We thank each and everyone who have shown immense love and support to our knowledge series ***Know Your Crypto***.Continuing on our promise to create awareness about the crypto world we bring to you another installment of the series where we discuss about one of the most sought after and valuable crypto project with a marketcap of around 2.7Billion$ at the time of writing the article, [IOTA](https://iota.org) the decentralised IoT token.

<center>![](https://themerkle.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/IOTA.jpg)</center>

**About**

IOTA is a Decentralized Internet-of-Things Token.IOTA (MIOTA) is based on a new blockchain technology designed for the Internet of Things (IOT) of the future.It proclaims itself as the fuel for the IoT growing economy and is named after the mathematical symbol used in imaginary numbers.It provides an infrastructure suitable to carry out micro-transactions for the Internet-of-Things ecosystem.Transactions are  free and the platform is ‘Quantum Secure’.The project features a brand new consensus mechanism called Tangle.



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**Team**
The core founding team of IOTA includes Sonstebo, Sergey Ivancheglo, Serguei Popov and Dominik Schiener.The Core developers include Alon Elmaliah who has a BSc. in Computer Science & Electronic Engineering from Tel Aviv University,Alfred Keller who has a Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering at ETH [Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich],Paul Handy among others.The team now has evolved and has developers, cryptographers, activists and general community members.


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**Token Distribution**
Theres exist no mining for IOTA, all 2,779,530,283,277,761 IOTA or roughly 2,800,000 Gigaiota (Gi) existed in the beginning.These tokens were sold to investors in an ICO which started on  25th November to 21st December 2015.All the tokens were sold/distributed,no tokens were kept by the developers.The developers instead used the collected Bitcoin to finance themselves and the technology.Around 48% of all Iota was claimed by their owners by November 27th . Until the 4th of February, additional 12% of Iota was claimed for a total of 60%. According to one estimate the IOTA ICO raised 3000 bitcoins in a presale, a remarkable amount of value .On it's first day of trading on 13.06.17 it reached a market capitalisation of $1.5 Billion on Bitfinex creating records. 

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**Strengths**

* The world’s first ‘blockless blockchain’
    
    Instead of a regular blockchain IOTA has created something a new consensus mechanism called Tangle which is based on a Directed Acyclic Graph(DAG) structure. It enables further decentralization of the network and also greatly enhances the scalability. IOTA doesn't have any fees which makes it optimal for real-time compensation.Tangle has a mesh of transactions and verifications. In Tangle every time a transaction is sent it verifies two other transactions behind the current. 
    
* Quantum computing is rapidly increasing and will continue to disrupt the crypto discussion more and more. IOTA's quantum resistant algorithm will ensure the protection of its network, data, and transactions.IOTA uses hash-based signatures instead of elliptic curve cryptography.IOTA also makes use of Winternitz signature which makes IOTA quantum proof. The hash function is called Curl.



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**Market Perfomance**

At the time of writing the article **IOTA** has a market cap of $2,718,413,971 and a circulating supply of 2,779,530,283 MIOTA.The current price of 1 MIOTA  stands at $0.977560 or 0.00023101 BTC .

<center>**IOTA Prices-1 Month**
![](https://preview.ibb.co/mSfuga/IOTA1month.jpg)</center>

<center>**IOTA Prices-All Time**
![](https://preview.ibb.co/mZbZga/IOTAall.jpg)</center>




The current market stats for **IOTA** can be found [here](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/iota/)

The IOTA foundation has established the IOTA Ecosystem Fund, a fund dedicated to supporting the development of new proof of concepts and applications built for the Tangle. The IOTA Foundation has now teamed up with F6S, the world’s premier platform for founders, startups, and accelerators which boasts a roster of over two million developers.

The IOTA protocol with it's new technological capabilities is an extremely exciting new approach to distributed ledger technology. It definitely promises huge scalability and economic improvements over traditional blockchains.

For the whitepaper you can visit [here](https://iota.org/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf)

Image source: [1](https://www.google.co.in/search?biw=1366&bih=662&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=IOTA+crypto&oq=IOTA+crypto&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0l3j0i24k1.15151.17415.0.17622.7.7.0.0.0.0.133.692.5j2.7.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.7.689.WIVh89wCYzo#imgrc=sYF2MDkOUdCubM:) [2](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/iota/) [3](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/iota/)
Author : @shrey

We would love to know your views on the recently started know your crypto series so get down below comment and resteem!Also if you want to know about a particular crypto currency do let us know in the comments so that we can take it in the next edition of **Know Your Crypto**