If you follow me you know I've written an article about IOTA (German) three weeks ago where I say that I believe it's undervalued. Well, since then there were some major news which makes me even more confident. And if you think bad about IOTA please read this article!
The first and most relevant news
is the post by Multicoin Capital. Tldr; "[They] have several [four] major concerns with the implementation of IOTA that make [them] highly skeptical of its lofty claims." My answers are below the statements:
- The IOTA Coordinator is Centralized
Valid - The coordinator is currently centralized, but there are plans for the future to decentralize it. The first step is to delegate the coordinators until the "critical mass" is reached when they get shut down completely. David Sønstebø compares this with a child who learns cycling. This also needs stabilizers and a helmet until it has the balance. source1 / source2==video linked below - IOTA Requires Hardware Changes to IoT Devices
The IoT devices itself needs a ternary processor to do the PoW itself. Anyway, the PoW can be outsourced for devices that don't have an ternary processor. IOTA and JINN will publish this year (probably Q1 2018) the first ternary processors and there are rumors that BOSCH is already building them. source - The Network Has Experienced Downtime
This is a project in its early phase with a new technology. Better they shut down the network (as long as they are able with centralized coordinators) to resolve an bug or stop an attack than they do nothing. This is nothing special. - Cryptography and Software Vulnerabilities ❗️❗️❗️(important)
And this is not true! DCI at the MIT Media Lab made some big allegations that the crypto used by IOTA is insecure a while ago, without providing solid proof for it. Now they finally provided a proof of concept piece of code which apparently isn't proving any vulnerability at all. source - read more - and more - last but not leas watch the video below
So yes IOTA is in early stage. There are a lot of points that has to be improved. But it's not overvalued or even worthless as a lot of people think, on the contrary, it's undervalued at least in my opinion. But to be fair, I also hold some MIOTA, so I might be biased.
The second news
is that big companies work with - and some also invest in - IOTA. I don't want to dive in too deep, it is simply a good sign that such large companies believe in the project. For more information I have linked the corresponding articles.
- Johann Jungwirth, the Volkswagen's Chief Digital Officer joined the IOTA foundations supervisory board.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/montymunford/2018/01/23/volkswagens-chief-digital-officer-joins-cryptocurrency-iota-foundations-supervisory-board/#27aca80e6fd6 - Bosch launched their next commercial IoT hardware, the XDK-110 with IOTA
https://theindependentrepublic.com/2018/01/27/boschs-new-iot-adaptor-xdk110-and-how-it-is-related-to-iota-miota/ - A list of all IOTA data marketplace participants
The third news
is the hack of the IOTA wallets. The wallet is pretty user unfriendly and has a bad UX but the biggest problem is that it doesn't have an implemented Seed generator. When I first installed the wallet I had to check what a Seed is and how to create it and yes I also used the malicious website to generate the IOTA seed but I didn't lost any money because I never use online generated Private Keys / Seeds and stuff like that. But a lot if people trusted this site (I don't link to it). But that's like asking someone on the street: "Here a $50. Can you buy me a keyhole and the key and send it to the address of my house?" And then hope that this person doesn't have a copy of the key to break in. Probably not the best example but I think you get the point. Especially in the highly unregulated cryptocurrency market with so much scammers. I hope this will get addressed with the new trinity wallet (open beta) coming these weeks. The problem why the current wallet is so bad is that it was never a priority for IOTA to create a wallet, which was imho bad. Here's a good article about new wallets.
Don't use that. But it seems the site is already down.Btw. there's currently a new phishing site around: https://www.iota-wallet.me/
The fourth news
is probably not as big as the other ones but Ivan On Tech a huge YouTuber in the cryptocurrency space made a Q&A with David Sønstebø.
I encourage everyone who still has a bad opinion about IOTA to watch this video.
It is about an hour long, but you can listen to it while driving or before going to sleep, because the sound is sufficient.
Leave a comment about your opinion about all these concerns, the wallet hack and the future of IOTA 🙂
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
My humble experience in this field is, that if there is lots of FUD around a project, then there is a reason for it. So do I say to panic and believe any FUD? No, but I have been with other projects (like SUB) and every criticism was rejected as "Don´t listen to this stupid FUD" and I chimed in until I saw myself, that there was a reason for it and the reality was even worse than all these "FUDsters" wanted to make us believe. I learned, that I should have listened to these objections, because most of the times, FUD is not spread out of the malicious intent of competitors but simply is what it is: a clear warning to look deeper.
That being said, I see that your are doing your research and looking at the pros and cons - which is a good thing - but for me, the signs that there is something going horribly wrong with IOTA are also obvious. Besides all the facts (and my own bad experience with nothing really working - wallet, withdrawals etc), my gut always gives me a warning when I hear about IOTA and I share this with people, so that they can be cautious. But hey - it´s just my intuition and I hope for you, that I´m wrong. :)
Hey @atmosblack thanks for your critical opinion. I like such comments much more than these "IOTA to the moon" stuff as you know what I mean. I like to get an idea how other people see this project as I might be (really) biased because I invested - for a student - a lot of money (probably peanuts for others^^). Your points are valid and if I see any red flags in the future I'll probably switch my investment to another crypto, but so far I'm confident with the project. I'll definitely keep an eye on the progress.
Btw. I think I know now about which crypto you talked in your "Snake Oil" article. hehe :)
You are very welcome - right, the snake oil article was about SUB and it´s good, that I listened to the signs and withdrew my investment (and still doubling my money). I moved all my funds over to EOS and I couldn´t be more happy about my decision. My initial goal was to invest in a true revolutionary web 3.0 technology and I guess my money is better invested into EOS than SUB, because they have a clear roadmap they stick to and underpromise but overdeliver.
Thanks for sharing such great information with plenty of sources. I’m an owner and believer in #iota
Truthfully it’s one of the first micro coins I purchased.
Thank you @rockmandown . Compliments always inspire me to write further well-researched articles :)
is iota worth buying?
There is no "Yes" or "No" answer. It's up to you! Do you believe in the tech? Do you think the team is able to achieve all of their goals? What's with the community? Is IoT really important in the future? There are plenty of other questions!
Do your own research. Don't buy a coin because anyone on the internet says you should do it because that's when you end up with no money. You start panicking when the price drops because you don't believe in the coin/yourself, you believed in another person, you even don't know.