Electroneum (ETN) is just a well executed marketing campaign, low chances of it succeeding

Since my last post about Electroneum was, as expected, met with hostility, insults, character assassination and emails to the chief editor of Captainaltcoin asking him to fire me, I decided to do another post, but this time, I will just relay what the community has to say about them.

Please don’t try to coerce the editor in chief to boot me as he won’t do it. I have joined this publication under the strict rule of independence in my work and in expressing my views and research without censorship.

Here is a nice introduction to ETN:

“Its because they are all paid shills getting people to swarm to any reddit thread that puts them in negative light…  Go look at their subreddit. Thats how a shill infested subreddit look like. No scepticism, no debates, no substantial information, just braindead praising.

Electroneum is a project made by a marketing company. They know shit about coding. They just fork whatever code is out there. The team was forced several times to get outsiders to code for them because they didnt know how to fix their own mess. They tried to implement ASIC resistance in their code, they didnt have enough miners that supported the project with GPUs, so the team were forced to pay for cloud mining to finish the fork lol, and then suddenly flip flopped 180 and said, ASIC is the future and gave a big FU to the remaining GPU miners that supported this shitcoin.

Electroneum is a headless chicken, trying to do what countless of other projects have already accomplished, with an army of paid shills, and a blockchain thats way way slower than many other projects that does the same, only much better.”

Ok, so a project run by very skilled marketers that used one of the most revolutionary marketing techniques that was introduced with the rise of the internet: affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing refers to an advertising model where advertisers pay a commission to third-party publishers and content providers for traffic or sales generated by the latter.

The concept has been around for a long time, but is only now gaining prominence as the internet becomes more widely available and its ecosystem is better understood. Electroneum guys ran this perfectly.

Marketers rarely know code. Electroneum apparently had no competent developer on their team but promised to hire “the best developers, they know the best developers”. Check this out:

“Electroneum’s methodology is “fork and forget.” A classic example of how moronic that is can be found right here.

They basically didn’t even look at the codebase they forked, and as a hilarious result, they included an unnecessary patch for an early attack on Monero. This patch would have broken Electroneum completely if it had actually gotten to that point (block 202612.)

As a side note, I received some death threats from people in their community for exposing that bug. :/

u/KnifeOfPi2

Below is a tiny fraction of the pest atmosphere created by ETN buzz prior to their ICO:

All the marketing around it, all the hype and all the exciment was driven by FALSE CLAIMS.

“ If you messed bitcoin, you can get this one”

“ If you want to make a ton of money, but don’t know how, get in on this”

“ If you want to become a millionaire from crypto, this is your ticket”

The truth is on Facebook and in Google, they are all pushing this narrative.

Because of this, the support is fake, it’s not real.

All most 80% of these people don’t have a clue, they do understand the point of the coin and they will not know what to do when and if it hits the exchanges.”

They even advertised on billboards:

Who is behind the project?

Here is more about the background of ETN founders:

“Electroneum is founded by an experienced digital marketer, Richard Ells. Richard Ells is director of Retortal, a UK based digital marketing agency. He has a wealth of experience in digital based businesses but no evidence or experience in cryptocurrencies or blockchain technologies.

Richard Ells is a digital entrepreneur who can execute an effective digital marketing strategy, this ties into his track record nicely. The insane hype and aggressive marketing surrounding Electroneum becomes clear when we understand more about the person in charge.

What I find interesting is that the Electroneum team is almost entirely formed of Retortal employees. Is Richard Ells using his personnel to create a team that convinces us into believing in trust and credibility? How do Retortal as a business operate with their own day-to-day duties now that Electroneum has obtained a $40m investment, 200k userbase and blockchain ready to go live in a week? Has focus been shifted from Retortal on to Electroneum?

What experience does this digital marketing team have with working with blockchain technologies? Are they just a bunch of glorified marketers who know the smell of online money by getting involved in what many think is the new ‘get rich quick’ scheme? Team profiles on the Electroneum website highlight achievements at degree level education but do not touch on industry or professional experience and achievements. There is little evidence to suggest that these people have the capabilities of operating a multi-million dollar digital currency.”

This post supplements the one from above nicely:

“I remember commenting on a post some time ago about Electroneum’s association with Healthy Living Products. If anyone is familiar with MLM companies like Amway, then be aware that there are so many similarities, especially when it comes to referral programs. This does not of course equate with a scam, since Amway and their ilk are legitimate companies with impressive strategies that keep them alive.

