If you are reading this you are most likely an Electroneum fan or someone who's just heard of this new kid coin on the block that's causing so much hype lately, short story short: ETN or Electroneum is a british crypto currency that uses a modified version of the "monero" blockchain code, in open source terminology this is known as a "fork" of Monero. Electroneum has a max supply of 21 billion ETN, about 4.2 billion ETN were sold at the ICO (Initial Coin Offering).
I have closely followed Electroneum, the team and the CEO Richard Ells since they launched their ICO. Buzz words like "the first british crypto currency" and "the first crypto currency powered by an app" were responsible for getting my attention initially, as was the case with many of you I suppose.
Later as you may know, I inevitably found out to my dismay that the "mining app" does not actually use your mobile computing power at all, it's just a simulation or as others are free to call it - a "fake mining" app. When I learned this I was even more sceptical, almost to the point of considering my investment a bad choice. Later on I will explain why it was the best choice I ever made.
At first I thought the same as everyone else that these guys have invented some new cool technology that can harness the power of mobile CPUs to power a block-chain type decentralized system. I thought about it for a little while, discussed this with my brother, but I was sceptical... my first worry was "battery life".
I bought a few hundred euros worth of it anyway and then I patiently kept my eyes on it's slow and painful birth, the team went through many problems at launch, they had some security issues with some of the investor's passwords which they claim were the same passwords the users used for their email accounts, not sure how that can be a problem unless some hacker got the email accounts as well as the passwords, maybe I am wrong, time will tell.
The release of the ICO wallets was delayed by a month, this is very uncommon for a new crypto coin, all these problems caused a lot of FUD and Hype. I am still not sure if this was Richard's brilliant marketing skills at work, he is afterall working in marketing for over 2 decades and owns like 2 companies that do just that.
Now, because of these mishaps at the launch of the coin, one would imagine that the coin would do terrible on the first exchange it would be listed on, well surprise-surprise - one would be wrong.
ETN was sold at first on the only exchange it was listed on (Cryptopia) for around a month, these first coins were not from the ICO, they were from the miners who mined the coin during the waiting time for the ICO wallets to be released. During this time the coin's price steadily increased and everyone was expecting a very big dip once the ICO wallets are finally released, I myself thought it would go from around 12 cents where it was hanging to under 1 cent, at least for the day. Well that never happened.
On 13 Dec 2017 when the ICO wallets finally were released (with remaining issues unresolved, some people still couldn't access their wallets) the lowest dip was around 3.5 cents average that day for 30-60 mins total average. Considering all the really bad mishaps this team have had since the beginning, I bet all my ETN that everyone was wearing the "Not bad" face that day and slowly coming to the realization that this coin has a good future. It was afterall and still is the most traded coin on that exchange.
Quickly after that day Electroneum regained it's previous position and then shortly after, it hit an all-time high of 23 cents on 6 Jan 2018 - due to the XIUS partnership announcement. Not bad for a 21 billion max supply coin, no? I mean you gotta admit, the coin hit 23 cents in exactly 3 months (2 months if you only count from the release of the ICO wallets).
• Then the January BTC dip came.
• Then the February BTC recovery came.
• Then I realized I spend too much time watching and analyzing the crypto market :D
THE SECRET
Now, coming back to my statement that "This was the best choice I ever made." - I will try to answer 3 cascading questions that hopefully will convince you that it really was:
1. How is this CryptoNote copy-cat different than any other CryptoNote coin?
First of all I want to bring to your attention the fact that CryptoNote as a "blockchain" technology has very good scaling features and very good privacy, it has both fast transactions and low fees and if all these things weren't great already - the technology is one of the few that actually has proven that an ASIC resistant algorithm can be decentralised properly, thus making the mining part profitable for many type of CPU's, not just high end GPU's.
