Electroneum wants to make it super easy to send money across borders. That’s hardly a unique goal in the cryptocurrency space. But it is unique in the way it’s focusing on digital payments through smartphones for people without access to bank accounts. Every crypto player talks about mass adoption, but Electroneum’s model may actually make it possible
Phones
$80, electroneum.com On the face of it, the Electroneum M1 is one of the worst-specced smartphones we’ve ever used. Its screen is terrible, the camera is awful, and it can’t handle any modern 3D games without stuttering and lagging like crazy. But there’s a very good reason for that: it’s not really aimed at us privileged Decrypt writers. Look beyond the traditional smartphone criteria, and you’ll find an intriguing concept… For starters, the Electroneum M1 is a handset that costs a staggering $...
Coins
Electroneum, the startup which enables users to “mine" its cryptocurrency on their smartphones, is launching new services in Turkey—the inflation-strapped country is currently number one in crypto adoption, worldwide, with 20 percent of the population claiming to own cryptocurrencies. The UK-based platform has has inked deals with all three of the country’s telecom operators, to enable users to pay for airtime with its cryptocurrency, ETN, its CEO Richard Ells told Decrypt today. "The whole co...
Coins
In a dramatic turn of events this weekend, the UK-based Electroneum platform made all its miners redundant—replacing them with charities and other nonprofits. It also introduced drastically reduced block rewards, and transitioned from a public to a permissioned blockchain model to serve its three million users. The moves, which will impact thousands of miners, were made in a secret hard fork of the blockchain over the weekend. They were inspired, a spokesperson told Decrypt, by the approach ta...
Technology
Starting this month, Indian telcos have begun rolling out blockchain-based tech that will help protect telecom subscribers from spam calls and texts at the behest of the country’s regulator TRAI. Large scale adoption is top of every crypto fan’s wish list. But we never thought the Indian government would come out in as Bitcoin’s biggest champion. There’s a touch of incongruity that a state currently mulling mandatory 10-year jail sentences for crypto users is behind the biggest implementation...
The Coins
Millions of people don’t have access to a bank account. Yet, a good chunk of them has access to a smartphone. In cryptocurrencies, meanwhile, mining is the preserve of huge arrays of machines ruling out most of the crypto community from being able to meaningfully contribute. It’s these two factors that have lead to the creation of Electroneum, a company that wants to democratize banking by putting it on a smartphone and bring mining to the masses by also bringing mobile into the mix. Can it succ...
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