By By Ken Hanly Jan 7, 2018 in Technology IOTA stands for "Internet of Things Application". The platform is designed to provide secure communications and payments between all the different items on the Internet of Things (IoT). The name also relates to small things communicating within the IoT. IOTA and the Internet of Things (IoT) As noted, IOTA, founded in 2015 by David Senstebe, Sergey Ivcanchegio, Dominik Schiener and Dr. Serquei Popov, is designed as a secure payments and communications platform for machines that are part of the Internet of Things. IOTA does not use the traditional blockchain technology of most coins such as bitcoin, ethereum and many others but a special type of The advantages of tangle versus the blockchain Unlike transactions on blockchains, such as those involving bitcoin, tangle transactions are free regardless of size. Confirmation times are quite fast. The tangle system can handle an unlimited number of transactions simultaneously, unlike bitcoin. READ MORE: North Sea Wind Power Hub to supply renewable energy to 80 million Iota also has the advantage of not needing any miners, as the authentication process just involves the users linked together in the tangle. This does away with the costs of paying miners in the iota coin for their work in solving mathematical problems to authenticate transactions. Everyone who initiates a transaction must verify two other random transactions. Compared to a blockchain system, the more people who are using the tangle system, the faster it is. Also, unlike bItcoins, all Iota coins already exist, so mining the currency is not required. However, the supply of Iota coins is huge. The number of Iota coins and units There is a fixed supply of 2,779,530,283,277,761 Iota coins. An example of how Iota might work Consider an electric vehicle (EV) coming into a charging station. The method of payment would be using IOTA. Both the EV and the charging station would be able to understand the IOTA protocol used to facilitate the payment. The EV and the charging station are both items in the IoT and are able to use IOTA to communicate and make payments. Present price of Iota As I write this Iota is one of the As noted, IOTA, founded in 2015 by David Senstebe, Sergey Ivcanchegio, Dominik Schiener and Dr. Serquei Popov, is designed as a secure payments and communications platform for machines that are part of the Internet of Things.IOTA does not use the traditional blockchain technology of most coins such as bitcoin, ethereum and many others but a special type of directed acylic graph (DAG) technology called tangle. Unlike transactions on blockchains, such as those involving bitcoin, tangle transactions are free regardless of size. Confirmation times are quite fast. The tangle system can handle an unlimited number of transactions simultaneously, unlike bitcoin.Iota also has the advantage of not needing any miners, as the authentication process just involves the users linked together in the tangle. This does away with the costs of paying miners in the iota coin for their work in solving mathematical problems to authenticate transactions. Everyone who initiates a transaction must verify two other random transactions.Compared to a blockchain system, the more people who are using the tangle system, the faster it is. Also, unlike bItcoins, all Iota coins already exist, so mining the currency is not required. However, the supply of Iota coins is huge.There is a fixed supply of 2,779,530,283,277,761 Iota coins. The smallest unit is the iota named after the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet or 1i. A Kiloiota or one Kiota. Ki, is equal to 1,000 i. A million i or 1 Miota is called a Megaiota 0r 1Mi. A billion is a Gigalota or one GIota, 1Gi. A trillion is a Teraota or 1 Tiota, 1Ti. Finally there is the Petaiota, or 1 Piota, 1Pi. The base unit for trading on excahanges is the Miota (Mi). The symbol on exchanges is MIOTA.Consider an electric vehicle (EV) coming into a charging station. The method of payment would be using IOTA. Both the EV and the charging station would be able to understand the IOTA protocol used to facilitate the payment. The EV and the charging station are both items in the IoT and are able to use IOTA to communicate and make payments. IOTA already has collaboration with Deutsche Telecom, Microsoft and Fujitsu. Obviously, big players in the technical area must see potentiality in the platform.As I write this the present price of Iota (symbol MIOTA) is $4.05. This is down considerably from a high of over five dollars in December of 2017 but is a huge improvement over its price during November when it was just around 39 cents.Iota is one of the top ten cryptocurrencies rated by market value. It is number ten with a market value of $11,297,289,654. More about Iota, cryptocurrencies, internet of things, blockchain versus tangle Iota cryptocurrencies internet of things blockchain versus ta...