Cryptocurrency IOTA Rises 90 Percent Following Tech Firm Agreements

Look out, bitcoin, there’s a new sheriff rolling in town–at least for now.
Digital currency MIOTA–the cryptocurrency under the IOTA platform–has surged past favourites such as Litecoin and Ripple to take sole possession as the fourth top cryptocurrency.
According to data from Coinmarketcap, IOTA gained more than 90 percent in less than 24 hours to reach $5.55 on Wednesday (December 6) and a market cap of over $15 billion.

Likely contributing to the rising price and added value to its market cap comes following IOTA’s Data Marketplace announcement, which includes teaming up with tech giants such as Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Samsung (KRX:005930).
According to IOTA’s blog post, the goal of the Data Marketplace is to “enable a truly decentralized marketplace to open up the data silos that currently keep data limited to the control of a few entities.”
CNBC reported this week that IOTA’s co-founder, David Sonstebo, said data is “the new oil,” and that the Data Marketplace is “letting firms sell data to incentivize them to share tis data that would otherwise be wasted.”
“At present, up to 99 percent of this precious data gathered is lost to the void,” Sonstebo told CNBC. “IOTA incentivize sharing of data through its zero fee transactions and by ensuring data integrity for free on the decentralized distributed ledger.”
Announced November 28, the IOTA Data Marketplace will be available for demo for two months and includes other industry leaders-in addition to Microsoft and Samsung–participate, including Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) and Volkswagen (OTCMKTS:VLKAY).
“This next generation technology will accelerate the connected, intelligent world and go beyond blockchain that will foster innovation real world solutions, applications and pilots for our customers,” Omar Naik from Microsoft said in the statement.
Since Wednesday’s high of $5.55, IOTA has dipped slightly to $4.08, while its market cap has also stepped back slightly to $11.3 billion as of 4:39 p.m. EST.
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Securities Disclosure: I, Jocelyn Aspa, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.