Electroneum Smartphone - Balanced Review Of Details

Hey you, welcome back to the channel. And guys, today, uh, I'm sure many of you have heard the news by now, the excitement with Electroneum as they attend the first day of the Mobile World Congress. Two surprises were sprung on us today, uh, one possibly suspected, the other one just straight out of left field. Didn't even see it coming. And that of course is the smartphone launch, Electroneum's own smartphone with the sleek, very nice looking design. That's gonna be used to top up minutes in Electroneum. They can do it through the application, but so much so cool to have your own Electroneum physical device. to be able to accomplish this with. And just a well-concealed plan for Electroneum. Uh, maybe they've been kind of listening to, uh, some of the, uh, the community about, uh, when they discuss development of certain projects and just dropping them on us. And I think that works the best. Maybe, maybe that's something they should do in the future. I guess also They've kind of been under the gun from us about communication, uh, as to, uh, you know, when they should tell us what they're doing so it doesn't look like they're not doing anything and they aren't aware when they're actually working, right? So what do I think of all this and, and how significant is this to the state of affairs, uh, with Electroneum and, and what can, what can be expected? So a lot of people are excited, and I'm glad to see the community, uh, having this really good, uh, feeling towards the future of Electroneum, uh, you know, which I feel is there, that it was, uh, set up that it was gonna have a pretty darn good future. Now I want to just try to, uh, try to put into a, uh, a picture or paint a picture or structure one of what possibly the next steps of Electroneum are going to be and how effective is this direction going to be exactly. And, uh, you know, is this something that, uh, is the right direction as it a lot of these steps still sound pretty experimental at this point. They've never been done before, and when something's never been done before, uh, you don't know what to expect exactly. Uh, it could be a bit unpredictable. It could be an explosion of results and this great effect, or it could be, uh, one that drags on, or worst case, it could be not what you expected. So let's, let's see what we can come up with ourselves just going over what got and what the next few months are going to look like for Electroneum. So, um, this phone that they produce, right? Don't know the cost. I'm not sure exactly how effective this is going to be. Uh, but here's what I do agree with, with this. I agree with that. This seems like a perfect accompaniment to the structure of Electroneum, right? Right? This phone that's designed to work with the electronic applications to allow people to basically move these phone minutes, to purchase them right with the device designed to do that, pick up these phone minutes, and also other features. You're able to purchase phone minutes for people who don't even have the phone, right? You can they don't need the phone, you can go on through your phone, you can purchase phone minutes for them and things like that. And that's all pretty cool stuff, really cool stuff. Do I, do I think the timing of it is, is good, right on time? Possibly. Um, let's, so let's talk about the effectiveness of this. And, and first I want to give a few examples, try to get my thoughts out with this and try to have a full understanding of what this means to Electroneum itself as a digital currency. So I'll give this example. There's another cryptocurrency you've probably heard me talk about, you pretty much are probably aware of, and that's Steemit. You know, in cryptocurrency, they're the kind of best of the social media sites across the blockchain, an area that I feel is probably one of the best uses of cryptocurrency. And the differences I'm finding with cryptocurrency and traditional investing is when you buy, let's say, a traditional investing stock, you, you own a part of that business, you own a part of that company. And when you buy into that, the value of your stock and the stockholders' equity is directly affected by what the business model itself does, right? Cryptocurrency is a little bit different, right? Excuse me, guys. Cryptocurrency is a little bit different. And what I mean by that is that in cryptocurrency, we're not really owners. We're not owners of Electroneum. We don't own Electroneum the business. We do not own Electroneum the company, right? Uh, we hold their currency, their tokens. Um, and these tokens, the value of these tokens, you know, obviously come from the buying and selling of them, the demand for them, um, and the value of who's buying them as opposed to who's selling them. So it works a little bit, a little bit different than in, uh, shareholders' equity, right? So we're not shareholders in Electroneum, uh, and I think that what kind of throws me off quite a bit in the cryptocurrency space because then it becomes a little bit difficult to separate Electroneum the business from Electroneum the cryptocurrency, right? And what we need to dissect in that, um, you know, is, uh, then Electroneum acting as a money, people are going to need to use that money and spend that money and so on and so forth. So, uh, how does— how is that achieved? Well, In this, in this model, uh, how Electroneum is structuring it, it's going to be achieved when people buy more Electroneum, right? They're going to have to take Electroneum off the market and use it effective as this money, and they're going to be actually using it and purchasing it, you know, from us, the Electroneum holders, right? Uh, now with the smartphone device, that's— it looks like it's going to be— I don't know where it's going to be sold, who's going to be— it looks like it's going to be available first South Africa perhaps, But I don't know, uh, it looks like it said it's going to be around $80, right? So I'm assuming what's going to happen is they're going to sell in a marketplace somewhere for fiat currency, right? And then they're going to buy it in maybe the money of their local communities and whatnot. Uh, you know, I don't know how the partnership works with the smart device. It would have been awesome. I think