OmiseGO: Make You Go OMG

OmiseGO (OMG). When I first learned about this coin I'm sure I actually said 'OMG'. And the good thing about it? It hasn't really boomed yet. Let's get into it.

OmiseGo is an Ethereum-based financial technology company. Its goal is to provide "real-time, peer-to-peer exchanges and payments. It promises to work 'agnostically' across jurisdictions and organizational silos, and across both fiat money and decentralized currencies."

What does this mean? Basically, they want to make it easier and cheaper to send and receive payments, and cheaper to exchange currencies. We aren't just walking fiat to fiat currencies either. Users of the wallet can transfer whatever asset or currency they desire. For example, you could use your Ethereum, Bitcoin, NZ dollars, airline points or FlyBuys to buy groceries using the e-wallet app on your mobile. Transfers can happen across borders, or even while traveling abroad. Unlike PayPal or Western Union where remittance fees are insanely high, with OMG the fees are almost negligible and users do not require a bank to send or access those funds. This is especially good for migrant workers who send money home and often don't have bank accounts and are forced to use expensive wire services instead.

The thing that really excites me about OMG is the infrastructure they already have behind them. The company Omise (pronounced Oh Me Say) was started in 2013 and has offices in Bangkok, Tokyo, Jakarta, and Singapore. They already transfer money between businesses and individuals, and as of March 2017 handle roughly 500 million USD worth of transactions per day. Yes, PER DAY. They already have a huge number of merchants which use their pre-blockchain service, and this year they also purchased Paysbuy, a company who is licensed by the Bank of Thailand to operate e-money services. What they need to do now is implement OmiseGo as the backend exchange in their existing payment infrastructure. Once that is completed any merchants already using their payment systems would be able to accept any type of currency supported by the OMG exchange. In future, other e-wallet services like AliPay, PayPal etc could implement this on their backend too, in fact anywhere that accepted Apple Pay or Google Wallet would then also be able to accept crypto as payment.

While they already have access to a huge number of merchants through their existing tech, the team is also working hard to bring in new clients. In August it was announced that McDonald’s Thailand (over 240 locations) will be using OMG's payment channel. McD's Thailand is just the start - they're hoping to expand throughout all of Asia, with Europe and Africa likely to be the next regions they will target.

Of course, it also can't go without mentioning that OMG has the backing of both founders of Ethereum (Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Woods). Of note, Vitalik and the OMG team met with reps from the Central Bank of Thailand earlier this year, the first steps on a long road to gain mainstream acceptance in the Thai economy.

Down to the nitty gritty. Personally, I think OMG is undervalued. They have a market cap of ~$788 million (versus $32 billion for Ethereum) and are ranked at #14 on coinmarketcap. The global remittance fee (cost to transfer money) industry is worth over $500 billion, so if OMG could even get a slice of that it would PUMP. As a Proof-of-Stake coin, token holders will also receive dividends, which is another plus. The reason why it hasn't soared too high just yet is fairly straight forward - it's early days. OmiseGO does not currently have it's own functioning block chain or e-wallet. It is pretty much a very in-depth white paper with a lot of promise. But it will have these components established before the end of 2017. If this happens as expected, it means that we will likely see some growth in late 2017 and early 2018.

With all of that said, there are still challenges. The main one being that they need to hit their roadmap targets. The crypto crowd is impatient and does not tolerate delayed targets. If they do not release their blockchain/wallet on time, the price could drop further.

In summary, OmiseGO wants to "unbank the banked" - to bypass the banking system and make digital payment and currency transfers easier, cheaper and fairer for all. It seems feasible, and they have a great team behind them, but they need to nail their roadmap targets and continue to get big name merchants (like McDonalds) on board. Who's investing?

Current market price: $8.

OMG can be purchased on most major exchanges, including Bittrex. You can also pick it up on Cryptopia. As an ERC20 token, it can be stored in MyEtherWallet or in the Ethereum wallet on your Ledger or Trezor.

Resources:
https://omg.omise.co/
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/omisego/
https://steemit.com/…/all-recent-news-on-why-omisego-omg-wi…