Basics
IOTA stands for Internet of Things Application, and it’s a crypto technology that facilitates transactions between devices on the Internet of Things (IoT).
Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept of connecting any device with an on and off switch to the Internet and/or to each other making them able to communicate
All of that requires a different approach. In the same way Bitcoin and Ethereum utilise blockchain technology to function, IOTA uses the Tangle. Tangle makes use of directed acyclic graphs (DAG).
Tokens and usage
DAG is a system where individual nodes link to each other. “Directed” means that the link between nodes always have a direction and acyclic means that you cannot create loops inside this structure.
There are no miners so every time someone makes a transaction, he references two different transactions through work done by the device.
All of this means no transaction fees and very fast almost instant transactions. The data can be also fully encrypted and authenticated.
MIOTA is the token on the network which is used as a transfer of value and data.
Recent News
Currently the network isn't truly decentralised and is using something called Coordinator. The team is working on removing it through Coordicide and are constantly doing progress. To help the progress IOTA prepared $5 million in funds to contribute towards Coordicide-related research.
IOTA has developed Telecom infrastructure asset (things like towers for example) marketplace where selected participants (Orange, Vodafone, Nokia, Infosys) can use the proof of concept developed by IOTA.
IOTA also partnered with Primority where using the 3iVerify platform, Primority’s customers (food manufacturers), can collect accurate information related to their manufacturing chains.
Other info
Here are the IOTA partnerships:
first public data marketplace on an Internet of Things (IoT) distributed ledger in conjunction with Microsoft.
Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of Volkswagen, Johann Jungwirth, has joined the IOTA foundation’s supervisory board and is in charge of process of implementing the digital technology.
Bosch currently has a large involvement with IOTA and estimated number of 15.6 Billion devices will be connected to the internet of things by 2020.
The Fujitsu system showcased at Hannover is a Tangle-based system which will be rolled out at Fujitsu’s Augsburg smart factory.
DnB NORD is a financial group and partnership will focus on formulating new business models, data privacy management systems
Availability and price
IOTA (MIOTA) is currently available on all of the main exchanges:
HitBTC (45%), Binance (21%) Huobi Global (18%). Also on DragonEX, Bitfinex and few more exchanges.
BTC is the most popular pairing, also paired with USDT, ETH, BNB, BCH and few fiat currencies.
Current price as of 3rd of August is around $0.28 with IOTA being ranked on 19th place in terms of the market capitalisation and market cap of $802M
All of the tokens are in circulation!
IOTA has suffered greatly due to the bear market.
The ATH was achieved on 19th of December 2017 and was $5.69.
How is it doing?
The biggest next step for IOTA is making it truly decenralised which will prove that the network can actually work without central authority. This is crucial!
The partnerships are certainly there so I am not worried about potential use cases especially considering lack of competition.
Looking at the price history we can also see that out of the top 20 projects IOTA is the one that lost most value. This proves a good buying opportunity if you believe the projects has a bright future and the partnerships can actually result in real life usage. I think many top 20 projects are worse.
I personally hold a small amount of IOTA since I like the project.