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.
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.
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.
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
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.