But if you need a reminder of what MLM does to crypto, look up OneCoin.”

BTW. OneCoin is one of the largest, busted scams in the young history of cryptocurrencies (and the competition for the top scam of crypto world is fierce).

Then we move onto their “mobile mining”. A bit confusing to use proof of work in the context of Electroneum, because

“The phones don’t do PoW anything, they are just given currency for nothing, it’s kind of proof-of-time but not really and there is no real effort involved on the part of the user. The whole point about PoW is it’s computationally infeasible to cheat the system.

I don’t buy this ‘introduce everyone’ concept, they haven’t explained how, it’s just a wishy-washy white paper and some bumbling videos on social media. Cryptocurrency is not for the average joe, it does require some intelligence and just handing it to anyone and everyone who owns a smartphone isn’t right. Also, the whole concept of air-dropping currency to phones requires centralisation, which is against one of the core ethos of crypto and if everyone has it, what is the real value?

Anyway, I could be wrong and that’s why I have a little bit of hashpower pointed at it. I’ll wait and see and I’m happy to have a reasoned debate over it. If you can explain exactly how the app will work and be managed I’m, honestly, all ears.”

Of course, the ETN shiller he was responding to never resurfaced again since he was trotting out the vague claims someone told/paid him to do. Once someone wanted to enter real debate with him, it was beyond his duty/knowledge scope and he made himself scarce.

There is more, much more to say about Electroneum. I will probably do another post about it in the upcoming period. I want to highlight again that I don’t claim this project is a scam but it does appear to be a splendid marketing campaign launched in perfect timing. The team behind the project might really invest the $40 million of their raised funds and really develop something but since it is unclear what they actually want to develop, it is hard to expect they will succeed.

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Damian Booker
Damian Booker

First thing to know about Damian is - he HATES shitcoins and has declared a war on them! Damian is a bitcoin hodler since early 2013. He used to mine Ethereum back in the day as well. Nowadays he likes to discuss bitcoin and its potential influence on the society organisation and governance. Damian hates fraudulent projects and his mission is to shed light on the maggoty scammers that have invaded the crypto space with their zero-value projects.

24 Comments
  1. This article reminds me of the scorpion who asked a frog to carry it across a river. The frog hesitates, afraid of being stung, but the scorpion argues that if it did so, they would both drown. Considering this, the frog agrees, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When the frog asks the scorpion why, the scorpion replies that it was in its nature to do so.

    As in Aesop’s fable of The Farmer and the Viper, there the snake’s reply indicates that what is fundamentally vicious will not change.

    “The more successful this becomes the more haters you’re going to have…when groups or products start getting attacked, that’s when I become interested in them.” – Grant Cardone

  2. Most incoherent article I ever read. It’s like the fake news that only talk bad about Trump while totally ignoring the good things he does for his country and people. Easy bashing but nothing substantial. Booo.

  3. Lol 🙂 .
    Still amused on how much hate etn gets from thos sh!t website. Remember back in spring an article said etn will worth 0 after the fork.
    You du*b fu**ers. And how can u say is like a headless chicken or etn team has no idea what to do with the project. You are nothing but a fag hater and this website supports btc only and 2-3 top alts.
    Where i agree with you its only the part with censorship, nothing else.

  4. Being run by a marketing company is a great thing not a disadvantage. Look at all great coins how they are losing their value bec they are running by ediots how only know coding

  5. If you think the community is full of paid shillers that don’t focus on the idea, then you’ve beeb watching the wrong place… The plan is literally just about all we talk about and is the reason it motivates people in high numbers to get involved. As much selling pressure we get from the premine/airdropped mobile miner coins and ASICs conbined, it’s actually holding oretty well btw. Plus many of these coins are free, so think about the sell walls veing created by other coin supporters taking advabtage of the app. The prices in these narkets don’t reflect a true value anyway as none of these projects are quite ready yet just yet and are almost entirely speculative. Honestly though, this article looks like an angry child wrote it, so you might want to work on that a bit You should search through Youtube for info on plans and ideas through supporters like All About Tech and others. Forums like reddit tends to have people that are salty about everything that isn’t in their holdings and will post anything even with zero knowledge on a subject. There is hardly any1 more transparent than electroneum has been. If you have questions, just ask..BEFORE deciding to maje a whole post on your feelings about it.

