Covid has brought misery and anguish to a huge swathe of people and we’ve all had to learn to adapt to new ways of living and working. Hopefully, this won’t be for too much longer. On a brighter note, the lockdowns made us look at how we recruit and work, and by embracing working from home, we’ve expanded our team to a much larger geography, which has meant we’ve been able to recruit some awesome new team members and grow the team faster.
Our TV campaign for AnyTask/Electroneum has gone live on lots of well-known channels – and you’ll see an update about that further down the email – but if you’ve not watched it yet – take a look here.
2021 is going to be a very positive year indeed, but before we talk about this year, let’s take a quick look at what happened last year…
A quick look at 2020 for Electroneum
It wasn’t all doom and gloom. In November, we celebrated our three-year anniversary, whilst earlier in the year we surpassed four million users worldwide. We introduced electricity top-ups to the app (now available in nine African countries), as well as mobile top-ups in more than 160 countries worldwide. We joined some influential trade associations, CryptoUK and Blockchain for Europe, teaming up with the likes of Coinbase, Binance, Cardano, and eToro. And we drastically overhauled our token economics; reducing inflation by 75%, scheduling block halving events every four years, and pledging to maintain ETN’s token inflation rate at less than 2%.
We also saw massive interest from other parts of the crypto space. Meconcash integrated ETN into thousands of ATMs across South Korea, whilst LockTrip.com chose us to be their very first collaboration, providing our users with the ability to spend ETN across 2.1 million hotels, flights, and accommodation. And our board of advisors and advocates grew considerably since its introduction in 2019, adding five new members to the team alongside David Bull CBE, former UNICEF and Amnesty International director, these include:
Quantum Economics CEO and former eToro senior market analyst, Mati Greenspan
Award-winning crypto journalist and prolific writer, Jillian Godsil
Hosts of the Bad Crypto Podcast, Joel Comm and Travis Wright
CEO of Cointelligence and famous ‘Scam Buster’, On Yavin
We also took our first step into gaming with the likes of leading blockchain game Splinterlands, and global hosting company HostHavoc, both of which now accept ETN. And more recently, On Yavin pulled together an incredible collaboration between Electroneum and one of the leading World of Warcraft Guilds, offering ETN Rewards to those in the guild who perform well. And let’s not forget our very first NFT, Electroman, which made its way to the popular trading card series Blockchain Heroes. This was something that I became aware of after it’s creation and I certainly did not suggest Electroman being based on myself … but hey, it looks like I need to visit the gym in 2021! I’m very impressed with AnyTask freelancer Neto Robatto, the quality of his illustration and animation was simply amazing, and again shows the quality of services available on AnyTask.com.
This leads us nicely on to last year’s most important development. The successful launch of AnyTask!
Live TV adverts
Launched into early-stage BETA back in late 2019, AnyTask.com became a serious alternative to the likes of Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer, and the first crypto-powered freelance marketplace to achieve true market traction. The platform has seen massive adoption so far, with more than 600,000 users and 30,000 active tasks available. The AnyTask team continues to build upon the platform every single day and have many new features and improvements well underway. And for those of you following our social channels prior to Christmas, you’ll be aware of our exciting next step.
AnyTask TV adverts are now airing live, appearing across several prominent TV networks, including CNBC, ESPN, MTV, BBC World News, Fox Business, and several others. This is truly a momentous moment for not only AnyTask, but the Electroneum project, becoming the very first crypto startup to feature prominently on live TV.
And remember, the purpose of this advert is to drive buyers to Anytask in markets where freelancing services such as Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer - a market currently valued in excess of $1.5 Trillion are already understood and commonly purchased. And with every purchase on the AnyTask platform, US dollars are exchanged into ETN via the open market, further driving ETN adoption.
Some eagle-eyed fans may have already seen the advert live, but if not, be sure to keep one eye on our social channels, as we’ll periodically post TV schedules. In the meantime, why not check out the advert on our YouTube channel.
