As most cryptocurrencies start recovering from yesterday’s cryptocurrency calamity, IOTA, a cryptocurrency designed for the Internet of Things (IoT), has suffered an 8 percent loss in the past 24 hours. The cryptocurrency has already lost nearly 50 percent of its value in the past 7 days, according to data from CoinMarketCap, as the cryptocurrency’s market cap dropped from $1.064 billion to $577,483 at press time.
IOTA’s token is now worth $0.207763 and its price decrease, at this point, reflects the currency’s volatile history. IOTA was launched on June 13 and when it did it immediately reached the top 10. From that point on, token holders went on a rollercoaster ride that seems to have no end in sight.
Volatility
After IOTA’s launch on the 13, the currency plummeted during the June 15 bloodbath, showing a 36.5% price decrease that forced it down from the top 10 to the top 25 cryptocurrencies. On June 26, thecurrency kept its downtrend and its value decreased by another 20 percent, the second biggest drop in the top 100, only topped by Peerplays’ 42.8 percent drop.
Then, on July 1, IOTA came back strong, even though most other cryptocurrencies were down. The surge, however, was marked by price volatility. The currency’s token, MIOTA; was at $0.634748 on June 13 and has since then been slowly, and in a very volatile way, losing value. There are currently 2,779 MIOTA circulating, the token’s maximum supply.
The cryptocurrency’s trading volume was of $5.6 million in the last 24 hours, down from June 13’s $25.4 million. When Bitfinex launched IOTA trading, the volume was so massive its servers briefly went down, as a whopping 4.44 million mega IOTA were traded in the first three hours on the IOTA/USD currency pair. On Reddit, users are seemingly not worried about the price dip, as no top threads even mention it.
A Unique Currency
IOTA is a unique cryptocurrency as it utilizes the Tangle ledger, designed to allow feeless transactions, meaning resources can be traded on-demand, and the amount sent is the exact amount received.
Tangle is based on DAG technology, as previously covered by CCN, and doesn’t separate users and validators. To transact on the Tangle, users need to approve other transactions, thereby contributing to the network’s security.
The Tangle project’s founders started developing in mid-2015, primarily for machine-to-machine payments and data integrity, after realizing that internet-connected devices didn’t have a way to transfer data and settlements securely, and needed a solution.
One of the project’s founders, David Sonstebo, previously stated:
“I don’t see IoT really working on a large scale without IOTA or equivalent due to the security requirements and absolute necessity of interoperability.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