it would have been great if It was a kind of a partnership where the phones as well could be purchased in Electroneum. So what would happen? But, you know, however this phone was produced, I don't know, you know, how Electroneum went about this, but if it could be purchased in these fiat dollars, then I'm not sure what happens to the profits taken from that. And I'll give you another example of why I brought up Steemit a few moments ago. And that is like in their model. They be— they finally said, hey, it's a good idea to start selling advertisements, right? The value of the cryptocurrency is going down. We've had to lay off several people. We should be actually generating money as a project ourselves, right? But now, how does that money get back into the economy of the cryptocurrency itself, right? As, as this doesn't work like a standard business, we're not shareholders. Well, the way they were doing it was they were going to just— the money that comes in from the purchase, their purchase cryptocurrency, they're going to burn off those tokens, right? And so by burning off those tokens, you now have less of those tokens. And because you have less of it, then that, that makes the, uh, the token more valuable in theory, because now it's less of them as a circulating supply. So that's where I'm a little bit confused about the smart device. Uh, I'm looking at it though, I guess, as what's going to be an easier way, you know, obviously to get these people the ability to buy the Electroneum. Uh, and, and that's fine, right? I agree with that, to have this component there, this accompaniment there, this accessory. You can buy the minutes with it. Did they need to develop this phone to, to do that? Uh, I don't necessarily think so. I think they could have went with the original plan, um, how they were doing it before. You know, all that said, it's not a bad idea. I think it's a great idea, but I don't know the cost that was involved in it, and I don't, you know, quite know, um, uh, full effect down the road, exactly how significant the effect will be. Now, also, the phone's $80. It's not an expensive phone by Western standards at all, right? It would be a reasonably priced phone by our standards, right? Almost, you might consider it a cheap phone by a stand, you know, by, you know, by, you know, on standards. But if you take into consideration the average American, uh, you know, in the West, for instance, where I live at, don't make that much money a year. Uh, you know, there are people behind these cheap mobile devices. You can get a smartphone for about $20 or so, uh, Android smart device that can pretty much do, you know, most of the things that, uh, we're able to do now, uh, online with applications. And even if that device was twice as much as that, it still would only be about $40. So is that practical for people in Africa and third world countries? Maybe. Uh, will the phone pay for itself if you're collecting about $3 in Electroneum, then you're able to pick up these Electroneum minutes half price? Okay, that's, that's great. That can work as well. Eventually they get the phone back. That's not a big, you know, it's not a big problem. I think it can, it can work well with the setup of Electroneum. Uh, I just don't know how necessary it was in the beginning. I think I would be more interested in just getting the idea out of how to get more people buying more Electroneum, uh, in the market. And, and again, with the smartphone, if they're buying a smartphone and it's not with Electroneum, but they're buying the smart devices with their local currency and Electroneum makes a profit, what they do with that profit is just to keep the Electroneum, the business operations running. But I can see how that trickles back to the economy of Electroneum. That's not a huge, huge, uh, problem I, I see as far as costs and expenses. Um, and they kind of go into the cost of the phone in their, in their email they got out, said something to the effect of, uh, how much is the phone costing the Electroneum project? And Richard goes, I'm very careful with what we've spent to ensure we get the best possible value for the long-term success of the project. We spent some money to build and ship these M1 smartphones, but we are actually selling them with a small profit. And again, I kind of go back to what do you do with the small profit? Does the small profit just get back to the Electroneum operations to keep it running? Uh, how does it affect the Electroneum currency value itself? And it says they will be a huge viral growth help. Yeah, so it's part of the long-term project, right? With zero long-term cost to the project. In fact, they'll even start bringing in some revenue at some point in time in the future. Future. Now again, we, we gotta think about this project and taking all this into consideration. This again being a long-term project, probably, probably about 5 years off. And I know a lot of people say, well, you know, that's— it's set up a good structure, set up a good plan. What's the problem? Why do you have a problem with that? Why isn't this great news for you like it is for everybody else? Well, it is partly great news. But it's a, it's kind of, it's more, it's just more to it that as I thought about it, uh, that concerned me about this setup process, right? It's a lot of working parts to this, getting it to this stage. It's taken years. And my, my problem with it is, and I want to go to the part of the letter that we got here when it talks about a plan on starting off here in South Africa. And I believe it mentioned something like starting in one city and going a place at a time. And I'm trying to locate that here, guys, on this letter real quick. Bear with me because I wanted to make sure that I brought out this interesting point I had. But it said about they will start one city at a time And, uh, and I can't seem to find it in the letter. I'll probably find it when I'm not looking for it, but it was— they was going to kind of do an experiment with one city at a time and move from city to city trying, you know, sort of spreading this, the promotional, uh, you know, idea behind this, right? Now Again, that, that's all great. I don't have a problem with that, and that works. But here's what I'm a little bit concerned about. I guess I'll see