As the cryptocurrency market continues to gain strength and recover from the slight dip we saw at the end of December, many of the major coins are giving way to an increased amount of interest in alternative, small market capitalization cryptocurrencies. Inevitably, this increased interest in coins that fall further down the pecking order from a market capitalization perspective is translating into some upside momentum in tokens that, just last month, would’ve been considered very much off the radar from a mainstream market standpoint.

This isn’t to say that the upside in the coins in question isn’t justified, just that they need to be in the spotlight in order to gain strength and, finally, the spotlight is now on them.

One such coin is TRON (TRX).

This one is an interesting one.

At the start of December, TRX was trading for $0.002 a share. At its most recent close, the coin went for $0.16 – a close to 8000% increase in a little over four weeks. To put this in perspective, bitcoin (BTC) gained around 1500% during the whole of 2017.

24-hour volume for TRX hit $2.8 billion this week and the total market capitalization sits at just shy of $11 billion, which is, again, up dramatically from the $150 million market capitalization recorded on December 1.

So what’s driving the action and what’s next?

That’s the golden question, of course, and it’s one that we are going to try and answer below.

So, what’s TRON?

Here’s the blurb: TRON is a world-leading blockchain-based decentralized protocol that aims to construct a worldwide free content entertainment system with the blockchain and distributed storage technology.

That seems pretty vague but the system and the technology behind it isn’t overly complicated. It’s basically a digital content ledger that allows for the free transfer and storage of secure, time-stamped digital content, and the TRX cryptocoin is the token associated with fees etc. on the blockchain.

And why is it running up now?

Well, aside from the fact that the entire cryptocurrency space (weighted towards the altcoin space) is getting a lot of attention at the moment, as outlined above, TRON has picked up quite a few fundamental developments over the past couple of weeks and is pitching to release further advancement news near term.

The company is developing a decentralized messaging app which, in the wake of the recent situation in Iran, has a very firm use case in place as and when it hits the shelves. Further, at the end of December last year, the former data mining chief at AliBaba, Zhao Hong (Marcus) Joined TRON. That’s validation of the company’s positioning in this space.

And that’s not all. Reports of NASDAQ listed companies with more than 100 million users wanting to partnership with TRON are circulating (and are rooted in official company Tweets) ahead of the main-net release, which is slated for this quarter.

There is also a strategic partnership in place with Game.com, again, serving to validate the company’s authority in its target niche.

The bottom line here is relatively simple.

Many of the smaller cryptocurrencies are running up on nothing more than increased speculative attention. In contrast, TRON is running, yes, and to a degree, it’s based on increased speculative attention, but, at the same time, there are solid fundamental developments in place to support the gains. This means that when the wider market corrects, TRON will likely just consolidate and, in turn, push higher as the year matures.

Throughout 2018, then, our thesis on TRON is very much a bullish one.

Let’s see how things play out.

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Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency.

Image courtesy of Tron.