Developed and targeted to mobile users, Electroneum (ETN) has a potential for mass adoption with a market of 2.2 billion smartphone users around the world. Like other cryptocurrencies, it is decentralized, meaning that it lacks the central authority of a governing body such as a bank or company. Anyone with an Electroneum wallet can send or receive the digital currency, and transactions take place in under 10 minutes with low transfer fees.
A UK-based digital currency, its target market includes the online gambling and gaming industries. Electroneum seeks to replace in-game currencies and is currently seeking mobile gaming partnerships.
The digital currency is built on the blockchain and has a maximum supply of 21 billion coins, which means that transactions will be displayed in only two decimal places as opposed to transactions such as bitcoin (e.g. 21.39 Electroneum as opposed to 0.089151 BTC). The idea is a more approachable and comprehensible transaction amount.
Electroneum History and Core Values
Led by Richard Ellis who founded UK digital agency SiteWizard and social media platform Rectoral, the part-time hobby became serious business with its launch of the Electroneum blockchain in November 2017. That launch was followed by the launch of the app wallet on December 13, 2017.
Ellis has been seriously interested in cryptocurrency since 2014. He believes strongly in the idea of a cryptocurrency that would be completely accessible to everyone by simply by downloading an app. He later set out to achieve his vision. The digital currency has been coined “the world’s first common cryptocurrency.” (Yes, pun intended.)
Electroneum’s initial coin offering (ICO) successfully raised 40 million dollars. It wasn’t without drama, however. Right before the launch of the app they had a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Even with the attack, however, they succeeded in distributing over 690 million Electroneum in the first 24 hours of their launch.
How Electroneum Coins are Created
When miners check and verify a specific number of transactions, they receive Electroneum coins. This is how Electroneum coins are introduced into the system. To start earning, users can simply set up their computers to become miners.
Since the vision of Electroneum’s founders was mass adoption of the digital currency, the mining experience was purposefully designed to be as user-friendly as possible, allowing almost anyone to easily become familiar with the interface and start using it immediately.
How to Earn, Purchase and Store Electroneum
Earning
By downloading the app, users receive the cryptocurrency. The idea is that by giving users Electroneum via their mobile phone, populations not necessarily exposed to the cryptocurrency market will become interested and share the idea with friends.
As founder Richard Ellis says:
“I’ve got these people that have Electroneum on their phones and they don’t know what to do with it, so entrepreneurialism will spring up around the thing that we’ve given them and therefore those people can then buy a product directly with Electroneum. This is what has been lacking in the cryptocurrency world at the moment but I’m going to try and change that.”
The idea is that by paying users to use the app it will spread virally. Users can also earn the digital currency by inviting friends to join the app and participate with them in a contest to earn 5000 Electroneum. Mining games are available to earn slightly more coins.
Another unique feature of Electroneum is that users can earn coins without actively mining them simply by running it in the background of their device. This takes place without overheating your phone or losing battery life.
The Android version of Electroneum’s mobile miner went live March of 2018. The iOS version will be developed later this year.
Purchasing
If you want to simply purchase Electroneum, you can do so on the Cryptopia, Qryptos, Vebitcoin, Cryptohub and Tradeogre exchanges. It remains to be seen when it will be accepted on the Bittrex and Binance exchanges.
Storing
By downloading the app, users are also provided with a digital wallet manager (the Electroneum Wallet Manager) that lets them send, receive, and store Electroneum. Since the digital currency is developed from the Monero codebase, it has built-in privacy features, including two passwords.
Users receive their money via a private view spend key which is 64 characters long. To be extra cautious, however, we recommend you also store your Electroneum in offline paper wallets and place them in separate paper wallets in the event one paper wallet is lost, stolen, or misplaced.
Electroneum Safety and Anonymity
The cryptocoin is designed with specific mathematical standards to ensure its protection against fraudsters. In addition, only those who have public keys and private keys of accounts can spend the money in that account.
These keys are generated randomly and not connected to personal information. No one can ever link any transaction to a specific account, which makes all digital transactions with this currency virtually anonymous.
The Electroneum Future
It’s too early to comment on Electroneum’s price, but it seems to have a lot of potential. In early March it rose 2% in one 24-hour period alone — quite a success considering that many experts predicted its failure immediately following its ICO. Another tilt in its favour is its massive adoption to date of over 949,629 registered users.
Future plans affecting its price include the launch of the iOS app and its recent partnership with both XIUS, a telecommunications payment company, and BMedia, a Japanese-based social media and e-commerce company.
Electroneum seeks to grow its user base to over 2 million users, expand its team, develop greater app capabilities and more commercial relationships in the future. Don’t overlook this fledgling digital currency.
