IOTA on the Up, Up and Away!

Inside the dreaded cryptocurrency storm that has been revolving around various financial circles around the world, one currency, in particular, has stood out from the rest of the competition. The currency in question here is IOTA. Developed in June 2014, it has since featured as a staple on the top 20 ranked list of cryptocurrencies in the world, cementing its status as a legitimate and useful Blockchain-based project. IOTA has been designed specifically for the Internet of Things (IoT).

At the time of writing, IOTA’s prices arrived at a crossroads, as trading volumes have dwindled and stagnated, causing investors quite a bit of worry and confusion.

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/iota/

At one point, IOTA’s trading volumes stagnated at around 2000 BTC, which was valued at $24 million.

IOTA has been making news for both good and bad reasons, as news of partnerships and collaborations with major companies coincided with harsh criticism from within the crypto community. However, all said and done, the future prospects of IOTA are still incredibly high, based on the following reasons:

1. Partnership Announcements: Johan Jungwirth, a C-Level manager at Volkswagen had revealed that IOTA would be partnering with the company to work on a special automobile project. The fruition of this project has positively driven the collective market sentiment in favor of IOTA, thereby keeping its price at higher levels.  Besides the automotive industry, other sectors have also partnered with IOTA to reap the benefits. For instance, on 22^nd February 2018, it was revealed that IOTA is in talks with establishing a partnership with the world famous company, Bosch.
2. Improvements in Technology: One way IOTA has assured users of a high-level functionality is the upgraded Trinity Wallet. The Trinity Wallet which has been in the development phase for an extended period of time is close to being released officially. Improvements include the addition of a user-friendly interface, introducing 2-factor authentication features as well as releasing separate variants for desktops and mobile users.
3. Tangle is the Future: Unlike the majority of other cryptocurrencies, IOTA does not use Blockchain. They have come up with their own model, Tangle. Unlike Blockchain, Tangle does not require miners to create new tokens and to validate transactions. This is because all IOTA tokens have been pre-mined. Thus the onus of validating transactions is on the users themselves. This dramatically reduces the transaction fees as well as the overall processing time of transactions. This is a welcome feature, as many members of the crypto community do not favor longer processing time and steep fees as in the case of other coins.
4. Smart Contracts Introduction Rumor: The main driving force between price levels in the cryptocurrency market is investor sentiment. So quite naturally, the rumor of the introduction of a new feature is greeted with a degree of hype surrounding the project. Such is the case for IOTA, which is rumored to introduce smart contracts functionality shortly. The rumor has its roots in social media forum Twitter, where some users began posting about a possible beta testing of IOTA’s new smart contract platform. However, this has not yet been confirmed by any members of the core IOTA team, adding to the speculation.

IOTA and Its Future

In spite of the small amount of negative publicity that IOTA has been receiving, including rampant criticism from the Digital Currency Group and the Digital Currency initiative at MIT, the IOTA team is confident that IOTA will perform well. According to them, the future of IOTA lies in catering to specific needs and not just another gimmick in the market. This is reiterated by the fact that IOTA raises money through public fundraising campaigns which are organized by the supporters themselves. The team also believes in maintaining a high level of transparency with its investors regarding the project developments, updated schemes etc.

In today’s technologically dependent world, they plan on developing a new type of marketplace where data collected from the IoT device network can be exchanged between various entities in return for tokens. The interest of investors in IOTA will only further solidify this vision going into 2018.

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Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Global Coin Report and/or its affiliates, employees, writers, and subcontractors are cryptocurrency investors and from time to time may or may not have holdings in some of the coins or tokens they cover. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency.

Image courtesy of Barbara Friedman via Flickr