Electroneum Update
Lets review some of the awesome stuff that has happened over the last few weeks in case you've missed any of it (take a look at our revamped website at http://electroneum.com for more details and a timeline).
Mobile Industry Adoption
It was always my plan to get to large numbers of users and create the first cryptocurrency with mass adoption - and mass usage. The mobile network operators have welcomed us in a way that I could only ever have dreamed of, and just a few short weeks after we started seeking some strategic partnerships in the mobile industry, we have secured signed agreements with companies that would like to promote Electroneum to over 100m users! We are now in negotiation with partnerships to take this number to over 500m users!
The mobile industry literally LOVES what Electroneum is doing because not only are we bringing a digital payment solution to the developing world, where there are many hundreds of millions of people without a bank account (don't forget the android app is now in 20 languages!), but we are also giving the users a little Electroneum every month, with a real world value. By introducing a small amount of cryptocurrency to a large number of people we are kickstarting the real world adoption of a cryptocurrency payment solution. The mobile operators will accept ETN, so there will always be somewhere to spend it, but are confident that entrepreneurial spirit will grow up around ETN and once our PayPal™ style vendor software is finished (which will allow the easy integration of ETN acceptance) we expect to see significant adoption in both the developed and less developed nations.
GSMA Membership
As a brand new and exciting part of the mobile industry fintech, we have become the first cryptocurrency in history to be welcomed as a member of the GSMA. This is a significant development in the corporate reach and appeal of Electroneum.
Mobile World Congress Attendance
As we'd like to make a splash in the mobile world, we've secured an exhibition stand at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. MWC is the largest gathering in the world for the mobile industry. I've been invited to participate as a panel member in one of the conferences, where I will, of course, be metaphorically shouting about the virtues of cryptocurrency. This is a HUGE event and is attended by everybody of importance in the mobile space, including all the CEO's of of companies we are seeking strategic alliances with. I have many meetings lined up already, and remember that Dr Chris Gorman OBE (yep, he's been honoured by the Queen of England) is on the Electroneum Board now and he has 20 years of mobile industry experience and is well known. He is spending the full week of the show in and out of meetings, ensuring Electroneum is the first cryptocurrency anyone in the mobile industry thinks of, when they seek a digital payment solution in the developing world.
Mobile Electroneum Miner - nearly live...
Our mobile miner has been tested by 10's of thousands of community beta testers. I'd like to say a giant THANK YOU to those people who have taken their time to help us get the product ready for millions of users. I have some great news for those beta testers... The original plan was to "reset the clock" at the end of the beta testing and start all miners at zero, but we feel that anyone who has taken the time to help us should have at least a small reward, and so we will pay out the ETN that has been mined by our betas! Thank you betas! The first payout round will be AFTER the full launch of the android miner, which we are aiming to get live for the MWC event (26th Feb).
Larger Cryptocurrency Exchange Listings
HitBTC (a top 6 global exchange) has agreed to list Electroneum and again, we are aiming to have that in place before MWC if we can. We also have another top 6 global exchange in the last stages of negotiation. It would be nice if we could get that live for MWC too, but I can't promise anything! We have a number of other exchanges outside of the top 10 that are about to list us, and it's worth remembering that as we show our user number growing, there will be many more of the top exchanges eager to list us.
Tech Stuff
We still have a few things to sort out with our transactional system before it's ready for huge scale but we've implemented loads of new code that has made things run considerably smoother.
We are working to update the system to give feedback to users around the blockchain. Most users expect things to happen instantly, when in reality the payment instruction has to go to a worker, that has to open the wallet, sync with the blockchain, accept the instruction, make the payment and then wait for confirmations. By feeding back lots more data to the end user to explain the process and where they ARE in the process, we hope to make the system far more reflective of what is actually happening in the background. It should cut our number of support tickets considerably too.
Staff
We've taken on some new staff who have already started and have many more serving out their notice periods. They'll be joining the team as soon as they finish their employment elsewhere. We've got some AWESOME new coders and we've taken on a project manager from a very prestigious brand and another from a media company you'll have all heard of. They are helping expand the team and bring corporate process and structure to everything we do.
A few stats…
I think it's worth noting that we have over 800,000 users now, nearly doubled from the end of our ICO, not bad, but you wait for that mobile miner to be live! We will get user numbers that even surprise us!
We have over 100k+ of twitter followers and 125k+ of Facebook follows, but the most shocking number for us is that more than ONE BILLION US DOLLARS worth of Electroneum has been traded around the globe! We've only been live three months!
Electroneum Price
For those of you who keep an eye on the price of Electroneum you'll notice that whilst it has taken a hit like most cryptocurrencies, it has been really interesting to watch the levels of trade.
When Electroneum was soaring in price the volume was high, $20m or $30m USD in a day was not unusual. If you take a look at the trade volumes now, you'll see they are very low in comparison. This is a great indicator (in my opinion) of the strength of the Electroneum project. For the most part, people that are involved have not dumped, but said "Hold on. Let's not forget that all those things that excite us about the project are nearly ready for launch. Lets wait and see if they really can be the first cryptocurrency that actually attains mass adoption, like they say they will.".
I can truly say that we have never been closer to our goals than we are today.
I'm always overwhelmed by the support of the Electroneum community, you've been incredible. Some of the videos are hilarious, interesting or informative, and many of the original supporters of Electroneum are still out there now making awesome video content every day.
A quick search for "Electroneum" in YouTube.com will find you hundreds of hours of video footage about Electroneum. My sincere thanks to everyone who contributes to the success of the Electroneum project. By the way, if you've not met Sean Davis yet with his "Crypto for the people" channel you are missing out! ... https://www.youtube.com/user/DavisBootCamp
I'd also like to thank all the supporters of the open source Electroneum project - my thanks goes out to the entire community who monitor our codebase and make contributions. All are most gratefully received.
All the very best to you,
Richard Ells
Founder of Electroneum.
PS - If you'd like to see the first in a video series of an interview I've done with a financial journalist, head over to our blog (http://electroneum.com/blog/) it's slightly embarrassing and I wave my arms around a lot, but it does get across the essence of what we are trying to achieve. There will be more of these out each week.