Factom is a data layer for the blockchain. It’s based on the idea that Bitcoin is the most trusted immutable data store in existence, yet it’s not very useful for non-Bitcoin transactions. Factom has created a distributed, autonomous protocol to cost-effectively separate the Bitcoin blockchain from the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. That allows a business to maintain a permanent, time-stamped record of their data.

Its token is the Factoid and its symbol on the cryptocurrency exchanges is FCT.

Factom can be used for applications such as title records, legal apps, financial apps, gaming apps, journaling apps, and for medical records.

They give some interesting potential use cases on their website. For example, Bank of America was fined $17 billion for improper mortgage records. Most of those fines came from Countrywide loans. They acquired Countrywide during the Great Recession. During the acquisition it’s estimated over 10 billion documents had to be transferred. Obviously the transfer of data could have gone much better.

If Countrywide had used Factom then every document would be on a chain organized by Factom. Every document and transaction would be hashed and put into Factom in a directory block. And it would be connected to the immutable Bitcoin blockchain. Then Bank of America could have done a full Factom audit and known for sure that it had clean records.

Factom has a couple of other cool potential use cases on its website. Check it out. In one it shows how it could have prevented the Sony hack. And in another it show how it could help unlock $7 trillion in land value.

Right now there’s 8,753,219 FCT outstanding according to coinmarketcap.com.

According to the Factom website: The original supply of Factoids was set by the software token sale. Once the full Factom protocol is running, Factoids will be issued at a fixed rate to the servers that run the protocol. For now, until the protocol is completely deployed, no new Factoids will be issued. To use the Factom protocol, Factoids are converted to Entry Credits (EC). EC are used to make entries into the Factom blockchain. Once a Factoid is used, the right is gone.

Per Factom Chief Scientist Brian Deery, “Factoids are demanded and removed from circulation when users buy Entry Credits (EC) to use Factom. The Factoid/EC exchange rate is set by the Federated servers. The goal is to have a stable price for EC. This will allow Factom users to ignore the Factoid price, just like how Gmail users can ignore the Google share price”.

For more details check out the Factom website here.

Now the question is, why is Factom up over 300% in less than 3 months?

Well, on June 17 Factom was awarded $199,000 from the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate. The funds are to advance the security of digital identity for Internet of Things devices. Not bad for an alt coin.

And the positive news has kept rolling out. On July 28 Factom announced a collaboration with SmartContract. SmartContract.com’s CEO Sergey Nazarov said: “We are excited to work with Factom on providing the Ethereum and Bitcoin developer communities access to Factom’s rapidly growing and increasingly auditable blockchain-based data.”

On August 10 Factom [announced] https://www.factom.com/datayes-factom-announce-collaboration/) a collaboration with DataYes. They will publish onto the Factom blockchain pricing data for the 3,000 most valuable Chinese stocks.

Then on August 23 Factom struck a deal with HealthNautica. They will use Factom’s technology to verify and time-stamp health records.

And finally they struck another recent deal with Intrinio, a financial feed data firm.

Conclusion

An alt coin with practical uses and ties to Bitcoin and Ethereum… plus a Department of Homeland Security award… there’s a lot to like about Factom. It’s definitely worth of a speculative investment.