  6. Click bait is all this is.

  7. Click bait, fake news, or just an angry reject that lost some quick money. Either way he shouldn’t be fired for belligerent journalism, he should be promoted. The internet is full of assholes with nonsensical opinions. The exceptional ones should be rewarded. Great work whatever online publisher that I could shill two shit about.

  8. man this DARMIEN HOCKER really is on his period. you need a tampon? I can sell you one, for 300000000 ETN.
    just who the hell start cursing when reviewing a coin?
    where is your proof of the shillers? Name one of your fav coins out there that is mobile friendly,
    name one of your favorite coins out there that out clean when there is a setback and goes right back to work. name one of your favorite coin that is genuinely communicating with its community?
    name one of you favorite coins out there that is KYC/AML compliant
    really this DERMIAN Hoocker is just only looking for attention, like a sad little baby.
    JUST BECAUSE YOU HOLD BTC AND WORSHIP IT ENOUGH TO INSERT ITS COINS INTO YOUR ASCHOLE, IT DOESNT MEAN THAT YOUR OPINION IS RIGHT, IT DOESNT MEAN THAT YOU ARE THE “I KNOWNEVERYTHING” GUY.
    CLICKBAIT IS WRITTEN ALL OVER THAT TINY HOOCKER FACE OF YOURS. I WONT WISH YOU DEATH, ILL JUST WISH YOU TO BE IGNORE BY THE WHOLE CRYPTOSPACE OVERALL. YOUR BOSS SHOULD START THINKING ABOUT WHETHER HE VALUES INTEGRITY AND HIGH MORALE OR THE CLICKBAIT MONEY, WHICH SHOWS HE’S JUST INTERESTED IN MONEY AND NOT CRYPTOS.
    YOU OBVISOULY ARE ON A PERSONAL MISSION, A VENDETTA AGAINST ETN BECAUSE YOUR AFRAID OF ITS AMBITION. DID WE HIT A NERVE LAST TIME YOU WROTE AN ARTICLE? THIS WEBSITE IS LOSING CREDIBILITY THE MOMENT ONE OF ITS WRITERS TAKE IT ON A PERSONAL LEVEL TO SHOOT DOWN A PROJECT…..
    LET ME ASK YOU CAPTAINALTCOIN, WHY IS IT THAT ONLY YOUR WEBSITE IS THE ONLY ONE TALKING SHIIIT ABOUT ETN? EVERY SINGLE OTHER ONES ARE SEEING AND RECOGNIZING ITS POTENTIAL.
    at the end of the day dermian hoocker can write whatever he wants, but he is only digging the grave of his fake, experience-lacking, unprofessional journalistic career.
    no deep research, no real proof, attacking communities…..what does that sounds like……Oh yea! FAKE NEWS AKA FOX NEWS. Hey dermian hocker you should give it a try at fox news. its right in your alley.

  9. It’s clear this guy got into crypto during the bull run and lost his ass XD

  10. Someone lost their ass this year and now they’re salty. This bear market is perfect for shaking out the weak hands like the author of this article

  11. No mention of instant payment. Or future plans. In fact seems all information was at least a year old????
    Disappointing at best…part of the reason all of crypto is down is stuff like this all the fighting between projects…projects should be working together for mass adoption then try to out compeat each other with better tech. Not fight like children….disgusting

  12. Come on folks…is this really the response to this article? If so it proves the guy’s point!

    As an ETN holder, I have been a supporter since the ICO, but every time someone raises thoughtful questions or even questions the strategy, they get these types of immature responses. Personally, I’m worried that even with all of the marketing going on, ETN still hasn’t been picked up by any big exchanges (minus the recent HITBTC listing) and now that the big regulators (SEC) and exchanges (NYSE-ICE) are starting to move toward institutionalizing the market, ETN will get left behind.

    For example, BAKKED will be going live Q1 2019 and will institute physically-backed futures for Bitcoin and a few other ALTCOINS. Bitmain is creating a cryptocurrency index for alt coins which will provide pricing discovery for the ETFs that are coming. The prices for the index will come from 11 of the largest exchanges and ETN is not listed on one! Interestingly, notwithstanding the hype and strong retail interest, the market value of ETN is going no where. The big “moon” that folks see in early 2019 is really for Bitcoin and those larger alts that have institutional buy-in. Even though I’ve gone heavy in ETN, I am worried sometimes that I’ve backed the wrong horse.

