IOTA is a cryptocurrency that does not use either blocks nor chains, and hence no miners by design. By using its own data structure called ‘Tangle’, a verified transaction needs at least 2 past transactions.
Overview
Though bitcoin rules a large portion of the world of cryptocurrency, a good number of altcoins are also raising their heads and drawing the attention of investors.
IOTA is a cryptocurrency, i.e., an open-source public ledger based on the communications and transactions between devices and machines that are connected via the internet, and the network of these devices is called the Internet of Things.
History
The founders of the coin are David Sonstebo, Dominik Schiener, Dr. Serguei Popov and Sergey Ivancheglo in 2015. In the first place, a fixed amount of 2, 779, 530, 283, 277, and 761 tokens were generated with no chance of creating new coins as there is no scope for mining IOTA. After a few months of origination, open beta testing was enacted, and for the following 11 months, over-the-counter trading was continued by IOTA.
2017 was an influential year for the project. A venture capital firm named Outlier Ventures invested seven-digit amounts in any cryptocurrency for the first time. IOTA got connected to SatoshiPay and REFUNITE which are supposed to be the largest databases in the world. In 2018, they are looking forward to continuing the pace of capacity enhancement. Occasionally, IOTA is equipped with newer technology.
Features of IOTA
Unlike other cryptocurrencies, IOTA is running on a newly developed platform named Tangle. It implies a mathematical concept known as Directed Acyclic Graphs, or DAG. Blockchain and Tangle are two different types of DAGs. In Tangle technology, to conduct a transaction, a user needs to validate two different, random transactions. Therefore, when multiple users have verified a transaction, it is considered confirmed. It results in less time consumption and the necessity of miners, which explains the reason for not creating new coins further.
At the same time, DAG technology ensures faster and more closely monitored transactions than blockchain does. The growth and speed of the network increase with the increasing number of investors. Users do not have to count transaction fees, and the scalability issue is also solved by IOTA.
The network uses a self-created hash function called Curl, developed in August 2017, which is faster and more protective than familiar Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC).
IOTA has suitable units of various amounts which make transactions smoother. The scale starts with 01 Iota (1i) and the ascending order is KiloIota (1Ki), MegaIota (1Mi), GigaIota (1Gi), TeraIota (1Ti) and lastly PetaIota (1Pi).
Reason Behind the Recent Spike in Valuation
The market spike of the coin can be considered the result of their diplomatic moves throughout the journey. They have shaken hands with tech giants who have prominent roles to play in IoT; for example, Samsung Electronics Limited (SSNLF), Cisco System Inc. (CSCO), Innogy and so on.
Bain, a leading consultancy firm, explains statistically that the market value of the coin will exceed $470 billion USD by 2020.
Market Capitalization
Very recently, IOTA crossed Ripple and took the place as the fourth most traded cryptocurrency worldwide. The total market cap touched $11.6 billion USD, and each coin was traded at $4.17 USD. The coin was described as “a sleeping giant” by David Sonstebo in an interview on CNBC.
Observing every leap of this coin, it can be concluded that IOTA will reign over the cryptocurrency world in the near future.
