OmiseGO had flown under my radar up until this past month so I thought I would share my compiled research. The goal of this article is not to give investment advice but rather to educate those interested about the project.
Before I get to the top ten things you may not know about OmiseGO let me give an introduction to the project and their vision for those who may not be familiar as it is often misunderstood.
From their website: OmiseGO's vision is to Unbank the Banked. OmiseGO is a public Ethereum-based financial technology for use in mainstream digital wallets, that enables real-time, peer-to-peer value exchange and payment services agnostically across jurisdictions and organizational silos, and across both fiat money and decentralized currencies. Designed to enable financial inclusion and disrupt existing institutions, access will be made available to everyone via the OmiseGO network and digital wallet framework, starting in Q4 2017. https://omg.omise.co/
What problems is OmiseGO aiming to solve? Interoperability between closed payment systems (think Paypal, Visa, Alipay, Apple Pay, WeChat, TenX Cards). If I use Alipay and you accept payments through Paypal can we make a transaction? What about if I use Apply Pay and my landlord has Venmo? What if I only have Euros and you accept USD? OmiseGO creates a blockchain platform that allows exchanges between these closed systems without any of us actually having to use a OmiseGO wallet, though you may want to due to the reasons below. Liberating currently unusable assets: There is a lot of assets trapped in closed systems that get stranded. AirMiles, Gift Cards, and Rewards points all have a value but are inherently difficult to use. OmiseGO is going to liberate them so that they can be spent. Providing bank experience to those without a bank. A considerable amount of people own phones but do not have bank accounts. How do they make a PayPal account or purchase online? Omise has already been involved here but OmiseGO takes this even further. Facepay is an example of the technology Omise has developed. https://omg.omise.co/
https://twitter.com/JUN_Omise/status/898496682089783296
- JUN_Omise
With that explanation, here are the top ten things you may not know about OmiseGO:
OmiseGO is not in direct competition with current e-wallets or cryptocurrency credit cards such as TenX but rather provides a means for them to overcome the limitation of their closed platforms. In addition, it provides a means for us to pay with any digital asset we would like to use (for example, you could pay using Bitcoin, AirMiles, or your own countries fiat currency to buy groceries while abroad).
The project is part of an already existing and successful fintech company Omise that was founded in 2013 and is serving Thailand, Japan, Indonesia and Singapore. This is a cover story from Forbes Thailand back in October 2016: "FINTECH ROCKSTARS shakes the Thai finance industry in Thailand 4.0" http://www.forbesthailand.com/cover-detail.php?did=49 Here is a link to their website if you want to check out the existing company and product. https://www.omise.co/
Omise provided a $100,000 grant to the Ethereum Foundation's Devgrants program in 2015. https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/01/08/d%CE%BEvgrants-update-new-funding/
OmiseGO had a very reasonable ICO. They are reported to have had >100 million from pre-sale interest alone but capped their ICO at 25 million. Further to ensure distribution they required participants to register and the max contribution was 1 ETH. https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/05/omise-go-ico-25-million-omg/
To further distribution OmiseGo planned for 5% of their token to be airdropped to ETH holders based on the amount of ETH they are holding. The date they are using to calculate the distribution has passed but the airdrop itself is still upcoming. The reason was that they wanted to contribute back to the Ethereum ecosystem and distribute their tokens as widely as possible. https://www.omise.co/omisego-airdrop-update
OmiseGO has made an informal announcement that they are already working with McDonald's in Thailand and have plans for expansion: "But from a business angle, we're launching OmiseGO to support Omise Payments and all existing stakeholders, including our existing and future merchants, such as McDonald's in other countries in Asia - McDonald's Thailand is just the start. Through OmiseGO, all Omise merchants will be able to seamlessly accept payments in multiple currencies, including ETH or BTC or other cryptos, without needing to know what their client is paying in." https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/6n7sl2/mcdonalds_to_start_using_omisego_as_a_payment/
OmiseGO is the first plasma.io project. Plasma.io is an Ethereum based project that dramatically increases the scalability. http://plasma.io/
OmiseGO is one of only two projects that Vitalik Buterin is officially an advising.
https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/874522987885670400
- VitalikButerin
The team (with Vitalik) met with the Central Bank of Thailand today (picture).
https://twitter.com/omise_go/status/897472052457684993
- omise_go
OmiseGO has stated publicly that further news will be announced soon. While I do not like teasers for announcements, this may mean that I will have to update this post. As of Aug 18th 2017 they have not released this news.
https://twitter.com/omise_go/status/897089480128999424
- omise_go
https://twitter.com/omise_go/status/898423778207711232
- omise_go
Addendum (Updated last: August 18th 2017):
Common questions:
How does one receive value from the OMG token?
OmiseGO is using proof of stake. Tokens confirm the transactions that take place and you receive a transaction fee (similar to a miner) just for staking your token. These transactions include (but are not limited to) payment, interchange, trading, and clearinghouse use. I believe the exact details (such as percentage/fee) are purposely vague because if they weren't then OmiseGO could never change the fee structure they present to users. https://cdn.omise.co/omg/whitepaper.pdf
Common misunderstandings:
OmiseGO is a platform technology: A platform refers to technology that other applications and technologies to be built upon. In the Cryptocurrency space the biggest example would be Ethereum. Google (search), Amazon (marketplace), Apple (operating system), Microsoft (operating system), and Facebook (social media) are all platforms.
"Unbank the Banked" vs. "Bank the Unbanked": The bank currently acts as the inefficient platform for those problems OmiseGO is aiming to solve. Hence, "Unbank the Banked". While OmiseGO does help bank the unbanked (particularly in SEA) this is why they have their slogan.
Where can I learn more? Whitepaper: https://cdn.omise.co/omg/whitepaper.pdf The following is a newsletter. I am in no way associated with the author or company but I found their breakdown of OmiseGO to be one of the best I have read: https://pbg-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/editorial/pbo/201708/20170817-pbo-monthly.pdf
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/omise_go/comments/6tvmo4/ten_things_you_may_not_know_about_omisego/
My opinion!
I think this coin has great potential if anyone thinks of gaining huge profits as a long term investment of 3-5 years. It signs a partnership deed with McDonald, they both will work together in their future projects. I am looking a very bright future about this coin.
Regards!
Bitcoin Expert