    I don’t personally care about the shillers…if they are willing to put themselves out these, they should get compensation. But come on folks, let’s start asking the tough questions of the ETN team so we get the rewards we all so richly deserve.

    Start thinking big picture!!!!!

  13. Interesting article just as you describe the whole thing was over hype characterized with false promises. The belief and trust that will never come to light. ETN promise to make people rich over night and crashed at launch took over six months to resurface without a proper solution. All I see about ETN is big advertising in bid places, but the coin is not gaining any recognition in the market place.

  14. Marketing makes the world go round. Bill gates did not have a superior operating system but he was the most successful at marketing it.

  15. This is the most uninformed bullshit 2nd grade-ish, no knowledge base, shit writing i have ever read! I literally think I lost thousands of brain cells just reading this bullshit

  16. Etn is a legal huge scam. Etn scams people using the pre mined coins and selling those coins for personal profit. Etn has been reported more than 1000 times to uk authorities for running a scam scheme. Etn is nothing more tham a monero clone.a shit coin without any future.. a failed project just like his poor businessman boss mr. ells.

  17. I’m not ETN shiller nor fanboy, I remain neutral on the project. but I agree this is a poorly researched and written article. Basically copied and pasted social media trope and called tried to pass it off as a research essay. lmao.

  18. Taking a look on how many people is on the ETN side, i think you are in the totally wrong way. So, etn get in this moment the best mobile projects, probably the best ideas on the market and this will drive Electroneum so far.
    We have lots of enemies right now. Nice, means we are on the right boat. Keep on writing about etn please. It gives us lot of exposure. Thanks.

  19. Haha I just always find the replies to these types of articles entertaining, if not a little sad. Crypto holders/traders are often some of the angriest, childish, craziest of people. They can’t handle ANY view that isn’t EXACTLY like their own, and when faced with a different view, or with truths they don’t like they devolve into wild animals and start name calling and ranting because they have no ability to have an intelligent debate, or, show any intelligence at all. Thank you for the entertainment and congratulations to ~75% of you for showing your ignorance.

    • Yes – the more scammy the project is, the more childish comments. ETN, XVG, SUB, Apollo etc – I hope they are just paid bots, can’t come to believe these are real opinions and “argumentation”.

  20. Just stumbled across this.

    Have to say, the most honest (but brutal) piece I ‘ve seen by a journo.

    Lets see how far ETN have come since it’s inception:

    Launched in Nov 2017 – Wallets locked due to alleged hack (no one claimed the hack), took months for release of wallets again.
    Bug found by Danile666 (google danile666 electroneum, and it should be the top post), no bounty paid, bug ignored for months.
    Whitepaper is nothing what the (charity) coin it is now.
    Not one gaming partner on board.
    Not one mobile partnership on board.
    HitBTC listing delayed by approx 12months
    Originally $30.00 stated free coins per month (then changed to $3.00), which no one in a non 3rd world country gets.
    Alleged user numbers (3.2mill) is now inaccurate as declared by Ells himself.
    Every single timeline is a failure.
    2 major fork screw ups (with a big FU to GPU miners)
    A big FU to KnifeofPi/Starmute even after he helped them save the coin from failure
    Copied Monero code, stripped it later of it’s privacy functions, applied KYC, which the unbanked (their ‘new’ target market) have difficulty registering for due to not having bank accounts.
    Launching a ‘new’ PoR algo to their coin closing all mining from the public, miners only allowed on their network with ETN’s say so, making this the most ‘Centralized’ coin in existence.
    Launching phone top-ups in S.Africa, Turkey & Brazil, however, the 2 latter ones are not with actual phone networks, done via a 3rd party, who is taking a massive cut of commission for the privilege.
    Not doing due diligence regarding their upcoming GigFail, sorry, GigFair, whereas they now cannot use the word ‘Gig’ as Fiverr have it trademarked. So ‘Anytasks’ is now formed, was meant to be launched end Sept 2019, now delayed till Q1 2020 (bear in mind that could be upto 31st March)

    Unlike the other comments, who state the op has no credible evidence, I offer anyone to debate any of the above, with actual facts/proof that anything said above is false……I’ll wait!

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