In celebration of this, we’re giving away $100 worth of ETN to one lucky person who records the advert on their phone and uploads it to social media using the hashtag #CryptoOnTV. You can find out more here.
Why so excited about AnyTask?
Some people are failing to understand why we’ve built AnyTask and are so excited about it, so I’d like to explain…
There are literally thousands of cryptocurrency projects. Virtually all of them claim to solve the unbanked problem or make other claims about real-world use. Very few crypto projects (perhaps 5 or 10) have substantial real-world adoption. I’m glad to say that Electroneum DOES have substantial real-world adoption.
We achieved real-world usage by giving ETN a real-world value to the world's unbanked by teaming up with Mobile Operators and allowing users to buy airtime and data in over 160 countries. We’ve been expanding this to include electricity top-up in 9 countries and counting, and there are lots more things coming in 2021.
But remember, the unbanked of the world do not have access to crypto exchanges. So, although mobile top-ups gave ETN real-world value to a giant audience of people, the PROBLEM was we needed a way to get ETN back into the hands of the people who don’t have access to a crypto exchange. We therefore investigated many avenues but decided to build our own. This was a scary prospect because there have been other attempts to launch crypto-powered freelancer platforms and they have all failed to achieve any level of success.
AnyTask achieves many things:
It empowers unbanked users around the world with a new way to earn
It takes the ETN sold from mobile top-ups and gets it back into the hands of the users (a full ecosystem)
It showcases ETN and Electroneum to a global commercial audience as a new (easy) way to pay global users
It has allowed us to understand the commercial needs of a large-scale integration of ETN (loads of new API tools were needed for the commercial integration and these will be made available to others)
We have already seen an influx of new buyers and sellers with the first few TV ads going out, and our TV campaign ramps up as we learn which channels and which times work best. We have the ads running on quite a few channels this month, and more during the year. We will be running the campaign throughout 2021.
If we look at Fiverr, Upwork and Freelancer, they have been very successful and have annual turnover figures of tens of millions of dollars (over 100m for Fiverr), so if we can enter this market and gain just a 1% share (which is conservative with the success we’ve seen so far) we will see many millions of new transactions coming into the Electroneum ecosystem. Once we showcase the success of AnyTask I expect it to be much easier to convince other commercial operations of the benefits of utilising ETN as a payout method.
What else will 2021 hold for Electroneum?
Our support team has been experiencing high demand in recent weeks, which has been amplified by the success of our AnyTask TV advertising campaign. As a result of this increased demand, our communications have not been as frequent as we would like.
We understand that this may have caused you some concern but please rest assured that we are working on resolving support tickets as fast as we can.
If you have been affected by this, please ensure that you reply quickly to our support team when contacted to help resolve the issue.
Our TV adverts will undoubtedly unlock further opportunities, as will our ongoing success with AnyTask. In the coming weeks, we are also preparing for major developments in the connection between Electroneum and AnyTask, in order to better educate and onboard new users. This is particularly important where AnyTask is already attracting thousands of non-crypto users - we are truly witnessing real-world adoption here. And as new users come on board, they’ll be looking for places to spend. That’s why in the coming months, we plan to launch a new in-app marketplace that’ll host several new ways to spend ETN, in addition to expanding existing services to new regions over the coming months.
Finally, we’ll continue to expand awareness of the Electroneum project amongst the crypto space, including regular coverage through influencers, keynote speeches at key crypto events, and extensive PR coverage. We are also planning a new ambassadorial programme that’ll help foster daily conversations around the project and help attract new members from the wider crypto space.
We are so incredibly proud of our wonderful community, and we thank you for your continued support. Without your thousands of shares, comments, and likes, we truly wouldn’t be where we are today - so thank you! This is truly an exciting time to be part of such a nascent industry. We are still at the very beginning, and we have many years of exciting times ahead!
One last thing - I know many of you will already be following us on social media, but if you haven't already, please join us at the Electroneum and AnyTask community channels. Every follow, like, share and comment really do help the project, so thank you!
Electroneum Social Channels
AnyTask Social Channels
Thank you and I wish you a fantastic 2021!