IOTA (MIOTA) is a new cryptocurrency system based on a new blockchain technology designed for the Internet of Things (IOT) of the future. It is named after the mathematical symbol used in imaginary numbers and it boasts a transactional settlement and data integrity layer for the IOT for the future.
The new distributed ledger is called the Tangle and it has been designed to overcome many of the limitations of the previous blockchain designs. With zero transaction costs and ability to transfer even extremely small sums of money, the IOTA promises to be a cryptocurrency for the machine economy of the future.
ICO IOTA is currently under Beta and raised over 3000 coins in an ICO a few months back. IOTA promises to shake things up and help in the scale and application of Internet of Things. In order to do that it has come up with some revolutionary developments on the blockchain.
Tangle The tangle is the name for the distributed ledger or blockchain the IOTA team has theorized and is currently undergoing development and deployment. But, in many ways it would be inaccurate to call it a blockchain since it doesn’t have any blocks AT ALL. So, the team continuously refers to it by its name tangle and avoids calling it blockchain except when it has to explain it.
The Tangle is the first public distributed ledger according to the company that can achieve scalability without any fee transactions and transmit as well. In conventional blockchains, the consensus is not a part of the blockchain itself and it is decoupled but in IOTA’s Tangle, the consensus is an intrinsic part of the system. This allows the Tangle to become the first entirely decentralized peer-to-peer network. Instead of blocks, the transactions are bundled together while creating a new transfer on the distributed ledger.
Can IOTA be mined? The IOTA cannot be mined as all of the IOTA’s as we call them, have already been created with the help of the genesis transaction. The total supply of the coins will remain the same at 2779530283277761 and it cannot be increased or decreased. This seems a bizarre way of introducing your coins but it is how they are doing things. The coins won’t be available all at once ofcourse but rather used for each individual transactions and that is where things can be interesting.
Right now, the IOTA is in Beta mode and you can check it out on the system. You can join the nodesharing process to find “neighbours”. The IOTA system requires your IP address since the new system is based on mutual tethering and internet of things can’t be possible without this type of connectivity.
Is IOTA available for trading? The IOTA coin is available on Bitfinex in Miota units. (1 miota = 1 million iotas). The value of Miota is $0.8 and the current trading volume is $32.89 m which isn’t a lot considering the low price per unit currency of IOTA. But, since the IOTA is still in Beta and the current application of the system is only reference implementation. The market cap comes out to be $2.24 billion but I will be more interested in it once the system really takes off a trader.
If you are an investor that changes the way you look at IOTA. It has seemingly reinvented the blockchain technology and is offering virtually free payments. So, it seems to be a really good investment opportunity. While you have missed the ICO, the price is still very affordable.
So, are you ready for a new not-so-blockchain technology to herald a new era of interconnectivity and sharing of technological resources that IOTA promises?