OneCoin Ltd. is a global company whose main product is OneCoin, a digital currency. OneCoin is a young currency and not yet open for trading to everyone. The company’s goal is to popularize the currency so that users can soon use it to make payments and to transfer money around the world. Read more about their story here!
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The Story of OneCoin
1. The Story of OneCoin
Background
OneCoin Ltd. is a global company whose main product is
OneCoin, a digital currency. OneCoin is a young currency and not
yet open for trading to everyone. The company’s goal is to
popularize the currency so that users can soon use it to make
payments and to transfer money around the world.
The company was founded in 2014 by entrepreneur Ruja
Ignatova of Sofia, Bulgaria. It has offices in Bulgaria, Hong Kong
and Dubai. Key markets are in Europe, southeast Asia, Africa and
Latin America.
Initial Public Offering (IPO)
On January 15, 2017, OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova announced
a plan to list OneCoin on a major Asian stock exchange by the
second quarter of 2018. That’s because “more than 70% of
OneCoin users are in Asia,” she said.
Under the plan, current owners of OneCoin will receive
certificates known as OFCs (WHAT DOES THAT STAND
FOR?) that can be converted into shares of the listed company. It
would represent the first time that a cryptocurrency business
becomes a publicly-traded company.
Early adopters of OneCoins are expected to get “special
privileges” in the form of a better exchange rate, when compared
to those who sign up later, Dr. Ignatova said. She added that the
company was running a special promotion in February that would
offer double the number of exchangeable certificates for the
number of OneCoins held.
2. OneCoin and its rivals
OneCoin is not an altcoin — a Bitcoin clone with slight alterations
– but a cryptocurrency with a very different structure. There are
three major differences.
First, while Bitcoin is based on a decentralized system, OneCoin
is not.
Second, Bitcoin was created anonymously and has anonymous
ownership. OneCoin’s ownership is public and its system is based
on KYC – know your customer – rules.
Transparency
OneCoin incorporates Know Your Customer (KYC )rules. These
rules require money-related services to be able to identify all their
customers, and self-report ‘suspicious activity’ that can be signs
of anything from money laundering to terrorist financing. By
comparison, Bitcoin and many altcoins operate entirely
anonymously and have therefore raised concerns among
regulators who want to stop cryptocurrencies being used for
criminal activities.
By contrast, OneCoin’s KYC policy identifies the user and verifies
the identity. The information requested includes name, residential
address, date of birth and country of birth. Every user must go
through a verification procedure whenever his or her identity
information is changed. This ensures that transfers made using
the protocol are never anonymous.
Monthly audits
Third, the OneCoin blockchain is audited every month by an
external, independent auditor. WHO? The goal is to assess the
consistency of the blockchain and to verify that no coins are
mined outside of the blockchain.
3. So far, each audit has verified that the blockchain is consistent
and every transaction is true. LINK TO AUDIT REPORT The
audits also confirmed that the number of mined coins as
displayed on the OneCoin homepage is the actual, real-time data,
and that there are neither more nor less OneCoins than those
stated.
With 120 billion coins already mined, VERIFY and the creation a
centralized model, OneCoin hopes to become the biggest reserve
cryptocurrency worldwide.
Mining
So how do OneCoin users mine and use coins? As with bitcoin,
the OneCoin cryptocurrency is not pre-mined. It means that
miners create the market.
To use OneCoin cryptocurrency a user first needs to create an
account at OneCoin. Typically they then purchase one of several
financial education packages from OneAcademy (a related
company that offers a suite of e-learning courses) which then
gives users promotional tokens, which can then be used to mine
OneCoins.
Users can only gain access to mine OneCoins if they go through
OneAcademy. However, not everyone has to buy in to the
system. In September 2016, for example, 96 OneLife members
earned tokens in one week without personally buying any
products or services.
Some users go one step further and join OneLife, a network
marketing company that offers members a chance to profit when
they refer and sell the company’s educational products to others.
Thus, OneLife members are not obliged to recruit other members,
and there is no mandated buy–in requirement. The remuneration
system is not based on the enrolment of new participants.
4. The OneLife Network’s terms and conditions bind all members
who wish to trade as OneLife representatives (IMAs). IMAs are
contractually obliged to follow ethical rules set out in the Terms
and Conditions. https://www.onelife.eu/en/ IMAs who fail to follow
the ethical rules can have their contracts terminated.
Once a OneCoin account is opened, a user receives e-mail
verification, plus confirmation that an e-wallet has automatically
been created for the person. The user then has instant access to
easier, faster, safer and low-cost financial services. For example,
OneCoin can process a transfer in a minute from any part of the
world to another.
However, if a client wants full access to all OneCoin offers, the
person must go through a KYC application process.
Next steps
Currently, OneCoin users can mine about 60,000 coins in all
pools, or a maximum of 1.44 million coins per day. As of October
2016, OneCoin began using a ramped-up blockchain technology
to eventually enable the mining of 120 billion coins per block per
minute – a big jump from the previous 2.1 billion coins mined
every ten minutes. VERIFY Since a cryptocurrency’s value is
determined entirely on demand and supply, the larger volume
could help to create long term stability in the currency.
Currently, OneCoin cannot be traded on public exchanges such
as Coinbase or Coinfloor because it is a young currency and not
yet open for trading to everyone. For now, only members of the
OneLife Network can mine and trade in the coins.
The company’s expectation is that once the goal of 80% mined
coins is achieved – which it forecasts could happen in the next
24-to-36 months – users will be able to publicly trade OneCoins
as they do bitcoins, for example. At that time, the company also
intends to release the source code for its blockchain. VERIFY
5. Customer base
OneCoin currently has over two million members, and the
company’s goal is to increase that number to 10
million. VERIFY It also hopes to sign on one million merchants
within the next two years. The new and more powerful blockchain
technology that was recently put in place is designed to make it
easier for merchants to receive payments in a timely manner and
thus help create a mass market for OneCoin.