What is IOTA?

IOTA coin is one of the fastest growing cryptocurrencies. It has been especially designed for the Internet of Things (IoT). Looking at the shortcomings of other popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, a few developers joined hands to develop a new cryptocurrency from scratch that can facilitate transactions between always communicating digital devices.

In their bid to overcome the problems of a traditional blockchain, they discarded the idea altogether and wrote a new codebase in Java programming language.

IOTA Founders

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivWqqfzunhI

Four highly talented people coming from diverse professional backgrounds are credited for being the founders of IOTA. They include:

David Sønstebø is a technology buff who believes Smart Cities laden with interconnected technologies are the future and cryptocurrency is going to play a big role. With an aim to overcome the drawbacks of Bitcoin, he laid the foundation for this currency.

Dominik Schiener is an extremely young fellow involved in multiple ventures that are all related to cryptocurrency space. His aim with IOTA is to create cheaper, quicker and safer payment system.

Sergey Ivancheglo founded Jinn and IOTA token, he also fulfills the responsibilities of CEO for both ventures. He firmly believes in the future of cryptocurrencies and backed Bitcoin right from the start.

Serguei Popov, a Ph.D. in mathematics from Moscow State University wrote the whitepaper for the currency. He's also a full time professor at IMECC-UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil.

Introduction and IOTA Coin Price Performance

IOTA was introduced almost 3 and a half years ago on June 21, 2014. After hovering around half a dollar for months, IOTA value shot up in mid-November as cryptocurrency's price climbed up reaching to the high of $5.45 by the end of December. The price has come down in last two months but the promise in the technology and the currency from various sectors remains quite stable.

Even at the price of $1.25, users' confidence isn't shaken and a lot of them believe it's a good and timely opportunity to go in. The market cap of the currency is just under the $4 billion mark.

The Technology – IOTA Tangle

As opposed to other cryptocurrencies that use blockchain technology to maintain a digital ledger, IOTA doesn't rely on it. Instead, it makes the use of Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) dubbed "Tangle" solving many issues that plague competing cryptocurrencies.

DAGs are particularly used by computer scientists. They are basically a cluster of squares or vertices interconnected with arrows or edges. Tangle is a particular type of DAG with a built in capability of storing transactions. Each square or vertex reflects a transaction and every transaction needs approval from already existing transaction. New vertex formed carries arrows or edges pointing towards the vertices used for approval.

In the image above, 0 represents the genesis. The point from where it all begins. 7 is the latest transaction that got approved through two pre-existing transactions, namely 6 and 4. In order to understand this better, head to the interactive tool given on IOTA's website. According to David Floyd, contributor on NASDAQ:

"The tangle is what is known as a directed acyclic graph (DAG): a data structure that moves in one direction without looping back onto itself.”

IOTA versus Bitcoin

Founders of IOTA didn't go down a different route just for the sake of it. IOTA hands out solutions for many issues that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies face, the most of which are:

Transaction Fees

Scalability

Network Speed

Micro-transactions

The technology behind IOTA, Tangle, asks the sender to perform a proof of work through approving two pre-existing transactions. Therefore, making and validating transactions are linked turning it into a completely decentralized system. There's no need for dedicated miners, only those who are making transactions have an effect on the system.

This improves scalability of IOTA as the number of people making transactions increases, the speed of network improves with it since more transactions are getting validated. In complete contrast, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies' networks slow down as the number of transaction makers takes off.

More importantly, Tangle allows the network to be free of payment costs. Other cryptocurrencies systems require users to pay the miners so they can approve transactions. By linking transaction to the approval process itself, miners aren't required anymore, hence there's no need to pay anyone to carry out a transaction. This also helps in improving the overall transaction speed.

If you try to buy a coffee through Bitcoin, it would take you no less than 10 minutes to process the transaction. That's why Bitcoin and other altcoins are not a viable tender for micro-transactions as they are too slow to process payments. IOTA solves all these problems by using a different technology than blockchain.

