Nano Explained and Why It Has More Upside

Earlier in February the relatively new cryptocurrency Raiblocks successfully completed a name change from Raiblocks (XRB) to Nanocurrency (NANO), as well as add a new website, logo, wallets, and addresses. The core developer team cited as reasons the fact that people encountered confusion about how to pronounce the word and that Raiblocks sounded generic and boring. The crypto community welcomed and celebrated the Nano name change decision. Nano’s price shot up 38% after the name change. It currently has a $1.3 billion market capitalization, 24th of all cryptos. Savvy investors would be wise to carefully watch the young crypto as it transitions into a new stage of life.

Often times crypto users have expressed frustration at the high fees and slow transaction confirmation times that plagued Bitcoin (BTC) after 2016. In 2017, due to data-intensive dApps like CryptoKitties, even the usually efficient Ethereum blockchain ran into concerns about speed and cost. So many people felt refreshed when they discovered the Nano project and its futuristic vision. Nano, as a conceptual “3^rd generation” cryptocurrency, might solve some of the problems that hinder older cryptocurrencies.

Nano eschews the design of a blockchain, a line of blocks that records transaction history, in favor of a block lattice, or directed acyclic graph (DAG). A block lattice is a record system in which every account holder maintains a private blockchain, where every block holds a single transaction. Because each account holder provides the computational power to verify only their own transactions, the entire network is not required to update the account ledger together at the same time. Transfers require both a send transaction from the sender and a receive transaction from the receiving account. Nano touts basically instantaneous and feeless transactions, unlimited scalability, minimal resources for network maintenance, and trustless decentralization. Nano cannot be mined and has no miners, only nodes that maintain the network. It has reached a maximum supply of 133,248,290 NANO. Nano is secured by a proof-of-stake form of node representative democracy: consensus is reached through votes weighted by account balances.

Some of the Nano team’s goals include Nano becoming a Internet standard that is fully decentralized and free from political disagreement, competing with fiat currencies as a peer-to-peer payment mechanism, establishing the premier cross-currency trading pair on exchanges, and helping the world’s unbanked poor to control and secure their finances. Simply put, Nano aims to transform money.

Investors who are attracted to Nano’s vision of the future of money have a few options to invest. NANO can currently be bought on just four exchanges: KuCoin, OKEx, BitFlip, and Binance. An easy way to buy NANO is to buy Bitcoin or Ethereum (ETH) and then send the funds to Binance to then trade for NANO. Long-term investors should store their newly acquired NANO off the exchange on their own wallets. Currently 3 wallets exist: an online, desktop, and integrated Telegram app wallet. The Nano team will release a mobile and light wallet in the future.

A few of NANO’s headwinds include its youth and market frothiness. NANO was founded in 2015 by one man, Colin LeMahieu, and has risen out of obscurity in the last year alone. So NANO’s ledger and network are relatively untested against cyberattacks and fraud. Also, NANO’s recent rise could be a sign of irrational exuberance. Its price exploded from $0.008 in March 2017 to an all-time high of $37.62 on January 2nd.

However, Nano is undoubtedly a new frontier of cryptocurrency. It offers exciting technology and applications. It utility and adoption will likely go upward. It would be reasonable to hold NANO as part of a well-diversified portfolio. NANO will rise in conjunction with the overall market, and perhaps even more due to its excitement factor.

The author does not hold any positions in NANO.