IOTA is big; well, at least according to its market cap of $1.3 billion as at the time of writing this post. The coin currently ranks 12th globally, and this is one of the reasons why we think an in-depth review of IOTA is long overdue.

A company holding such a position must have a lot to offer, don’t you think?

2018 has been somewhat challenging for the crypto community, and to see a coin thrive in times like this when the market is correcting is a rare occurrence.

This coin, just like most others, has experienced both upward and downward trends. But what’s amazing about IOTA is its ability to maintain a decent market cap of over a billion dollars, with most promising coins trading below the coveted billion-dollar mark.

But that’s not why we wrote this IOTA review; today, we’ll look at the other aspects of this coin including what IOTA is, how it works, where to buy, and how to store it.

What is IOTA Cryptocurrency?

I found the video below quite useful in terms of gaining a general understanding of what IOTA does. I hope you’ll find it useful as well:

IOTA represents a cryptocurrency and a platform for making small payments without paying any commissions. The platform’s coin operates differently from most other coins; users are able to transact one coin or a fraction of it.

IOTA is all about the Internet Of Things; imagine having almost everything we do manually today becoming fully automated.

Things like taking our cars to the garage just to diagnose a simple problem. With IOTA, cars can communicate with a dealership and IOTA can help find certain faults in a car’s system, among other things.

They say the future belongs to those who prepare for it; it seems IOTA took this phrase literally as they are getting ready to own the future of tech.

IOTA was born through an ICO issued in 2015, which managed to raise 1337 Bitcoins from the Crowdsale. Then, ICOs we quite unpopular, but the project raised an equivalent of $8.3 million. That’s not bad for an idea that people knew close to nothing about.

A big chunk of the raised funds was spent on marketing, development, and actualizing the idea; by 2017, IOTA (MIOTA then), made its first entry into a regulated exchange, Bitfinex.

The same year saw the platform close several deals with giant tech and automobile companies including Microsoft, Samsung, Volkswagen, Fujitsu, and more.

How Does IOTA Work?

Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the like that are natively blockchain projects, IOTA is different in the sense that it uses a Tangle log that is based in the DAG-directed acyclic graph.

In blockchain-based projects such as Ethereum, information, programs, and codes are all stored in blocks, where the transaction histories are maintained.

In Tangle, things are a bit different. There are no blocks, and the transaction has a special scheme that categorizes them in respective groups.

A new transaction, let’s call it C, is verified by older transactions A and B.

Such a technique enhances the efficiency of operations within the network, and this means that more network transaction leads to the faster verification of transactions.

IOTA coins cannot be mined; all the coins totaling 2.8 trillion were issued and are protected by MAX_SAFE_INTEGER using JavaScript.

IOTA and the Internet of Things

The success of IOTA is largely related to how the Internet Of Things (IoT) will be received by consumers. This means that the success of IoT will be the success of IOTA, and the reverse is also likely to be true.

The success of IOTA is likely to come from a global network of objects that are largely internet enabled so that they are highly interactive with each other regardless of the distance.

At the moment, there are very few examples of IoT operations, but there’s no doubt that the train has already left the station.

Imagine homes or offices that can make use of forms of tech such as NEST, which help regulate lighting, electricity, heat, and more. Such homes can unite into estates, and estates to towns, then towns can go global, forming a whole network IoT.

IOTA seeks to connect almost everything with the network of Internet Of Things to have them work together. In the end, the ecosystem should have chains of transactions that can be executed in large numbers with minimal costs.

IOTA is working on a technique of ensuring that the operation of the IOT is never affected by internet connectivity; this way, as many people as possible can participate in the network at a minimum to zero charges.

Where to Buy IOTA Coin?

There are many IOTA crypto exchanges that you can easily sign up on to acquire your coins. If you’re stuck on where to buy the IOTA digital currency, consider buying from Binance and Bitfinex.  Between the two, Bitfinex has the highest trading volume but is unavailable to US citizens.

So, if you’re in the US, consider using Binance to acquire your coins.

What’s Next?

After buying your coins, it’s time to find a safe storage for them. There are several storage devices and applications. But be careful about storing your funds on internet-connected tools.

Essentially, there are two main types of wallets for you to choose from when it comes to storing your IOTA:

• Desktop GUI

This is the wallet that the IOTA team recommends to its users for the safe storage of their funds. The wallet supports Windows, Mac, and Linux. The wallet has two nodes; the light and the full one. The full one is better placed into a heavy wallet, while light operations such only storing your coins can operate on the light version.

• Trinity Wallet

This is a much simpler wallet to operate compared with Desktop GUI. But be careful with it as it’s still operating on a Beta version and is prone to loads of bugs.

Whichever wallet you choose, make sure that it supports the major computer operating systems such as Windows, Mac, and Linux.

We’ve come to the end of our IOTA review; if you have any comments or questions, feel free to drop them in the comments section below.