IOTA vs Bitcoin vs Ethereum

Cryptocurrency IOTA Bitcoin Ethereum Market Cap $4 billion $158 billion $69 billion Avg. Growth Rate 400% 950% 1600% Predicted Price (2020) $8 $90,250 $12,800 Total Supply 2,779,530,283 MIOTA 16,916,563 BTC 98,158,443 ETH Website www.iota.org www.bitcoin.com www.ethereum.org

Up to date 13/03/2018

How to Buy? – IOTA Exchange

Using Bank Account to Buy IOTA

If you are a resident of Singapore, US, Europe or Australia, you may buy Bitcoin through your bank account using Coinbase or similar website. After acquiring Bitcoin you can convert them into MIOTA via Binance. If you are from any other country, you will have to find out the exchange that accepts bank transfers from your country.

Using PayPal to Buy IOTA

You can't buy IOTA directly with PayPal. Instead what you will have to do is to buy Bitcoin with Paypal and then convert it into MIOTA through a cryptocurrency exchange service such as Binance.

Using Cash to Buy MIOTA

Again, there is no direct way to buy IOTA/MIOTA with cash. Again, you will need to buy Bitcoin with cash and then convert your Bitcoin to MIOTA through a cryptocurrency exchange service.

Using Skrill to Buy MIOTA

There is a website called BitPanda that enables Europeas to buy Bitcoin with Skrill. Once you buy Bitcoin, you can always convert them into MIOTA using Binance or other cryptocurrency exchange service.

Using COINMARKETCAP to Buy MIOTA

The easiest way to buy any cryptocurrency is through exchange, in fact it's the only method in most cases. Cryptocurrency exchanges are websites that allow you to purchase cryptocurrency of your choice in exchange of another cryptocurrency, mostly Bitcoin and Ethereum.

If you are not tech savvy, you might want to take another route. Go on to coinmarketcap.com and where it says "search currencies", type in "IOTA". Press enter and it will show you all the related details about IOTA such as current price, market cap, 24 hour transaction volume, maximum supply etc. Right below the information you have a tabbed section with Charts being the active one. All you need to do is to click on "Markets" tabs and the website will serve you with a complete list of exchanges where you can get IOTA from.

Remember, you can't buy IOTA directly with traditional currency. You will have to either buy Bitcoin or Ethereum on Coinbase through your bank account. Then you can use those cryptocurrencies to exchange them for IOTA.

IOTA is sold in MIOTA scale which is basically a unit of basic IOTA.



1 IOTA 103 KiloIota (KIOTA) 106 MegaIota (MIOTA) 109 GigaIota (GIOTA) 1012 TeraIota (TIOTA) 1015 PetaIota (PIOTA)

Reddit on IOTA - Community's Verdict

To be honest, there's no single opinion about the currency. There are those who believe in it and those who doubt it's sustainability over a long term. Generally, Reddit communities are willing to put their confidence in cryptocurrencies as they are bound to be a part of our digital future. IOTA isn't an exception, the current sentiment seems to be positive with a bit of skepticism.

Many believe in the ability of founders and developers to keep their promises and deliver the results. One of the founder of the currency, David, maintains a blog on Medium with more than 10,000 followers. He keeps updating about the latest developments and announcements.

Redditors who have put their faith in the currency are in it for a long haul and price dips in short term don't phase them. While some of them think that IOTA developers need to improve their attitude and communicate better, they don't doubt their ability to deliver.

That being said, one of the Reddit users reported that after sending a payment through BTC, he waited for almost 6 hours and payment still didn't get through because of processing times. That's one of the reasons why Bitcoin makes for an unsuitable cryptocurrency for making online payments. The system can only compute 7 transactions every 2 seconds which is painfully slow if you want mass adaption of the technology as alternate online payment system. That's where IOTA's strength lies, it can process a large number of transactions per second and the more transactions are processed, the quicker the system becomes.

It is clear the Reddit community doesn’t believe in Bitcoin as the online payment method of the future. It will be in the hands of IOTA that can process transactions quickly.

Desktop IOTA Wallet

One of the ways to store IOTA is to download and install IOTA GUI Client from IOTA website. The wallet is available for all 3 desktop operating systems including MacOS, Windows and Linux. While setting up the wallet, pick a host and select light node. Once you've done that, create an 81 character seed comprising only of the digit 9 and uppercase letters. Store the seed safely.

