Ever purchased a product from a website before, and received credit points on your e-wallet or debit card/credit card? Ones you can never seem to use? There’s a certain amount of benefits attached to those credits. But there doesn’t seem a way to use those points or credits because there is no product which will completely liquidize and utilize those points.
The OmiseGo Team had introduced a very interesting concept of a white label e-wallet operating on smart contracts using the Ethereum blockchain technology. What it supposedly does is liquidize the value of assets held in the form of flying miles, credit card points, grocery card points, USD, euros, loyalty points. Converting these multiple currencies and credits into ERC20 tokens that can be used to purchase units of OMG, or to convert it into any currency in the world.
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Our Take
OmiseGo’s goal is to become the first absolute decentralized asset exchange in the world, and to remove the resistance that comes from conversion of assets in one currency to another. Their motto is ‘bank the unbanked’ and that is exactly what they plan to do with their white label e-wallet; liquidize any unused asset possessed by people so that they may spend it. For example: you have 7000 unused flying miles you’ve been credited with because you’ve travelled frequently for the past year, but you have no use for those flying miles unless you want to use it for air tickets. These assets remain unused until they are exchanged for liquidity and that is what OmiseGo hopes to achieve, to create liquidity on closed ends and to eradicate the problems caused by slow payment processing.
History
Omise (The parent company of OmiseGo) was founded in mid-2013 by Jun Hasegawa and Ezra Don Harinsut to establish a payment gateway online to offer payment processing solutions to cater to different business needs. The idea in their minds was to bridge the gap between online stores and shoppers in Thailand. Due to lack of payment notifications, citizens of Thailand were subject to several fraudulent transactions online. However, the idea grew to a global level where the founders discussed to bring into existence a payment processing method with no limitations integrated into an e-wallet.
With the help and support of Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood (co-founders of Ethereum), the founders of Omise initiated the concept of a white label e-wallet based on the open-source public blockchain Ethereum. Mid-2017 brought about the ICO of OmiseGo and acquired a total funding of $ 25.4 million. Among the investors were both the co-founders of Ethereum (Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood). Mr. Buterin is even part of the advisory board of OmiseGo and sees great potential in its future. After all it is created with the intention of making online payment processing not only hassle free but also free of limitations.
People trading OmiseGo will be able to accept payments in BTC, ETH, USD, Euros without the need of knowing what currency it is. Clients can even make payments in multiple currencies. This could be very economical, since there will be no hidden charges, processing fee etc. OmiseGo is said to be the first coin to be using plasma.io framework to power it’s blockchain. In the fourth quarter of 2017, Vitalik Buterin visited the OmiseGo team to teach the team about Plasma and how it can power high-scale decentralized operations. The e-wallet is said to go live within the 1st quarter of 2018.
OmiseGo is one of the top 20 cryptocurrencies trading right now and the sole reason is the extremely attractive proposition of it’s e-wallet. The OmiseGo coin (OMG) holds the sixth largest market cap, exceeding $1 billion among coins based on the Ethereum blockchain technology. McDonalds Thailand partnering up with Omise in August 2017 boosted its value up to $16 per unit. However, OMG has traded at a peak of $ 25.7 per unit on 14th January, 2018. OMG has shown an upward bull trend in its fluctuations and looks good on paper as an investment due to its parent company’s promise to create a world standard with its new technology backed up by Stripe powering its anticipated white label e-wallet to ease out payment processing and transactions across the globe.
An open source SDK is the most unique selling proposition offered by the company Omise and their cryptocurrency OMG. Aside from aiming to be the most economical, hassle free and fast e-wallet you’ve been waiting for, and being the fastest p2p (peer to peer) transaction medium in the globe, there is much more to OmiseGo which makes it a wise investment in 2018.
#1 Proof of Stake (PoS) model
Making investments more beneficial, OMG will transform from Proof of Work (PoW) cryptocurrency to a Proof of Stake (PoS) model. What this means is that users of the e-wallet can purchase a few tokens and they will get returns for holding those tokens, which means that investing in OMG will have overhead gains too.
#2 Stripe
In 2014, Stripe – a major company in cloud computing had backed up Bitcoin, after which its value gradually went up. This happened because reluctant investors gained confidence when such reputable organizations backed up a new kind of security/asset that nobody had complete knowledge about. Today, Stripe is the leading name around the globe when it comes to cloud computing; and it’s backing up OmiseGo. 2018 looks good for the currency OMG, assuming everything they have promised is delivered on schedule.
#3 Hassle-free Currency Conversions
Holding fiat currencies (USD, Euros etc,) is of primary importance when you buy BTC or ETH coins. But OMG wants to eliminate such limitations and even accept multiple currencies as payment for exchange of coins and also allow you to hold coins in fiat value in your wallet. You will be able to trade multiple coin pairs against OMG and even other currencies. OMG does not pose competition at this front but rather aims to eliminate it by being the first open-environment when it comes to payments.
#4 Plasma
With the introduction of Plasma, OmiseGo will be able to process payments at least 400 times faster than merchants like Alipay, Paytm or even Visa. According to globalcoinreport.com, OmiseGo will process excess of a million transactions in a second, compared to 24000 transactions a second compared to Visa, MasterCard etc.
#5 Unbanking the Banked
OmiseGo’s motto is ‘unbanking the banked’. What they imply by that is many third world countries have a very weak currency and holding money in banks is an expensive affair for citizens of such countries. Especially because of the several hidden charges revolving around transactions and transferring money to another account, banking becomes a luxury rather than a need for such customers. OmiseGo’s aim is to eliminate the need of banks, and to act as a bank for people who need to transfer, withdraw and hold money without paying various charges that take a toll on their capital.
