At press time, IOTA is changing hands at 24 cents against the greenback and up an impressive 27% in the past 7 days of trading. However, from some quarters, optimism and confidence in the project could see it soar to astronomical levels.

IOTA Market Performance | Source: Coinstats.app

Earlier, a Fundstrat report suggested that if IOTA turns out to be the IOT standard, its valuation would exponentially rise to a whopping $700 billion by 2035, lifting the token’s valuation to a three-digit figure.

In their analysis, there is a 10% chance of this happening and it all stems from several factors.

Some are on-chain developments while others are external.

They include:

Observers reckon that this monumental event is the ultimate “day of reckoning” for the project. And it’s easy to see why. At the moment, IOTA transaction processing is largely centralized because of the Coordinator.



The #IOTA Foundation is preparing to take its most important step to date in the maturity of the IOTA protocol – realizing the dream of a permissionless & scalable distributed ledger technology. The IOTA Foundation refer to this event as Coordicide: the death of the Coordinator. pic.twitter.com/pltqJCFAHg

— IOTA News (@iotatokennews) January 13, 2020



As part of their decentralization strategy, the successful implementation of Coordicide will not only usher in a period of decentralization and confidence, but it will see IOTA prices recover and criticism subside.

Understandably, this upgrade will be step-by-step and that’s why some argue that current IOTA valuation is at bargain territory.

“IOTA’s own “day of reckoning” in the form of the Coordicide is coming closer every week. Although this update won’t be pushed with one patch, IOTA’s step by step decentralization will change a LOT. People believe that the bottom is found, so this is “bargain-territory”



c) IOTA's own "day of reckoning" in the form of the coordicide is coming closer every week. Although this update won't be pushed with one patch, IOTA's step by step decentralization will change a LOT. People believe that the bottom is found, so this is "bargain-territory"

— 42 (@42_paradox) January 20, 2020



While the crypto market is upbeat and likely re-arranging their positions in readiness of May 2020 halving, the incoming scarcity shock will likely have two effects. At a constant demand, BTC’s prices will inevitably rise because miners will receive half the amount they would have in normal circumstances.



Throwback to bitcoin 4 months before the 2nd halving.

The price was declining after going up 200% from the bottom.

People were saying the halving was priced in.

Here is what happened the following months. pic.twitter.com/sP1B5G1qQe

— Crypto₿ull (@CryptoBull) January 16, 2020



With rising prices and the existing direct correlation between Bitcoin and altcoins, IOTA—lodged at 20th, will most likely benefit and lift to new levels.

If Bitcoin dump as miners switch off gear in the aftermath of halving, as a promising project, IOTA stands to retain value and may continue inching higher if developers deliver on their promise.

The community-driven software, Hornet, was recently released. It’s a step in the right direction, and Hornet is basically a lightweight alternative for IOTA’s full node.

Hornet is fast and allows several operations to be executed on the network.



HORNET 0.3.0 is out! Added: Local Snapshots + database pruning, RPM and DEB packages, Spammer log messages, `neighbors.json` hot reload during runtime: Changes in the file are recognized and updated, Changes via webapi are stored to the file. https://t.co/Kwyf5RCdWe #IOTA #DLT pic.twitter.com/NPJRZEFYwK

— IOTA News (@iotatokennews) January 14, 2020



IOTA leads as an IOT blockless network. In their course of achieving their objectives, they have partnered with car companies and the network is resilient, inherently scalable, and the success of Coordicide will truly usher in a distinct, feeless DLT solution for ambitious companies looking to leverage on emerging technologies.

The post IOTA Is Up 27% Week-to-Date, But Will These 3 Reasons Spur Further Demand appeared first on Coingape.