And consider the advice of people who know the industry.

Received a mass-email from them just now.

After the security problems of the ICO they have taken a few days to safeguard their website - basically the system that allows ICO investors to withdraw their coins to offline wallets, as well as the mobile mining app system.

They then decided to bring on Hackerone, a software security company working with the Department of Defense, Coinbase, Spotify, etc. to help them test the system for any vulnerabilities. Hackerone is now busy testing and plan to test until early December.

It's true that most defenders of Electroneum are those with large investments. I myself have made a good investment and mined a truckload in the early hours of the blockchain. But with that said, I do believe in this coin. It has all the right ingredients to go viral and gain mass acceptance.

And since the strength of any currency lies in the number of users it has, this viral growth will enable it to grow with leaps and bounds.

Richard mentioned in his email that they plan to bring the system online within the first or second week of December.

Fingers crossed...

Actually nobody is forced to believe or invest in Electroneum. If you don't want it, just don't do it!

I am aware that there is a lot of FUD from monero lovers fearing that ETN might become a risk to there own investments.
There are also the complaints of the tech preachers who always want to have technical development in the middle of everything.

But I am sure that noone has to fear ETN. They will bring a lot of people from developing countries into the crypto market which will push every Monero wallet too.
and an innovation doesn't have to be pure technically. This is a huge experiment with a perma airdrop of coins to millions of people. Noone ever did it. Noone ever even thought of it. This is enough innovation for me. And I can't predict what will happen to exchange rates with this massive perma airdrop. But I am excited to watch it. I might lose my money I invested in it, but actually this is crypto. It is always a huge bet and a huge risk. That is what it makes it attractive to many people including myself.

Oh dear.  Harry Redknapp has deleted his Electroneum tweet and is distancing himself from the project.

Maybe the Maria Sharapova news has freaked him out.

Honestly, there’s too many rose-tinted glasses looking at this thing. There are some obvious questions that no-one has answered, like how giving coins to everyone is going to result in good intrinsic value, or why everyone is tolerating the wallet being offline for weeks (given that Ethermine EU went offline for a few hours and there was a massive ruckus) or how copying a codebase (not that there’s anything wrong with doing that) and some vague promises of mobile mining should result in a new coin?

The only thing I can see going for it is the massive hype and fanbase surrounding it might just be the one thing that saves it. It certainly won’t be it’s technical merit (you can’t dismiss technical in crypto, can you...). Anyway I have a little holding on that vague chance - I haven’t totally dismissed it, I’m just not buying into it as much as some of the big holders.

Nice to see some sensible debate on this.

Question.  What about Electroneum's plans makes you think it can succeed where the hundreds of other projects that have attempted to crack the smart phone market have failed?

I mean, there are literally hundreds of projects with mobile wallets that work well.  Bitcoin for one! Transaction times too slow?  How about Dash?  Crown?  The list is endless.

BTC is and always was a work-in-progress though, and frankly, I've heard many people refer to it more like 'digital gold' where it's a store of value rather than an instant payment system. One of the other coins can be the payment mechanism of the future.

None of these coins are perfect and I would definitely like to see something gain traction (preferably something I hold or mine) but Electroneum just seems to have been managed in such a cack-handed manner and the development team seem more interested in self-indulgent social media posts than development (seriously, launching merch and tying it in with charity seems like a low blow somewhat) - I've seen a few videos where Richard comes across as a bit of a bumbling buffoon rather than a technical genius too (um, do another take if you don't get it right the first time maybe)? They also haven't explained how they're going to achieve their goals, even if they want to put it in layman's terms, someone will want to see the technical implementation.

I don't think you can pre-install this on everyones' phones, this sounds like a botnet in the making and even if you somehow could, what's the value in absolutely everyone being able to 'mine' (I put it in quotes as it's not mining, it's some weird centralised token distribution thing which they have glossed over) something? If that could happen then I can't see it having much actual value if you just give the stuff to anyone 'smart enough' to buy a smartphone

Anyway, I'll wait and see. All I know is the mess with the launch is stuff they should have sorted before, not during and if it has to be during, then a hell of a lot quicker than they have. I almost dismissed Bitcoin before, I won't ever say something is useless or bad until I have the evidence but, from my end anyway, Electroneum definitely smells a bit off and you know what Occam's Razor says...

First, I will stop the quoting for now to make it more easy to follow the discussion which I am really enjoying! Thank you all for that.

I edited my first post with a link to a video about the app. Here again the link, so that you don't miss it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuoqZBp7B-E
Again, it is not a very well done video, but it gives you a very good idea about the potential. Absolutely worth the time to watch it.

In real world I am in IT for around 15 years now. I started as a system administrator and developed to IT project manager the last 5 years. From my experience one of the biggest problems is the complete underestimation of the complexity IT infrastructure has reached these days. Many people are just not able to overlook all the different challenges you are facing if your project is a bit bigger than making a word press blog with some pictures in it.
Additionally I had to deal with a lot of people from sales trying to convince me as a customer of their product. They promise you everything. It will be easy, it will be fast, everything is doable. And once you are making up a PoC you see that even the base functions you were asking for are not working as expected.
Because of that it is very unlikely that a serious company is sending you just a lonley sales guy these days. They are nearly always accompanied by a technical pre sales colleague just to prevent the customer from being too disappointed.

From this perspective I would say Richard is the proto type of the sales guy. He underestimated the size of the project, he could not stop himself from promising early release dates and he had no partner who told him the truth.

But that is not saying anything about the potential of the product. Actually I am feeling a lot better after he engaged Hackerone and started to come up with a (little) better time schedule.
It is a bit like when I became a father. When my first son was around the age of 4 it hit me once that this will last now for decades. It had been a more technical knowledge before.

What I want to say is that these technical delays are common in IT and it is not saying necessarily anything about the quality of a product.

I am not sure, but I would give often it to it a gimmick, unless you have cement proof.

I do not know what country's electronic media you are talking about. It would be good to be specific. In ym country I have not heard about any such information. I still think this is a scam and I would be careful. It does not matter whether they have raised money or not. It takes time and perseverance to become good!!!!