What Is Electroneum (ETN)? – Beginner’s Guide

Electroneum (ETN) is a England-based cryptocurrency that aims to create a decentralised, easy to use currency network specifically aimed at mobile users, who will be able to send, receive and mine Electroneum. While mobile users can in theory mine and trade other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the need for large amounts of processing power means that a mobile could never mine a notable amount of Bitcoin. Whereas with Electroneum the team seeks to level the playing field with a lightweight, easy-to-use mobile app that can give users a taste of mining a coin.

The Basics of Electroneum

Electroneum started life as a fork of the cryptocurrency Monero. It’s aiming to be a user friendly introduction for people new to cryptocurrencies and act as a lightweight, quick coin that is aimed at the casual mass market.

The most unique aspect of the Electroneum coin is its focus on mobile users. Any user that downloads the Electroneum app will be able to instantly use cryptocurrencies and even ‘mine’ the currency. This even earns the user a small amount of Electroneum while the app works in the background, simulating a mining experience.

Electroneum uses a proof of work consensus algorithm to validate its transactions and therefore is capable of being mined. Mining is when a computer completes a series of very difficult calculations and validates and processes the transactions going on across the blockchain which ensures the validity of the currency.

As previously stated, mobile phones simply don’t have the processing power to complete these calculations on a satisfactory level, so what Electroneum proposes to do is to give all users the ability go through a very simplistic ‘mining’ process to help new users better understand Electroneum and cryptocurrencies in general. The mobiles do not actually validate any transactions.

Users will be able to actually mine Electroneum with their computers as you would any other crypto, and as they will be doing the actual calculations they will be awarded more currency for their efforts. There are several Electroneum pools out there for mining and also a single click mining desktop application which makes mining and joining mining pools incredibly easy. The Electroneum mining algorithm is also written in such a way that it doesn’t favour ASIC mining rigs. Instead normal CPUs or GPUs are able to mine the coin sufficiently.

Whilst Electroneum is definitely not a revolutionary currency and isn’t likely to compete with Litecoin or Bitcoin cash as a useable currency, it does serve as a useful introduction to cryptocurrencies and can already be used on mobile as a quick and simple currency with all the benefits of any crypto.

Roadmap

History

Electroneum is a very young currency, having officially launched on 1st November 2017 and launched its app wallet on 13th December 2017, managing to raise roughly $40 million with its ICO. The focus of the company, its mobile app, is currently in beta mode on Google Play (although that has now closed at 20,000 users so you can’t currently download the beta) and they are trying to iron out any bugs before releasing the finished app on the Apple Store and the Play Store later this year.

Future

Electroneum’s aims for the future lie mainly in improving its mobile app for launch this year, as well as securing deals with mobile companies and other businesses to ensure the currency has as wide a reach as possible. It has signed agreements with companies like XIUS that enable secure transactions across mobile devices and aims to have its own PayPal-like transaction capabilities built into its mobile app.

In 2018 they plan to over double the apps users to 2 million whilst also adding more members to the team and increase their reach and partnerships.

Team

The electroneum team is headed by its founder and CEO Richard Ellis, who has a coding background as well as experience in start-ups, namely web design website SiteWizard and online marketing company Retortal. The company’s offices are based in Kent, England.

The team employ a large range of marketers and people who specialise in advertising. This can definitely be seen as a good thing for potential investors as many cryptocurrencies do not market their products enough to get recognition.

Seeing as Electroneum has been consistently in the top 100 since it’s release, it goes to show that the marketing team is doing its job.

Trading Information

With $40 million raised at the Electroneum ICO there has been a lot of interest and buzz around the Electroneum price. It’s managed to keep a fairly high market cap throughout its short life with the Electroneum coin price having a maximum value of over $0.20. For more information head over to our post on Cryptos Decoded

How to Buy Electroneum (ETN) Coin

The main exchange that you can buy Electroneum is from Cryptopia. There are a couple of others, including TradeOgre and Qryptos but we’d recommend Cryptopia.

Cryptopia is a crypto to crypto exchange so you’ll have to buy some Bitcoin or Ethereum from Coinbase before you can buy the Electroneum.

How to Store Electroneum (ETN) Coin

Electroneum coin is stored in a special Electroneum wallet. This is made by signing up on the website or through the mobile app. It can then be accessed using either. Through this you can set up online and offline wallets and easily link them to any mining software you have set up.

Using the wallets and the mining software you can easily earn free Electroneum, so buying some might not even be necessary. They also have a referral program which you can earn Electroneum for signing your friends up. If you want to sign up for the Electroneum app, consider using our referral code to help support Cryptos Decoded. The code is:

38BDE3

Competition

Electroneum is aiming to become the go to mobile cryptocurrency for new users, so you could say its competition includes almost any cryptocurrency that’s sole purpose is to act as a currency. Well established cryptos that are aiming for a lightweight and quick networks like Litecoin, Dash, Monero, Ripple and Bitcoin Cash will be its main rivals. Its similarity to online transaction companies like Paypal could also mean some competition, but as it is one of the first companies to provide a mobile based cryptocurrency it currently has just about enough qualities to remain unique.

Our Opinion on Electroneum

We think that Electroneum is an interesting coin due to its simplicity. It isn’t reinventing the wheel, it (probably) isn’t going to compete with Litecoin or Bitcoin Cash, but it will likely find its place within the crypto market as a decent coin for people who are new to cryptocurrencies to begin using. If it manages to find more widespread adoption using this route, then it could be very successful.

Pros and Cons

Pros

By focusing on mobile usage it gives the currency a possible usage of roughly 2.2 billion mobile phone users across the world.
It also highly prioritises ease of use and this means that for many Electroneum could be the easiest entry into the world of cryptocurrency. With a mobile app and mining tools for Mac, Windows and Linux it will be easy to learn the ins and outs of cryptocurrencies with Electroneum and users could make their first crypto transaction within minutes of downloading the app.
From the deals it has signed with mobile companies so far it already has a user reach of close to 100m and is closing on 1m registered wallets.
As the currency is still in its infancy now is a good time to invest as when the full app launches Electroneum could shoot up in value.
The marketing team is great, for such a young, simple coin it’s remarkable that it’s managed to maintain such a high market cap and place in the top cryptos.

Cons

Until the full launch of the mobile app it will be extremely difficult to estimate how successful the currency will be.
Compared to other cryptocurrencies Electroneum haven’t set out their plans for the future very far: Their website only details goals to the end of 2018 so this is something worth keeping an eye on.
It’s unique selling point can easily be copied by other, larger cryptocurrencies and make Electroneum suddenly redundant.

Conclusion

Electroneum is an interesting proposition, as it could potentially change how cryptocurrency is made and exchanged and its potential user base is significant. It is certainly a good starting point for anyone looking to get into cryptocurrency and understand how it works as its focus on being user friendly sets it apart from many other coins. At this early stage it is hard to judge how far Electroneum could go but it seems to be off to a good start and anyone interested in investing short term could be looking at a rise in the near future with the launch of the mobile app. If you’re not keen on putting any money in it could still be worth taking a look at both the online and mobile mining tools if this is something you’re interested in.

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