(every opinion expressed in this article is my own)

Introduction

IOTA Foundation is a registered not-for-profit entity in Germany. They are a team consisting of experienced developers, researchers, advisors and business developers who have been in the crypto-space since as early as 2011. The most notable name in IOTA Foundation is the Lead Developer, Sergey Ivancheglo, the genius Belarusian developer who invented Full Proof of Stake consensus in 2014.

IOTA Foundation has the absolute first-mover advantage when it comes to Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). In my humble opinion, DAG will make Blockchain obsolete and will become the go-to DLT in the near future.

Europe

The EU is arguably the most progressive and tech-friendly region on Earth. A lot of countries are actively developing regulatory frameworks for embracing cryptocurrency and DLT, with Germany as one of the pioneering forces. As a consequence, the EU is the perfect natural habitat for IOTA to develop and implement its DLT, amid regulatory uncertainties in America and Asia.

In a recent movement, the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has signed a decree which legalizes cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings (ICOs), and smart contracts. All crypto transactions and related income, including from mining, will be tax-free for the next five years.

Belarus is the home country of Sergey Ivancheglo, and he has confirmed on IOTA’s Slack channel that he will “tell them to use IOTA”. This is one of the many examples showing how IOTA is making actual adoption progress in Europe, thanks to the region’s crypto-friendly atmosphere.

Asia

At the turbulent heart of the ongoing financial market volatility is a global economy in transition — an imbalanced world searching for a new equilibrium. And Asia post-Japan, with its sheer size, youthful population, and financial resources, will be critical to any new balance in global economies and even politics.

Overall, growth in 2017 in Emerging Asia (Southeast Asia, China and India) is expected to remain strong. Over the medium term (2018–22), the region’s growth is projected to remain robust. While the growth rate of China is slowing, growth in India is anticipated to stay brisk. Southeast Asia is poised to maintain its growth momentum, averaging 5.2% per year from 2018 to 2022 on robust domestic private spending and the implementation of planned infrastructure initiatives.

Despite Asia’s massive growth potential, its infrastructure is still heavily under-developed. Trillions of dollars worth of money will be poured into building infrastructure in Asia in the next 5 years, to embrace a digital world with the Internet of Things. Any DLT project that can take advantage of this massive opportunity and stay ahead of the game, will have the opportunity to monopolize and be supported by the newly-built infrastructure in the region.

IOTA, focused on the Internet of Things, is doing just that. The IOTA Foundation is taking aggressive steps in having talks with Asian governments/companies and hiring developers with international experience and polyglot abilities, especially in Asian languages. IOTA tokens are currently listed on 3 major exchanges (Bitfinex, Binance, Coinone), all of which are headquartered in Asia (Hong Kong and Korea).

While America remains an inevitable area of interest for IOTA, it is undoubtedly clear that the current focus of IOTA Foundation is on Europe and Asia.