[ICO Review #2] Electroneum - The Biggest Opportunity Since Bitcoin's Early Days?

Quick, personal note:
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Here it is. The one everybody is talking about. Arguably the biggest ICO going on at this moment. As of today they have more than 87,000 registered users with more than $17 million raised in funds, and if you still want to claim the 10% bonus, you need to invest before October 18th. 

Electroneum aims to bring crypto to the masses by reaching out to the 2.2 billion smartphone users.
Since its infancy, cryptocurrencies have only really been accessible to the nerds and tech-savvy in the space. It is estimated that only 0.5% of the world is up to date in the crypto space - imagine what happens to your investment when the other 99.5% joins in and creates demand.

Right now, there are more smartphone users than there are people with bank accounts in the world. Providing the unbanked parts of the world with a way to access money directly and without the use of a bank is a HUGE deal. And to back that up, as you can see, most of the traffic is coming from some of those very countries - South Africa, Ghana, and Singapore being the top 3:


Electroneum, and its investors, see a huge potential in mass adoption and plans to do so by introducing their mobile miner. Now, some of you will probbly think "wait a minute, using a phone to mine would either end up destroying the phone, or yield little to no results at all," and rightfully so.

Electroneum's mobile miner is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It's designed to introduce the masses to the very core of cryptocurrency, mining, by not actually doing any "real" mining, but only giving the user the experience of mining by "being issued a hash rate reflective of the CPU processing power of the device and being awarded coins for participating in the experience" (link to technical whitepaper).
"Mining" through Electroneum's app will only amount to about $30/month.

I believe that this is an ingenious way of introducing crypto to the masses and the Electroneum team has already proven their capabilities by virtue of their superior peer-to-peer, referral-based marketing strategy.

Backed by Duncan Logan, early investor in Uber and Spotify, I can definitely see why the hype is real. 

The Electroneum Team



Currently, 12 people are developing the Electroneum tech and brand, accompanied by 2 advisors. Having a strong team is essential to the execution of an idea this big, and I personally believe they can pull it off.
Let's take a closer look at some of the members:

CEO Richard Ells
"Richard has a history of building successful digital businesses. He co-founded the successful digital agency SiteWizard, now over 20 years old. More recently, he founded Retortal.com in 2013. As the CEO, Richard’s assembled a team of over 40 developers and created a social media management platform, used by global fortune 500 companies such as Herbalife and Avon. Retortal’s software is used by hundreds of thousands of people."
I think his experience speaks for itself.

Developer Dean Cole
Dean Cole has worked with Richard Ells at Retortal and is responsible for the development of the Electroneum Blockchain. He doesn't have decades of experience but from what I can gather he seems like the kind of guy who can execute on innovative ideas.

General Developer Robert Hopkins
Robert studied cryptography at the University of Kent and works with cryptography and security at Electroneum. Not much to see on his LinkedIn which is a shame.

The Marketing Team
Electroneum's marketing team is 4 members strong and has, as previously mentioned, already proven very great. They've managed to build a strong community, and as a result Electroneum is currently winning the vote to be listed on the cex.io exchange.

A closer look at the app

"Electroneum is a cryptocurrency just like Bitcoin or Ethereum that you can easily mine for free on your smartphone.
Obtaining Bitcoin or Ethereum is relatively difficult, but we've made Electroneum really easy for anyone to get involved with ZERO technical knowledge.
Download the free app, mine some Electroneum coins and you are part of the exciting cryptocurrency revolution." - Taken from Google Play.

Electroneum's app is already up and running and you can download it here, although the mining feature itself won't be available until the blockchain goes live after the ICO on November 1st.

You will get your own wallet from which you can safely spend the Electroneum (ETN) you mine and/or receive from your friends - but you might want to hold on to your ETN for the long term, though, as I could easily see its value increase by 5-10 times before this time next year.
They will also be releasing a desktop miner so you can generate ETN from your pc.

Electroneum Bonus Structure
As seen below, most of the juicy bonusses are already gone, with only the 10% bonus remaining. If you buy ETN via my link, you will earn an extra 1% on top of that - with no additional effort.

The Electroneum Coin (ETN), Token Distribution & Fund Allocation

The total amount of ETN will be 21 billion tokens. The idea is to increase the supply compared to Bitcoin while at the same time getting rid of the many decimals because quote, "It’s easier to tell someone that the price of an item is 345.67 Electroneum than it is to say 0.01374 Bitcoin."

There will be a total of 6.3 billion tokens up for grabs at the ICO at a price of $0.01 per token - not including bonusses - and they accept both Bitcoin and Ethereum. The rest wil presumably be released as mining bonuses.

With regards to how your investment money will be spent, quote, "The scope of our long terms goals is largely defined by the funds raised in the crowdfunding token sale. With that in mind we have developed a development and marketing strategy for every crowdfunding token sale outcome."

As seen below:

And:

And they have also provided this quick timeline of the company's history:

So, should you invest?
I can only speak for myself from here on. I will tell you that I have invested 0.078 of my hard-earned BTC in Electroneum back when the bonus was at 50% which gives me a total of 39,721 ETN. I'm a big believer in the potential of massive mainstream adoption through game-like app experiences and I wouldn't be surprised to se a 100x return in a few years' time. 

(Note that the number of registered users has gone up by 1,500+ since this morning where I started writing this article)

The fact that they've gotten attention from investors like Duncan Logan is a huge deal and I have great confidence in the Electroneum team that they can deliver on these promises.
Even though I cannot give you financial advice, I would definitely encourage you to read their whitepaper and consider investing even just a few bucks into this project - you stand the risk of losing maybe a day's earnings but with the potential of gaining a couple months' salary in the long term.

If you're not sure how to invest, please go ahead and contact me and I will walk you through the process. Investing in ICOs is still quite technically challenging, but that's a GOOD thing! It means that you are here early and stand to reap the greatest rewards whenever cryptocurrencies become mainstream!

Website: www.electroneum.com
Whitepaper here.

This concludes my review of Electroneum. Please do let me know in the comments below if you are hyped, disagree with something, or if you have a third opinion. Criticism is appreciated as I strive to write the most transparent and easy-to-digest reviews possible.

Have a nice day and take care!

Andreas