According to some users on Reddit, this is pretty difficult to set up but we believe Lightwallet isn't that hard to set up.

Mobile IOTA Wallet

IOTA wallets for mobile can be downloaded both on iOS and Android, however Android's version is still in beta so it should be used with caution. As far as iOS IOTA wallet is concerned, it hasn't been officially launched yet so caution should be exercised with its usage as well.

IOTA Paper Wallet

This is a way to store your digital currency physically. IOTA paper wallet asks for 81 character seed comprising of the digit 9 and uppercase letters. Once the system generates the paper wallet, you can print it out to send it to IOTA. Ensure to keep the physical document in safe place.

Remember that cryptocurrency isn't a space for those who want intellectual convenience. You will have to inform yourself about a lot of aspects of cryptocurrencies and since there are no regulatory bodies governing the space, if you lose your currency, it's almost always irreversible damage.

IOTA Fraud History

The currency itself and the founders haven't been linked to any fraudulent activity as of yet and there's little to no evidence that any such activity is going on behind the scenes.

That being said, there have been instances where some IOTA wallets on Github have scammed users out of their currency but again, no cryptocurrency is above that. During November 2017, the news was also floated that Microsoft is now officially backing IOTA which later turned out to be a fake news as Microsoft denied the existence of any formal partnership.

Where will IOTA be used in the Future?

The biggest selling point of IOTA has been its usability. It aims to remove the shortcomings that other cryptocurrencies have, thus being more appropriate for day to day use. Here are the instances where IOTA or MIOTA could be of great use:

Data Transfer - IOTA can be used to transfer large amounts of data quickly and safely through Tangle. It pretty much eliminates the risk of hacker attack and has a great technology to form seamless connection between devices.

Micro transactions - IOTA is soon going to become your go-to credit card. Because of its ability to make quick payments, you can actually use it to purchase everyday items unlike Bitcoin which takes a lot of time to process a transaction.

Voting - If we are going to have smart cities in the future, they will be run by e-government more than the traditional government. That's where IOTA can be of great assistance in carrying out election activities such as voting where sensitive data has to be recorded and transmitted.

Public Transportation - With the capacity of interconnecting a network of digital devices and process micro transactions quickly, there is no better application for IOTA than public transportation.

Apart from the abovementioned applications, IOTA can also be used for IoT based telecommunication, interactive navigation, masked messaging and a lot more.

IOTA Coin Future

In 2017, IOTA achieved many milestones. First 1 million confirmed transactions were completed in testnet and the platform got $10 million in ecosystem fund. IOTA started trading on Bitfinex with a record breaking launch that gave it a market cap of whopping $1.5 billion. IOTA also became the founding member of the Trusted IoT Alliance and Decentralized Identity Foundation. During this period, IOTA also introduced timestamps in the currency as well as Flash network. Robert Bosch Venture Capital also invested in IOTA and it got selected by Tokyo Metropolitan Government Program.

All of the developments and overall increase in currency value suggest that IOTA is here to stay and it is going to be a promising year for the cryptocurrency.

Conclusion

After being introduced in 2014, IOTA remained in obscurity for the most part of its short life span. However, the boom in cryptocurrency sphere last year also took IOTA by the storm quadrupling the currency’s value in no time. Along with monetary gain, IOTA foundation also hired some of the most talented people around the world and many positive developments were made. Despite some concerns around the legitimacy and sustainability of the currency and the technology, IOTA has been able to garner solid support from the technology enthusiasts and cryptocurrency buffs alike.

Bitcoin is technologically inferior to IOTA as the system behind Bitcoin slows down as the number of users increase. Which means it can’t be used an alternative online payment method. On the other hand, IOTA’s tangle technology allows quick scalability which translates into a lot quicker transaction processing and the process actually speeds up as the number of users grow making it more viable as a payment platform. That’s a huge advantage of IOTA over Bitcoin and the one that could prove to be lethal for Bitcoin.