Hi Everyone!
Firstly, as this is our first email update of 2019 a belated Happy New Year to you all!
2019 is going to be a very exciting year for Electroneum.
There’s a few things I’d like to cover, but let’s start with that headline!
YES! The free Electroneum App is now available on iOS and can be installed right now on your iPhone (if have one!!) from the Apple Store.
You can CLOUD MINE some ETN every day from your iPhone!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/electroneum/id1270774992?ls=1&mt=8
For those who have followed the Electroneum project from the start you will know that it has been a long process to get this approval – but as with EVERYTHING we do, we ALWAYS deliver what we say we will, no matter what challenges there are – we always find a way through and ensure we deliver.
There’s a bit below about the gig economy and how we can encourage the flow of wealth from the developed nations into developing nations. Having the iPhone app live is important to that because we want the people in developed nations to access and spend ETN just as easily as the developing nations. Obviously we see a much higher ownership rate of iOS in these countries, and they will now be able to manage and spend their ETN from their iPhone.
Please download the iPhone app, get cloud mining - and please leave a review if you get a chance. Thank you.
New Website Live
Take a look at our new website – it’s far more informative and representative and it’s live now:
We are taking feedback on any typos, grammatical errors or broken links right now https://community.electroneum.com/t/new-website-live/13551 We have had some superb feedback from our community and already fixed a number of small points. As soon as that feedback is all complete (Mon/Tues next week) we will get all the translations done and in place – ready for MWC Barcelona in February.
MWC Barcelona (Mobile World Congress)
A year ago we attended MWC in Barcelona. We were the first mobile cryptocurrency and the first to be a member of the GSMA. We attended MWC to start making inroads into the mobile market.
This year has been a year of challenges and a year of hard coding to overcome those challenges, and I’m very pleased to say that we have done so and are going in to this years MWC in a VERY different state to last year!
You’re going to see a couple of exciting things happen in February – we were going to launch both at MWC but we might bring one forward by a week as it’s such an important launch we feel we need to have a full team in the office to deal with any launch issues – rather than launch while the team are at the show. Don’t worry – we’ll still keep you guessing for our big show launch!
Please don't expect a Samsung or Vodafone deal - we have to get an ecosystem running and demonstrable in a manageable environment before we can show the huge brands the power of crypto - I just want to set a level of expectation! It is a MASSIVE first for crypto - but I've seen people on social thinking Electroneum are going to be partnering with one of the top brands - and I don't want to do something awesome, only to see it overshadowed by disappointed community members! Really huge brands will come - once we show how it all fits together.
Why are we attending MWC?
Mass adoption of ETN requires a few things. Firstly you need distribution. A year ago we launched the world’s first mobile mining experience where people could earn some cryptocurrency just for installing and using the free Electroneum app. That experience just got a WHOLE LOT BETTER with the launch of CLOUD MINING.
Cloud mining is initially launching with the Apple App today (this was a major part of getting approval from Apple). We have had nearly 5000 Apple Beta Testers using it, and it’s all gone well. As soon as we have usage and experience of providing cloud mining to tens of thousands of users we will roll it out to Android users too. This shouldn’t be too long as we are very keen to improve our mobile mining on Android before MWC.
Hopefully we’ll see cloud mining on Android before the show.
Mass adoption also requires PARTNERS. No cryptocurrency can expect to gain mass adoption without companies accepting cryptocurrency as payment for goods or services. We’ve discovered over this last year that there were some challenges for the partners – and we have overcome them!
This year at MWC we shall be showing new vendor partners that we are UNLIKE every single other cryptocurrency in the world. We are reaching out to MVNOs and MNOs (mobile virtual network operators and mobile network operators) and showing them a way to use OUR viral growth to grow THEIR businesses, whilst enabling a community of happy customers.
Here’s what we have this year, that we didn’t have when we first reached out last year…
Instant Payments. When we launched our instant payment system it was because virtually all vendors, in nearly every market, require INSTANT (or near instant) transactions. You can’t expect a 20+ minute blockchain confirmation delay while you wait for your coffee, or to checkout online, or for topping up your mobile phone with airtime or data. We overcame that with our instant payment system.
Blockchain engineers. Not surprisingly, nearly all large digital vendors have technical teams, however they mostly have no blockchain engineers or people who even understand blockchain. How can they accept a payment if they don’t understand block confirmation time? What happens to the payment if it is added in a block that gets orphaned? Vendors don’t want to have to worry about settlement of payments – and we have taken that worry away from them completely. We have created an industry standard API that allows their engineers to instantly know a blockchain payment is coming. The payment will arrive – and that is 100% certain. Our system guarantees it. No blockchain engineers are required for vendor integration.
Accounting. Vendors and people that accept cryptocurrency will need to account for it. You might find a few small vendors that are not worried about accounting but ALL reasonable sized vendors and above will have an accounting team that WILL NOT KNOW HOW TO HANDLE CRYPTO, especially in large volumes (10s of thousands of transactions). We’ve made that easy too! Our instant payment vendor system also takes care of their accounting. We store the spot price of ETN along with the local fiat currency amount (and the daily closing price is required for some countries). This enables these vendors to easily complete their accounts and fulfil their OBLIGATORY requirements to have these details on record.
Regulatory environment. We’ve made some bold statements about how we believed the mass adoption of cryptocurrency would hinge on ensuring it complied with each regions’ regulatory requirements. We introduced KYC and AML last year (Know Your Customer and Anti Money Laundering processes). We were the first cryptocurrency to do this and we did it because we were out in the market speaking to the very people that can make mass adoption happen. We heard their fears and we became the very first cryptocurrency that is compliant with the European 5th AML Directive.
