If you’ve been an Electroneum enthusiast like me since the ICO launched back in September, you may be slightly puzzled by the price action recently, as Electroneum continues to struggle despite something of a market recovery in cryptocurrencies.

What is going on? Why aren’t we seeing more growth? I decided to take a look and try to figure out if there is genuine cause for concern with the Electroneum project.

The Electroneum Story — A Brief Recap

OK so first up, let’s just briefly recap what has happened so far with Electroneum.

Back in September we had the ICO, which was a home-run success. Over 120,000 contributors and the hard cap of $40m reached early.

Then we had the botched launch, when accounts were compromised and Electroneum had to call in the services of Hacker One to sort things out.

After a delay of just over a month, users were finally given access to their Electroneum wallets in mid-December.

Since then there has been generally nothing but good news: the Android app was launched on 5th March, numerous deals have been signed with mobile phone companies taking Electroneum’s user reach to over 100 million people, ETN has been listed on the Kucoin and Qryptos exchanges, new team members have been added and there are now over a million Electroneum wallets.

And yet the price has been in a pretty much steady decline since it hit the heights of close to 20 cents a token back in January and hasn’t recovered like most other coins in the recent market recovery.

So what gives? With all the progress that’s been made in recent months, why aren’t we seeing the price rally?

Before I get into the possible reasons, let’s have a look a little more closely at how Electroneum has actually performed in relation to the general market and whether we should be in panic mode yet or if it is much ado about nothing.

Electroneum Versus The Market

Although Electroneum has fallen significantly since reaching the highs of around $0.20 per token earlier this year, it is important to compare its fall to the overall market. Everything is relative as they say.

So firstly, here is a graph of Electroneum’s performance to date in 2018:

And compare that to the overall cryptocurrency market in 2018:

As you can see, they aren’t actually that different. Electroneum has fallen approximately 83% from its highs in January, where as the cryptocurrency market in general has fallen around 58%.

So essentially Electroneum has underperformed the overall market by about 25% in the year to date, which is disappointing, but not necessarily the end of the world.

However, I think most of us were expecting it to be doing much better than that, so I will have a look at some possible reasons for the current state of affairs.

1. Expectations Were Set Sky High

Again, everything is relative and perhaps we are being overly harsh on Electroneum mainly because expectations were set so high. At the outset there was an almost unprecedented amount of hype about the project, with endless videos on YouTube and massive followings built up on Twitter (currently over 115,000 followers) and Facebook (over 140,000 followers).

A lot of the videos on YouTube were making crazy price predictions of everything from $1 to $100 per ETN (I think I even saw $1,000 per token from one over-optimistic YouTuber).

So perhaps many of us went into this almost expecting Electroneum to 100x as a matter of course and our expectations weren’t really realistic to start with.

2. Problems and Missed Deadlines

Perhaps a certain amount of the drop in price has been because of problems with launching various aspects of the Electroneum project and the missed deadlines this has led to. This goes right back to the botched launch originally through to the delay in getting the mobile mining app up and running and the promise to have ETN available to trade on HitBTC by 26th Feb, which still hasn’t happened yet.

Although there is nothing of grave concern about these missed deadlines, such was the massive hype created around the project that there is an inevitable sense of disappointment when these misses happen.

The impression one gets is that when Richard Ells launched Electroneum he never expected it to become so big so quickly and he hasn’t managed anything on this scale before, despite being a successful businessman. So getting everything done on time has proved tough, but at the same time we shouldn’t underestimate what they have achieved so far.

3. No iPhone App Yet

Following on from the point above, some of the disappointment may lie in the lack of any iPhone mobile mining app being available yet.

Not only has this created some division and resentment in the Electroneum community, but it adds to this sense that the project isn’t quite as professionally run as it should be. Plus there is no estimated date on when the Apple version will be available, which adds to the frustration.

One could argue that this isn’t Electroneum’s fault as Apple have quite strict rules on allowing cryptocurrency apps on their platform, but it’s something you would expect a more experienced business than Electroneum to have resolved prior to launching the Android app so that both would have gone live at the same time.

4. The Hype Machine Has Moved On

One of the problems coins which have been majorly hyped face is what happens when that hype dies down? What do they have left to fall back on?

It seems the hype machine has died down considerably from the days of the Electroneum ICO when there were hundreds of YouTube videos about it. There are new ICOs and cryptocurrencies to hype now like Nucleus Vision, EOS and Credits and they appear to have taken some of the thunder away from ETN.

In Electroneum’s case however, at least they have a working product and the potential to gain millions of users. Plus they have something unique in terms of the mobile mining app, which as has been discussed many times elsewhere, gives them the chance to target the billions of unbanked people around the world.

5. More Coins in Circulation

Another potential reason for the disappointing performance in the Electroneum price is the fact that with the release of the mobile mining app, more coins are now in circulation.

Although in reality the number of additional coins released shouldn’t have been large enough to have had much of an impact on the price, in markets perception is everything and if the perception is that the market is being flooded, then that might be forcing people out of holding onto their ETN.

What Now for Electroneum?

It has been something of a roller-coaster journey with Electroneum so far with many ups and downs but if we step back a little and look at the bigger picture, things are still well set for the future.

Firstly, they have a unique product in terms of the mobile mining app. Whilst most other well-known blockchain projects have spawned a plethora of copycats, Electroneum has established itself as the big — and really the only — player in its niche.

Secondly, it still has a massive following behind it which even some of the world’s top brands would be envious of in terms of social media fans. This should give Electroneum a great chance of succeeding in terms of gaining publicity and traction for its products and services.

The team has grown considerably from the ICO days and they now have some top talent from the worlds of business, programming and blockchain technology. This should hold them in good stead going forward.

In addition, they apparently still have a good deal of funds left from the ICO with which to take Electroneum forward and develop new partnerships to grow the user base in futre.

And whilst there have been some hiccups along the way, most of the major milestones on the roadmap have been achieved. It shouldn’t be long hopefully before we have the iPhone app and then it is all about getting payment solutions set up so people can pay for things with the Electroneum that they mine. If they can get those set up reasonably quickly then Electroneum could really fly.

So really the only thing we seem to be missing now is the hype machine, which has started looked elsewhere for new projects to plug. But if the investment in Electroneum made sense at the outset from the perspective of them having a unique product with the potential to help millions of people around the world, then it still makes sense now.

If indeed millions of people do end up using the app and adopting Electroneum as a means of payment, then it could still become one of the top cryptocurrencies in the world. All that is needed now is some patience to let the story play out.