IOST, the latest rising star of the crypto market, has been going through a period of stagnation as of lately. After its initial post-launch pump which saw it explode from 175 to over 1100 satoshis, the coin had a strong retracement which saw the price drop down all the way to 200 satoshis. The following months saw it react similarly to the rest of the market, with bullish months of April and early May leading to a recovery to 800 satoshis. During the period behind us, IOST slightly dipped, going down to just above 500 and occasionally flirting with 600 sats. The coin is currently traded at 524 satoshis (a 2.86% drop in the last 24 hours) and at 0.040089 USD (a 3.33% drop in the last 24 hours).
This young currency (started trading in mid-January) definitely has more room to grow and many traders are still “hodling” it, even though it’s not the most potent coin on the market. Still, with the way Bitcoin and the rest of the market has been moving, IOST has held its own pretty good. It is currently sporting a market cap of 335 million USD which is enough to keep it on the 51st place of coinmarketcap’s list of cryptocurrencies.
IOST is a coin that looks to offer what they call an “Internet of Services”, a decentralized blockchain-based network of companies that will perform various online services in exchange for IOST tokens. The platform will provide the infrastructure for a service ecosystem centered around various decentralized apps that each service provider will be able to create. The platform doesn’t use either the PoW or the PoS algorithm, but rather an in-house perfected Proof of Believability. It also has what they call Hyper Universe Distributed System, which is a fancy way of saying that the platform will be able to support different service providers at the same time. IOST network is currently an ERC20 token and is looking to launch its own native blockchain. A testnet is already up and running with plans to launch the full mainnet by the end of 2018.
The coin doesn’t have much going for it as of lately. Except a few major exchanges like Huobi and Zebpay starting to trade it, coin’s news cycle has been relatively slow. There were some rumors that Upbit might be listing it as well but that hasn’t materialized yet. Everything suggests that the team is silently focused on the testnet in order to make sure the mainnet will be ready for the predicted EoY launch. There are reports that intensive work is currently being done on transactions, scalability, security, node and wallet functionality.
There are only 11.2 billion IOST tokens in circulating supply out of 21 bilion in total. So, expect a big dilution of value once more tokens enter the circulation. It is only 2 months old and considering 60% of ICOs fail in their first year, IOST could be one of them.
It made a big pump when it was listed on Binance and it entered a slump after that, joining the rest of the market.
A recent announcement confirmed that Sequoia Capital, a Chinese VC company, has invested into and launched a project named Theseus. The project will be closely tied to IOST as it will focus on creating a research and development team dedicated to providing practical applications and assistance to potential IOST service providers and their customers. Theseus team will also aim “to inspire and assist more developers, promoting the growth of the IOST blockchain developer community.”
Read: What are the most promising altcoins for 2018?
This announcement revealed a long-term issue of IOST which is funding through venture capital and financial institutions and not through open crowdfunding. While this does remain a somewhat worrying issue with the IOST project, the support of institutional investors should mean that the coin has a bright future ahead. For now, will have to wait and see what the mainnet launch brings, but IOST does look like a coin with good potential to reach its previous all-time highs and perhaps go a lot further than that.