#6 Revolutionising payments worldwide
Bitcoin became a red-hot cryptocurrency because it was the first of its kind. It brought about a revolution where people could hold assets on which the government had no control. Ethereum shot up in value because it offered the first open-source blockchain technology.
Do you see the pattern here?
In 2018, there are hundreds of coins to choose from, but a good investment is a coin which has multiple applications in the future and brings something new to the table. A coin backed up by a reputable organisation (such as Stripe) inspires confidence for investors. A good coin should also offer something more than merely being a fluctuating virtual currency with various highs and lows. The associated service//technology could be a more advanced blockchain technology or even a modern e-wallet with less complications.
But as long as a coin brings revolutionary technology to the table, it is more likely to rise up in value. 2018 might be the year for OmiseGo due of its white label e-wallet which promises to make transactions, transfers and payment processing hassle-free, lightning fast and basically revolutionizes how payment merchants work.
Every cryptocurrency is a volatile investment; but should you consider OmiseGo as a viable investment option? The product promised by OmiseGo is the main factor driving the popularity of the cryptocurrency OMG; and that product is their white label e-wallet based on Ethereum’s open-source blockchain. It is expected to be introduced in the first quarter of 2018. However, there are other factors as well that inspire confidence in potential investors.
– A world class cloud computing organisation called Stripe is backing up OmiseGo’s project and some of Stripe’s previous clients are Facebook and Bitcoin.
– The two co-founders of Ethereum; Gavin Wood and Vitalik Buterin are part of the advising committee of OmiseGo. he duo are very optimistic about the future applications OMG will brings. They also happen to be existing investors in the OmiseGo project and are currently in possession of OMG coins.
– Another factor that inspires confidence in investors is it brings to the table the USP of being the only non-banking entity to eradicate the need of banking in the distant future. With time, its audience should hopefully see the benefits of storing money in private OmiseGo wallets than elsewhere.
OMG is not only a cryptocurrency, but also the next step in financial independence for many, as it frees your assets from any overhead or hidden charges and instead remunerates investors who hold their stakes in the wallet.
If OmiseGo carries out all the promises it has made with its business model, it will be a wise investment for 2018. Another factor that inspires confidence among investors is that OmiseGo rejected a little upward of $ 100 million during their initial funding and accepted only $25 million to begin the process to initiate their DAO.
OmiseGo had also partnered with McDonald’s in Thailand and it is anticipated that it will spread to all branches worldwide. That accounts for all the positive factors that we think you should consider and go ahead and invest in OMG.
However, there are drawbacks and risk factors you should be aware of. Several Cryptocurrencies have been introduced with revolutionizing business ideas and acquired millions of dollars during their ICO (Initial Coin Offering). However, most never followed it up with concrete results, and disappeared with the funding. OmiseGo has made very big promises; so far as to state that it will change the way payments are processed worldwide, but they haven’t yet initiated their blockchain on an open source for programmers worldwide to view it and examine it. There is little evidence of their project being worked on, except for the continuous tweets they posted when Vitalik Buterin visited their office to educate them about Plasma and its applications that will increase the rate of transactions online per second by about 400%.
Omise (The parent company of OMG) is a reliable online payment gateway that has operated well in South-east Asia for the better part of a decade and has been handling p2p (peer to peer) transactions from the very beginning and that is a major factor which inspires confidence among investors. It would be easy for these guys to integrate these transactions into a blockchain and combine it with Plasma to deliver the desired product which people are looking forward to. Omise plans to integrate its existing services into OmiseGo which expands the array of future applications, making it the only decentralized exchange to have the benefits of a centralized exchange.
OmiseGo is a one of a kind decentralized exchange but there are other such payments systems which pose competition to it.
1. REQ (Request Network): The REQ is another decentralized payment portal based on Ethereum’s blockchain technology that can be used to request and receive payments online. It uses a three-tier architecture to power its ecosystem and uses ECR-20 tokens knows as REQ tokens. A few REQ tokens have to be paid as fees to convert the existing currency to another coin. The fee depends on the current exchange rate of REQ tokens against the tokens of the alternative coin you wish to purchase. This is where REQ falls behind OMG; as OMG aims to eradicate all processing fee associated with conversion of assets from one currency to another.
2. KNC (Kyber Network Crystal): Working on a similar principle as REQ, Kyber Network uses Ethereum blockchain technology to convert one cryptocurrency to another in exchange for a small fee. KNC is the coin associated with Kyber Network and it has great future potential as it has Vitalik Buterin on its advisory board. However, they handle p2p transactions mostly and do not have an e-wallet that is as revolutionary as the OMG wallet.
3. NEO: NEO is another cryptocurrency backed up by a platform which utilizes smart contracts and promotes decentralised exchange of currencies. It does not offer a wide array of applications like OMG but works along similar lines and fluctuating trends have been observed for this coin around the $ 75 mark. This currency cannot seem to cross that threshold but if secondary activity does influence it, then NEO looks like a good investment in the longer run. However, with OMG’s vast array of applications, especially revolving around eradicating payment processing fees altogether, OMG is not a bad investment for the long run either. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile investments and only time can tell which coin performs better in the longer run. But as far as predictions for 2018 are concerned, NEO’s token value is assured to move across an upward trend. However, OMG is sure to put up fierce competition as it sets out to revolutionize payment and capital holding systems across the world.