IOTA : A Cryptocurrency With Infinite Scalability And No Fees

                                
  Bitcoin has been dominating the news lately due to some incredible landmark heights it has achieved in the last few weeks. It has gained value at a rate no one could have predicted when it was established in 2008. As its value rises over $15,000 this week, discussion over factors that could affect its stability continue to mount. But Bitcoin was only the first of many cryptocurrencies to be developed.

What is IOTA?

• IOTA takes its name from the Internet of Things, a giant network of "intelligent" devices that use cloud resources to communicate with one another. Essentially, it allows users to remotely access the device from another one -- for instance, allowing your phone to interface with your refrigerator when you forget your shopping list at home.
• This advantage is created because of the structure of the IOTA market. Instead of relying on a continuous blockchain as a ledger, the system requires the sender of a transaction to perform a "proof of work" by validating two other transactions. Proof of work is a security measure that requires a sending machine to perform a difficult operation that can be verified easily by the receiving machine.

What are advantages of IOTA over other cryptocurrencies?

• The most practical advantage from a user perspective is that IOTA's structure removes the reliance on a middleman, leaving the entire transaction fee free. Mining fees are not necessarily a deal-breaker when considering large transactions, but if you want to exchange just a few dollars or less for a service, using Bitcoin can consume large quantities of time or money due to the block chain ledger structure. Those fees only increase over time for Bitcoin users, and it has been one of the major concerns in its value in the long-term. 
• Bitcoin was intended to be a fully "decentralized" currency. Only the people holding Bitcoins are supposed to have any say in what it can and cannot do. Centralized currencies such as the USD or the GBP are subject to the rules of the agencies that "own" them: the states that they come from. As such, their value is tied heavily to the actions and laws of the state. Cryptocurrencies are not beholden to those rules, instead relying on exclusively the trust of the users in its value. This allows its market value to rise significantly farther than any fiat currency and protects it from being devalued when something happens to a state's economy.