Electroneum (ticker symbol: ETN) is a cryptocurrency. It was first announced on August 4, 2017 and the development team is located in United Kingdom. The maximum supply is set at 21,000,000,000 ETN. As of December 28th 2017, the circulating supply was 4,997,507,466 ETN.^[1]

Overview

Electroneum is a digital money system (like Bitcoin) that was specifically designed for mobile users – thereby appealing to a potential market of 2.2B smartphone users worldwide. The Electroneum mobile mining experience (when available) will allow anyone to mine "ETN" coins with their mobile phone.

It is a digital currency (or "cryptocurrency"), Electroneum is created, held, and spent entirely electronically. No one person or entity can control it or regulate it.^[2]

Instead, transactions are processed and validated by a growing network of computers around the world (called "miners") that must all agree on the account balances of every user (or wallet). Mathematical functions safeguard every aspect of the process and make sure that no one can game the system or commit fraud.

The Electroneum coin launched officially on 1 November 2017 and the app wallet launched on 13 December 2017.

What Makes Electroneum Different?

Electroneum (and other cryptocurrencies) is "decentralized", meaning that it is controlled and regulated by a network of computers all over the world who have no affiliation with one another. Therefore, no person, company, bank, or government can control Electroneum or create more of it.

Because Electroneum is held digitally, you can send money to any person in the world with an Electroneum wallet (more on this later). No bank regulates spending so there are is no long waiting time or high transfer fees required. A typical transaction takes about 10 minutes to spread through the network and to be validated by the mining network – making it much faster than other inter-country money transfer methods.

Who Created Electroneum?

Electroneum was created and developed in 2017 by a group of people based in London, UK and led by CEO Richard Ells. In September/October 2017, the company pre-sold ETN coins to investors through an initial coin offering (ICO) in order to raise funds for further development. The Electroneum "blockchain" (decentralized ledger system) went live on 1 November 2017 and put the coin into circulation. The Electroneum app wallet went live on 13 December 2017 and provides a user-friendly way of sending and receiving ETN.^[3]

The company also created the Electroneum app used to mine Electroneum, manage your account, or send/receive Electroneum coins.

Is It Safe to Use?

A large amount of "cryptography and mathematical safety standards is built into the system to safeguard it against crooks and fraudsters. Every computer in the mining network must conform to these standards or risk being rejected by the rest of the network.

It is therefore entirely safe to use, and only the person in possession of both the public key (account number) and private key (password) of an account – i.e. you – can spend the money in that account.

Since Electroneum accounts (wallets) consist of strings of random characters, no personal information is tied to the account. Although every computer in the network will be able to see all transactions from a specific account, they won’t be able to link that account to any specific person. This makes Electroneum transactions virtually anonymous.^[1]

How Does an Electroneum Account Work?

Electroneum is held in a so-called cryptocurrency wallet – defined by an account number (called the public wallet address) and two passwords (called the private view key and the private spend key). Both the public key and private key are long strings of letters and numbers, typically 64 characters in length.^[2]

When you first buy Electroneum coins (say 100 coins), every computer in the mining network agrees that your account number contains 100 Electroneum coins, thereby providing a faith-based system for the currency. A wallet is simply a collection of the 3 keys above that represents a ledger entry on every computer in the mining network. If a person can provide all 3 these keys, they are considered to be the rightful owner of the coins, and are allowed to spend it.^[1]

To spend Electroneum coins, you can send it to the account number (public wallet address) of the receiving person. The network will then deduct coins from your account and credit it to the receiver’s account. To receive coins, the sender must send it to your public wallet address, and the same process is followed.^[2]

Who Creates Electroneum Coins?

New Electroneum coins enter the system as "rewards given to miners. Each time a miner checks and verifies a certain amount of transactions, he/she receives a reward in the form of Electroneum coins. After receiving the reward for his work, the miner can then spend those coins or exchange it for other currencies – effectively introducing new coins into the system.^[3]

Anyone can set up their computer to be a miner (called mining node).

Mining Electroneum With a Mobile Phone?

Electroneum has a major advantage over other cryptocurrencies in that it can be mined using a "mobile phone". Traditionally, mining could only be performed on a computer with lots of processing power. However, the team has created an algorithm, that allows anyone with a mobile phone to mine effectively – thereby making it possible for millions of smartphone users, around the world to learn about cryptocurrencies and mine their own coins.^[3]

To mine Electroneum coins, all you need to do is to download the app to your phone and create an account. The app can mine in the background while you perform other tasks, or you can play the mining game to earn slightly more coins.^[1]