it this way, and that is South Africa is also a target area for not only Dash but Bitcoin Cash, right? And the reason I'm concerned about this, guys, is that Dash has a lot of experience with— I mean, they already have a working model and a tactic how to go into these regions and areas. And let me explain to you a little bit why I'm concerned about that and why when a project takes 3 to 4 or 5 years, and when, when I was in the venture capitalist business and people will come in with ideas or they'll try to get a project funded, when we would project out how long it would take that business to get up and running, the next thing we would do is look at the competitors in that same field over the next few years, because it's not just the environment stays the same while you're setting up and you're trying to put all your ducks in a row. The environment around you is changing and the marketplace is changing and they are moving towards these competitors. Right. And the problem with that is once you get kind of locked into a, a, um, a, uh, a market, a, uh, a competitor and their business, it's hard to separate yourself from that. It's kind of like, kind of like what happened with Apple products and Android, right? There are some people who are just gung-ho for, um, Apple products and they're gonna stick with Apple. And then some people made the change to, or to switch to Android over the years because Android became this big competitor. Everybody started to switch to Android. If you remember in the beginning everybody was on Apple and iOS devices, right? But it's not just Apple and Android, it's, it's, it's other competitors as well, right? So you have to kind of look at who's all getting a part of this market share and what's gonna be— who's gonna be significant in affecting this. When, when I think about Dash going into South Africa, right? And going into Latin America and India, as Bitcoin Cash is planning to do, and going into Southeast Asia. When I, when I think about all of these, these Bitcoins like that, or looking at like an example of what Dash did there, when Dash goes in, I'm gonna tell you what they do. Dash goes in and they establish a good presence with the community. Not just the community, uh, they're giving out a lot of money, they're setting up a lot of workshops and education, they're giving money to the state and local governments, right? So they're kind of greasing some elbows there, kind of officially, unofficially, and it's their masternode community doing this who has a lot of money. And the masternode community is not Dash the company that's controlling them. The masternode community is the entire Dash community. And they can just up and decide and do whatever they want to do when they want to do it if they think it's an idea. Because the masternode communities are the ones who pay for all the marketing and advertising down in Venezuela when there was these large campaigns and banners flying around Venezuela. And so the reason that's concerning over to me with if this process to integrate all this in and get this effect and experiment one city at a time, the reason I'm a little bit concerned about that is because there are competitors targeting that same area who have experience with this, and they're going after these small unbanked communities. And the problem with how Dash does things is when they get in a city, in a region, in an area, They do these workshops for all these businesses and these people, and they give them money and they set them up. And now every vendor around you is taking Dash, right? Or they're gonna be taking Bitcoin Cash. So to me, where Electroneum excels in this is that in the niche market of where they're going to be setting up smartphone as a way to pay for these phone minutes, which in turn these phone minutes were to be used for maybe purchasing other goods and services, right? Used to buy bread and things like that. But now you're going to potentially have people around you like Dash and people around you like Bitcoin Cash who are pouring money into these small cities and small areas. It's nothing for them to go in and do that. And establish a presence, and now they got their smart devices and every vendor around you is taking Bitcoin Cash and Dash. Um, that's kind of my concern with this, and so I'm concerned that that will squeeze Electroneum into this tube of, okay, we need to expand our partnership where we have these deals where they can buy these minutes and they're getting twice their minutes for Electroneum, right? They're getting twice the value of their minutes, so That's working out pretty well. So you're staying that course with that and you're expanding your partnerships with the mobile operators. That can work, that can work well, uh, provided that your mobile operator partnership and the networks grow to a certain extent. And if that happens, that's, that's great. But that would be my only concern as far as using it as a currency in the local communities in that idea, excuse me, in that idea of people using these minutes to purchase other goods and services. If it's just to purchase the airtime minutes that have been kind of used as another means of a value to transfer, that will be something, you know, entirely to that specific market. But that was my chief concern. How do you work around this? Well, I, I think for me personally, just looking at it, the, the workaround to it would be the time frame in which they get into this. Because again, I think it's not just about, uh, you know, having a good setup, the good design, a good plan, and going for a few years later, several years out, and making it work. But it's also who's— who else is your competition out there. Who else is in that region? Who else is educating the people and giving those people resources in those regions? Because this is what Dash and Bitcoin Cash does. This is their mission. This has always been their mission. So what we need to understand is this is a— this is a— Electroneum is basically a competitor now against them, and they're all headed up head-to-head and The influence of these people in those regions to market to these people and get them using your product before it's used by these other groups is going to be very important. Because again, once I'm into your product, it works for me