Understanding Electrify signed with TEPCO, the largest electric utility in Japan and the fourth biggest worldwide.

MoU’s do not necessarily mean that ELEC is poised to be rolled out in Japan or there is a formal partnership with TEPCO. However, liaisons with energy providers is going to be key to making inroads in new energy markets and should be seen as a positive step forward for Electrify. The team has also signed an MoU for joint research with the National University of Singapore into energy management and trading with blockchain technology as well as PV-related technology for distributed power generation.

Project viability

I am not an expert on energy markets in my home country, let alone ones halfway round the world. My instinct is that it will be a slow and very tough to break into electricity markets, despite increasingly favourable market conditions. Consumers are lazy and a lot of regulatory bodies efforts to increase the ease of switching suppliers has led to negligible results. People frequently disregard ongoing bills such as energy statements and do not expend much effort in a search to reduce costs.

I also think that there will be tough regulations (despite the deregulation currently happening) and increasing competition from suppliers when faced with the realisation that they have to do something differently to retain customers. Cryptoassets in general face regulatory battles worldwide, and that is before the electricity market is added into the mix.

The team are not blind to these regulatory challenges and have covered them in detail, but there will always be issues when opening up operations in new countries (the team has Japan, Australia and the Philippines listed in addition to Singapore as a focus for 2018 and 2019), especially when the company remains a small one against the existing energy giants.

That said, Electrify has already signed up a number of businesses to use its service since launching last year, and Singapore is a perfect country to begin operations from given the pro-business leanings and the commitment to fully liberalise the electricity market in 2018. The partnerships signed in a short period further legitimise what they are trying to do and highlight their connections.

How is the token used

The token (ELEC) will be used in a number of ways: