The world of cryptocurrencies has been gaining better and bigger use cases as time goes by but critics keep saying that the crypto space still lacks adoption. Electroneum is one of the newer altcoins that try to fix this problem by targeting mobile and smartphone audiences.
It is claimed that the unbanked population wouldn’t mind buying a decent mobile phone, but they would hesitate to buy a new computer or laptop even if the price is the same as the phone. Electroneum tries to prioritize this mobile audience as they know the potential is huge, where people can use their mobile wallets to pay for utilities, groceries, or even to buy tickets for events all around the world.
So, how does Electroneum try to achieve this vision? And is it worth it to invest in their native cryptocurrency, ETN? Let’s find out together!
Electroneum - Summary
In short, Electroneum is a payment project with a massive focus on enabling mobile-based payments, which has become increasingly popular in developing countries. For those who have been living in different parts of the world, you would have known that many of the unbanked population might lack documentation and might not even have a bank account, and yet they always have some smartphones which they use on a daily basis.
Electroneum tries to lure these unbanked population to support its network. According to its own official website, there are 1.7 billion people who don’t have access to a bank account. Electroneum created a system which was called mobile mining, and they rebranded it to cloud mining.
With this cloud mining system, they claimed each individual user could earn up to $3 USD worth of ETN (Electroneum’s native cryptocurrency) every month simply by having the mining application on their smartphones.
$3 might not mean much for people in first world countries, but it’s still good money to earn in many developing countries. The core team of Electroneum believes distributed rewards systems like this would benefit everyone as it would allow more individual users supporting the Electroneum network with their cloud mining application.
So, the idea here is that you will only need to login once a week to the cloud mining application. By doing this, you can still “mine” ETN tokens even when your phone is switched off most of the time. Thanks to cloud technology, the users are not required to mine 24/7 like Bitcoin.
As for use cases, Electroneum is plain straightforward about it. The idea is to have a digital payment ecosystem that can benefit everyone, including corporates, MVNO/MNO, retailers, and individuals.
Last year (2019), the core team decided to upgrade the network to Proof-of-Responsibility (PoR) algorithm. They also managed to reduce the block rewards. Last but not least, they believed it would be a good idea to have Non-Governmental Organization (NGOs) supporting their network and ecosystem.
Analyzing Electroneum Team
The main faces of the team - image source
As usual, when it comes to crypto investment, you need to know the core team members behind the project. If you are wondering why the answer is quite simple, it’s simply because you believe in one cryptocurrency’s future if you decide to invest in it. And who can help you to realize that future if not the core team of the same cryptocurrency?
So, how about the Electroneum team? Let’s start with the founder and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Richard Ells. It’s claimed that Richard is also the owner of two other successful businesses called Retortal (a social media scheduler) and SiteWizard (a digital agency).
Specifically about SiteWizard, it’s been around since January 1996. So, you can say it’s been operating since more than 16 years ago. Retortal itself has been live since January 2012. Richard Ells looks like a successful founder with all these companies having enough revenues to stay around.
After Richard, we have Dr. Chris Gorman OBE, who acts as the Director and Head of Business Development with the Electroneum team. He’s been around since November 2017. He’s also the GSMA Intelligence Advisory Board Member which is based in London, United Kingdom.
Apart from these two jobs, he’s also quite busy with his job as Director at both Lucid Group and Blue Sky Studios. For your information, Lucid Group is a UK-based specialist media and entertainment company group. Meanwhile, Blue Sky Studios is a gift and stationery distributor in the United Kingdom.
And then, we have Barry Last, who acts as the Chief Technology Officer for the project. It is written that Barry has been with the Electroneum team since May 2018. Prior to joining the team, he used to be the Solutions Architect at GForces, a company providing automotive e-commerce solutions in the United Kingdom.
Barry has tons of experience with the software world. He has been a Developer since the year of 1997. At the time, he was working for Global Websuites Limited.
Next, there’s Nick Cook, who serves as the Chief Operating Officer of the Electroneum company. Prior to his time in Electroneum, Nick was the Head of Transformational Consulting at MHP, which is a Porsche company. He also had some experiences with Pcubed, a London-based company, where he served as the Automotive & Manufacturing Practice Lead.
After Nick, we also have Nigel Pooley, who is the Head of Mobile Development at Electroneum. It is written that Nigel has been a serial entrepreneur for mover two decades. His prior experience includes being a solution provider for some huge brands such as AT&T, Vodafone, and Nokia.
Last but not least, we have Chris Norris, who is the Head of Corporate Relations at Electroneum. Chris has an impressive background with the banking and financial sector, where he used to hold senior roles at Merrill Lynch and Citigroup.
If there’s anything to learn from the core team members, I say they are all experienced in their own respective fields. It looks like all of them had huge experience with entrepreneurship or senior roles in big companies. The team is actually quite good compared to many other altcoin projects.