The FCA (the UK regulatory body for financial service and FinTech companies) has just released its guidance for cryptocurrency
https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/consultation/cp19-03.pdf
We were absolutely correct. They INSIST on adherence to the EU 5th AML Directive, we literally couldn’t operate from the UK or EU without it. Also, take a look at section 5.13 – it might remind you of someone.
We were ahead of the curve because we saw that the ONLY way that cryptocurrency will gain mass adoption is through EMBRACING governmental acceptance – not fighting it. There are plenty of cryptocurrencies for the people who want to circumvent the law, or are fearful of governmental control (and there is a place for them – I’m not against those projects) but we’ve never wanted to focus on the 1%. We are about the 99% of honest, law abiding citizens that want to improve their lives and gain access to the global digital economy. We are enabling that.
We now have a system that is not only fulfils the UK and EU requirements but also has the flexibility to deliver different AML / KYC configurations on a country by country basis, ensuring each regions’ regulatory process can be adhered to by the ETN users and vendors in that country.
You will see more and more regulatory control of cryptocurrencies over the next couple of years and we will always stay inside that environment.
This is what gives global vendors the confidence that cryptocurrency CAN genuinely be a mainstream payment method, that sits alongside the traditional digital payment methods that we all know and have dominated for 50 years.
The Electroneum Team
Take a look at our new team page:
https://electroneum.com/about/team/
You’ll see that we’ve assembled an awesome team of people who are dedicated to making Electroneum a huge success.
We have some big things coming in February – and some very powerful changes coming in the summer (UK summer for you guys in the Southern Hemisphere!).
I have worked as the head of a number of tech companies and I can honestly say I’ve never seen so much achieved by any company in a year.
We are in a GREAT place for 2019.
Gig Economy / E-Learning
As well as accepting cryptocurrency it’s important to give people a reason to want to EARN cryptocurrency. If all cryptocurrency ever does is bounce in and out of fiat currencies – it is not functioning as efficiently or as elegantly as we think it can.
True mass adoption will require ETN to be accepted and then RE-USED as ETN somewhere else – without it being converted to fiat.
We believe that be enabling an enormous community of people who do not have access to the worlds’ digital economy, we are fulfilling this.
Imagine someone who earns less than 50 dollars per month being able to earn 5 dollars worth of ETN for helping someone create a logo for their brand (believe it or not that’s actually quite achievable from a smartphone – it’s amazing what you can create for free and sell online) or make a stop frame animation for someone’s social media channels. It’s life changing – but if they can only get paid in ETN what are they going to do with the ETN? Remember they don’t have a bank account and can’t get paid any other way.
The answer is the backstop of the MVNO allowing airtime and data to be paid for with ETN. All small entrepreneurs can ultimately change their ETN for airtime and data AND RESELL IT for fiat – if they need to. As we grow the ecosystem, more vendors will realise that there is a new unit of value in town, and swapping some eggs or milk for some ETN will allow THEM to top up THEIR phone without fiat, or buy airtime and data to sell to other customers for a fiat profit.
We are launching our ETN powered gig economy (a digital freelancer website) website in Q1 2019. This will enable people in the developed nations to access a valuable new UNTAPPED resource. People that will be very excited to join the global digital economy and make their lives a little better. Why would companies in the developed world bother to use this? Firstly it makes good business sense. Unbanked millennials are just as bright, resourceful and eager as anyone else (perhaps more eager!) but they are also available at a low price point (HIGH to THEM!). There’s also the CSR angle. The corporate social responsibility angle. Buy some social media posts from someone in Africa – a few dollars of value makes a difference to them and gives the social post FAR MORE impact – thus promoting their business even further.
We’d like to ensure that people have access to these digital skills, so we are also launching an e-learning platform that allows someone with a digital skillset (creating that funky, low cost logo for instance) to create a tutorial and give it away for free – or sell access to it for a some ETN.
Suddenly the cloud mining takes on a new meaning. We are seeding the economy with ETN to allow people to understand what ETN is and to make their first purchase (some airtime for their phone perhaps). Then they could use the next month’s ETN to buy access to a digital course that teaches them a new, sellable skill to put in the online market place.
Mass adoption for us is about making ETN widely available. Easy to access. Easy to earn. Easy to spend. Easy to accept and perfectly legal.
This year we will be creating our first ecosystems where ETN moves around in a circle, from user to user.
Last year has saw some extraordinarily hard work from the team and they have delivered nearly everything we need on the ground. We have a streamlining of the user onboarding experience coming out, the gig economy and e-learning to come out, and the cloud mining to activate on android. All these items are either finished and waiting to roll out – or are in the last stages of testing and beautifying.
We are ahead of every single other cryptocurrency in terms of our ability to deliver exactly what we have promised. Mass adoption.
I am ridiculously excited about 2019. Nobody has ever been closer to mass adoption of a cryptocurrency and I am more confident today than I have ever been at any time since having the idea for a mobile cryptocurrency right back in 2016 that we will achieve it.
Thanks for taking the time to read this very lengthy email, I can’t help myself once I get typing. The only way to get mass adoption is to solve a problem. The entire team are extremely passionate about delivering an ETN ecosystem to the 1.7 billion unbanked people of the world. This solves the issue with connecting these people to the global digital economy, which is the secret to mass adoption.
Thanks again for all your support and community spirit. Electroneum has the best community in the entire world of crypto - and I'm proud to be part of it.
Richard Ells
Founder & CEO, Electroneum.com