Electroneum - The good, the bad and the ugly

Its funny how certain things come along sometimes. Having just woken up in the middle of the night, i found myself not being able to put myself to sleep again so i decided to check the current pricing of the coins i am holding (something i find myself doing way too often nowadays) and that is where i saw the advert for this up and coming coin - Electroneum.

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I must say that from a marketing aspect it looked great but as I always do i decided to analyse all that was available and went through all the usual paths white-paper, blogs, forums etc. Having done my due diligence i really liked what i read and infact decided to do something i had promised myself never to fall for - Invest in an ICO. Granted it was not a big sum but something about the project clicked, the gaming aspect, the team. It all made sense to me so i took the dive. After all i thought if something goes wrong then its an extra 10 days of part time work to make up for it!!

What attracted me to the project? Well for starters i liked their concept of putting crypto currencies in the people's hands most particularly in their phones. People love using their phone. Step into a waiting room at a clinic, a bus stop etc and tell me i'm wrong if more than half of the people are not staring at their devices. The way i see it is there is no better way to get people to use a currency than putting it in circulation, putting it literally in their hands, even if a small quantity at a time but if its there they are going to use it - be it just sell it off on an exchange, using it for gaming, betting but there will always be circulation. Circulation creates a purpose and a use case, add to that a team that has shown they are more than capable of marketing the concept and getting other companies on board and if all the pieces fall in place you have a winner.

You see from what I have learnt about crypto currencies so far is that since they are still quite in their infancy, they are very influenced by the buzz created around them and more seasoned traders say that they can tell when a crypto is going to do well by seeing a certain level of buzz growing around a token or coin. Imagine a currency where there is a constant movement of funds and a team that knows how to keep them buzzing (so to speak). That the buzz is already there is very visible already. $40 million raised in an ICO, thousands of accounts, have a look at the telegram channels popping up and you can reach your own conclusions. I would not be surprised if the coin reaches the top 30 cryptos by market cap within the first week of it being released.

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Lets face it, even though many say that crypto is for the people and that it is about taking back control of money, getting your hands on the first coin is all but easy. Having to sift through all the exchanges, trading sites etc trying to weed out the ones that are only trying to scam you (of which there are way too many) hence to the novice, crypto might still seem too confusing to get into. Hence making it accessible to people on their phones does look appalling.

This of course does carry its cons most notably the fact that unless very properly documented getting people to just jump into cryptos without any prior experience can result in a lot of confusion and having many immature people not willing to learn the ropes (except for shouting moon and thinking they are going to become millionaires in a week or a month tops) can create friction and also hamper the overall image a company and coin has. Again have a look at the telegram groups and you see all sorts of messages thrown about that show that there are already a number of people who jumped onto the ETN bus for the wrong reasons. The delays in getting the wallets released has already brought about the worst in most people who got into the coin who were thinking that by now they would already be sipping margaritas on some beach and the days when you had to go to work were just a past nightmare. Granted the delays have been dragging now and anger is a natural response, but some more patience should see things through.

The way I see it the team has quite a job on their hands in not only helping people to get up to speed but they also have to make sure that in everything they do they make sure that it is simple enough for every tom dick and harry to use. Otherwise Richard Ells should think about doubling his support staff from day 1.

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From a technical aspect what i liked about the project is that it does serve a purpose. There are actual use cases where this makes sense. The white paper mentions the gaming industries as their major focus both betting and actual gaming where such a coin would give users the possibility of using coins earned in one game in another etc. I see however another use case for this - retail. Imagine stores like Amazon and next and pc stores etc accepting the coin for payments. In my opinion it is a no brainer. Say you are mining the coin on your phone (sure we know this is not actual mining), you can earn say 20 dollars in a month just for leaving the app running in the background. What better way to make use of those $20 then to buy that nice shirt you saw online, or a pair of shoes, or even better accumulate 10 months of savings on a new smartphone purchase, then you have twice the mining power and a new phone!

Of course there will always be pitfalls and the delays that the project is facing are not helping people's trust in the project however i do feel that this could be a good one that makes some waves. This could also reflect in the price for the coin over the first set of weeks or even months but for people who have been in the space for a while this is nothing but a given!

Finally I would like to close with this, whatever you do or not do remember that ultimately it is your money, hence you use it as you feel you should. There are too many people who are trying to scam or trick you on a daily basis and this is unfortunately a vast occurence in the world of crypto so my advice is take your time to formulate your decisions and do not let people push you into things. Do I think this project will be a success? Yes but thats also because i have personally invested in it so I might be biased. It can also just go bust, or the buzz can die faster than it started so we will have to let time make us wiser on that. However that is my opinion anyone else can formulate his or her own!

If something does not feel right then it probably isn't or maybe not at the time so take a step back and decide. Whether you chose to buy, sell or "hodl" is entirely up to you. You will make mistakes but the only thing bad about a mistake is if it does not teach you anything!

As always I am very open to comments, feedback suggestions etc. If you have any queries I am more than willing to help out.