Use Cases Of ETN
Illustration of ETN coin
Naturally, when it comes to cryptocurrency investment, we also need to know where the natural demand comes from. After all, we try to invest our money in the cryptocurrency itself, right? In that case, we need to know the exact use cases of the token and not just the blockchain platform that supports the token.
So, how about ETN? Well, Electroneum is not an all-in-one platform like Ethereum. And thus, the use case of ETN is exactly the use case of the whole project. It’s intended to be used in a digital payment ecosystem.
ETN is utilized as a form of micropayment, especially in merchant systems that might include cross-border transactions. This type of use case is universal and depends on the adoption of the said cryptocurrency.
Partnerships
In the partnership department, Electroneum team has been doing decently, although not very good either. They have been focusing their attention on getting the right partners in achieving their vision.
One of the interesting integration or partnership is the one with Paycent, a Singapore-based company that allows crypto payment to be used for fiat payments. In July 2019, Electroneum Twitter account confirmed that ETN was to be added soon into Paycent app.
Another decent partnership that they announced was the partnership with The Unlimited, South African FSP, and Mobile Virtual Network Operator. The partnership was considered important because users of The Unlimited in South Africa were allowed to top up mobile data and airtime with ETN.
Last but not least, there’s also partnership with One Development, a Thailand-based company where Electroneum can be used as one of the crypto solutions for the mobile network coverage and infrastructure in Thailand.
Great partnership between Electroneum and One Development
Judging by all these partnerships, I say they are doing decently, although I wish they would have more companies in their partnership list. Let’s give them some more time. I say they are doing decently because these partnerships are specifically targeted to realize Electroneum’s vision in the payment sector. They are not partnering with irrelevant companies.
Potential Roadblocks
So, Electroneum is trying to appeal to the unbanked population with access to a smartphone. That’s great, don’t get me wrong, but at the end of the day, their use case is still to be used as a normal peer-to-peer currency.
In that case, there are tons of crypto projects that naturally compete with them. You can even start with Bitcoin itself, where it is often used by people in developing countries to send money overseas. Bitcoin has a big advantage due to its liquidity in many fiat on/off ramp websites and merchants.
Other than Bitcoin, we can also put DASH in the competition list. DASH is trying as best as it can to penetrate the developing countries. In Venezuela, for example, DASH has a good presence, due to its speed and low transaction costs (also, a lot of retail stores accept DASH payments).
At the end of the day, trying to bank the unbanked population is not only about the technology but more about the adoption. When more people feel more comfortable with Bitcoin or DASH or other altcoins due to the liquidity in the fiat on/off ramp websites, it will be harder to convince them to use ETN.
External Factor And ETN Price
As usual, talking about all these factors above won’t be enough to decide whether ETN is a good investment or not. At the end of the day, there’s always one big external factor that can affect a certain altcoin price. In this case, that external factor is called Bitcoin price action.
What does it mean? It means altcoin prices tend to follow Bitcoin trend. For example, when Bitcoin price goes up, altcoin prices tend to go up. When Bitcoin price goes down, altcoin prices tend to go down. This has been the likely case for a long time.
So, how about 2020? Well, it’s a tricky year because we will have Bitcoin’s mining reward halving event somewhere in the middle of the year. If we use the past halvings for our judgment, Bitcoin might pump harder until 1-2 months before the halving event itself; then the price might crash for a short period of time before it continues to pump. This might be the case again this year.
However, we cannot be 100% sure, as the crypto market is full of speculation. It’s actually possible that BTC price will go down prematurely. In that case, ETN price would go down as well.
Either way, it’s always important to pay attention to BTC price action if you decide to invest in ETN.
Social Stats
As usual, we can measure how active the community is by checking their Telegram channel. Electroneum Telegram channel has more than 24,000 members with decent chat activities. It looks quite good, actually, compared to many altcoins in the top 150 range.
Current stats for Electroneum Telegram channel
Electroneum also has a Facebook page and a Twitter page. Surprisingly, Electroneum Facebook page is actually more active than its Twitter page. Compared to other altcoins, its FB page is also quite more active.
Conclusion
Electroneum is trying to target the unbanked and mobile population, which is excellent, because it has specific targets. However, its use case can also be challenged by other top altcoins and even by Bitcoin itself, as all of them (technically) can be used by the unbanked population as long as there’s enough liquidity in the fiat on/off ramp websites and applications.
Personally, I say ETN is an okay coin to invest your money in, but there are better altcoins with more promising use cases out there. What do you guys think about ETN? Let me know in the comment section below. Also, you can check my other articles in the investment series here:
Is Decentraland A Good Investment?
Is Nash Exchange Token A Good Investment?
Is Verge A Good Investment?