everywhere I look around. Like what you get in Venezuela, so you can buy coffee and bread and donuts and, and, and, uh, and electronics, right? Because they have done these workshops and set it up with all these vendors around you, that's gonna close you in and box you in, right? And so that's how I was looking at the whole thing, and that's why I was a little bit concerned about expansion and those particular markets Electroneum is targeting, because if you got companies like Bitcoin Cash and Dash going in there, right? Uh, they're, they're going to, um, have all that set up with those vendors around there because they have experience with this and they have become quite efficient at it. So again, I would stress that Electroneer's approach to this, that they would need to move quickly on this. They would need to do this quickly, uh, because Once these people get acclimated to using these, these unbanked people, right? If it's a situation like Dash coming down there or Bitcoin Cash, they've already established and solved the banking issue, right? Because now they're banking with Dash and Bitcoin Cash. And that's the point I'm trying to make. So what would be very necessary, important, I think at this point is for Electroneum to really speed up the gears now, right? They're, they're moving pretty well, but you know, the time is of the essence for what they're trying to do in these regions because these other cryptocurrencies, they have a very similar expansion plan. They're essentially doing the very same thing, guys. And I'm thinking Ripple's going to get into this next. I'm thinking that Ripple's going to have to fall back on, uh, you know, uh, going into regions of the unbanked as well and trying to be this, this, this currency with them. Because after the other bank coins begin to get more established with any idea that we're just going to create our own cryptocurrency, I think XRP token is going to have to fall back on the idea of, well, you know, we were always this coin for the banks and the people. We're the people and the banks' coins, right? So their expansion is going to have to go back into, um, you know, individual holders using Ripple XRP token as a currency and then dealing with the banks that are left over, the smaller banks that they're going to be able to do business with because they're not going to be able to more likely do business with the larger banks because the larger banks are just going to go, well, we'll just create our own blockchain, right, and move our own have access and trust in our own trillions and billions of dollars. We're not going to hand that over to someone else. That doesn't make any sense, right? So that's where I'm at with it, guys. I'm still very excited about what Electroneum is doing. I'm worried about the time frame they're doing it within. Uh, you know, I think it's going to have to be a, um, a, a very clear-cut and understandable plan about how they plan to grow the Electroneum economy as far as how people come in and purchase up these phone minutes, uh, going from one city at a time. Yeah, it does work on an experimental level, provided that nobody else was going into the region. But it's going to be other people all around you with their cryptocurrencies trying to bank these people as well. And so, uh, things I liked about Electroneum, uh, from the beginning was that I felt they offered a very comprehensible, easy plan that made sense to people, and people would just jump on and say, okay, this device is so easy to use, it's so easy to move this crypto, that I'm going to go ahead and use it and jump in it. Uh, that's not quite what's happening as of yet, uh, and I don't know how long that onboarding will take exactly, but, uh, you know, it— I just think the project needs to be mindful of those potential situations going forward as far as the expansion. At the very least, I think this is still going to be a very valuable token that's going to hold a share in some of those markets. So that's the good part. That's the good part. Um, but, uh, just my full taking in of what we got here, I, I like it so far. Uh, I'm gonna be watching how well they move over the next few months with this, but That's all I want to say, guys. Quite a bit of information. Exciting times here in the cryptocurrency marketplace and going to be looking forward to what we get over the next few months. We're going to be looking at the price rise in Electroneum. Although I'm not expecting a big price rise in Electroneum. I'm still kind of looking at it as a gradual move up, guys. I'm not looking for big jumps and leaps in Electroneum based on this news as of yet. I know some people are, but I'm a bit bearish a little bit, right, in the market right now still in general. So I'm not looking for real big leaps out. Might see a little bit of spiking, but I don't expect a whole lot. I think when we're gonna see the real giant moves we're looking for is going to be when there is this huge demand market of people, these partnerships where these people are actually just buying all their phone minutes with Electroneum or a good portion of them, which will happen with the marketing as they go forward through spreading their marketing campaign throughout these regions, which is going to be key to target. Because the, the, the bottom line with all this, guys, is whatever was going to go down in the West with Electroneum, I feel like at this point in the game it's already went down. So now it's going to, it's going to depend a lot on the demand of who's buying this cryptocurrency and what's going on with that. And if that creates enough ruckus, yes, it's possible the West will jump on trying to take advantage of the price rises. They always do. but that initial ignition may have to start off somewhere else this time. But that's all I want to say, guys. Uh, if you like content like this, don't forget to like, subscribe. A few more days left in our Electroneum versus Ripple contest. If you haven't signed up yet to start collecting from our faucet, uh, perhaps you should do so, um, especially with everything going on in the news. You do get that spike and pick up a few extra Electroneum Tocas. But that's all I want to say in this video, guys. If you like content like this, don't forget like, subscribe, and until next time, take care.