Many will say ETN brought no innovation to CryptoNote or blockchain tech in general, but why reinvent the wheel? CryptoNote is already a good tech, it's just that Monero and many other coins using it never did anything more with it, they just created some assets and that's pretty much it. Not enough if we want to keep this CryptoTrain going to the CryptoRocket station.
The main goal behind Richard's vision is to create a crypto currency micro payments platform for the world that will include the unbanked, not just people from developed countries.
2. What's this Mobile Miner experience app all about and why does everyone say it's the best thing since sliced bread?
Instead of burning up your phone by mining with the CPU (which would be even crazier than potato) the guys at Electroneum thought to offer over 2 billion people who own a smart device something of a mining experience with real rewards through a simple app install. For the average user the process behind the mining experience has absolutely no face value, it's just a visual experience, an introduction to the concept of mining, but the unique thing about it is that all that hard fake mining brings the user real rewards. If you think about it, this is brilliant in it's simplicity because many will hear about mining in the near future but probably 90% of all those people will never have the skills to build a mining rig and about the same number of people won't be able to afford to build one anyway. This app / coin will be able to target the 2-3 billion people who own a smart device while at the same time tackle the problem of "the unbanked". Most of the users will think the app is mining for real, it makes no difference to them whatsoever.
3. Why is Richard Ells giving away free Electroneum coins to people and how does this help get this coin mass adopted?
Well I just gave away the main plot right there no? Actually not really. Allow me to elaborate ... as you know, once a blockchain is up and running it costs absolutely nothing for the the founder/developers to keep it running (hardware-infrastructure-wise) because it runs on the miners systems and clients who host the nodes. Now, I have not yet figured out from where exactly, but Richard is going to give free ETN coins to the people using the mobile mining app, these people could be some poor folks from underdeveloped countries that will simply keep the app running in the background on a cheap smartphone (or expensive one, why not) and at the end of the month be able to pay for prepay worth a couple of euros and have minutes and mobile data, or they can pay for many other things.
Electroneum has already signed deals with big GSM operators, one of them is XIUS with around 75 million subscribers and more partners are coming.
Imagine if you will that every time a mobile miner pays for prepay credit, a GSM subscription or other small things with ETN - the coins go to the merchant/operator, but at the end of the cycle all the coins return to Electroneum since I suspect no company will want to receive an unregulated currency that can be worth 1-50% less in one day, so I am guessing the micro transaction goes through ETN and the GSM operator receives Fiat (like USD, Euro, GBP, etc). All coins will return to it's issuer this way and the circle is complete.
Using and abusing the GSM operator example again - Electroneum will probably have a fee for this service and you can imagine that a tiny fee means everyone will be happy. From a very happy user/customer to a happy partner (GSM operator example) and of course at the end of the cycle - an even happier group of ETN holders, this will keep going an going and once they will have hundreds of millions or billions of users you will be crying for not getting in Electroneum right now.
One way to get Electroneum is to buy from the only current viable exchange (will add more in the future): Cryptopia. Another way is if you are a miner, you can use a reliable pool, but I strongly recommend you don't use the big pools ... they have enough monopoly as it is, they have high fees and ... mining/crypto is supposed to be decentralised, if this is not the case the whole ETN network is in danger of becoming vulnerable to an attack type known as 51% attack which can end-up utterly bad for ETN and it can cause many other issues. I recommend that you support a reliable pool that has a good community like www.electroneum.vip.
Remember that mining is needed to help keep a blockchain stable and mining was created to be fair for all pools sizes, small or large, the only difference between a small pool and a big pool of miners is that it takes a little longer to get a payout since blocks are mined less frequent (this is ok, the payouts are much bigger too), but all proof of work in any pool is treated the same, the thing that matters is the fee and reliability (uptime) of the server. It's not more profitable to mine on a big pool unless you're planning to mine for one hour and that's it.
Hope the 3 questions were enough to hint at a positive vision for ETN and explain some things that you were not aware of and which can bring great value to the ETN HODLERS.