DigiByte has launched into the #37 spot with a market cap of $682M.
After a brief ‘holiday discount‘, the crypto-craze is kicking in again—and many of the major gains we’re seeing are emerging from lesser-known altcoins.
The coin generating noise now is DigiByte (DGB), which jumped 120 percent in 12 hours—including a 53% bull run in just 25 minutes the morning of Dec. 23 (PST).
[Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.]
What is DigiByte?
DigiByte is an open-source, decentralized blockchain via the DigiByte Foundation, and DGB is the native asset. The DigiByte development team has gone to great lengths to ensure that Digibytes “cannot be destroyed, counterfeited or hacked, making them ideal for protecting objects of value like currency, information, property or important digital data.
Having been in existence for four years, with a community of developers and innovators behind it, DigiByte has become “the world’s longest, fastest and most secure UTXO blockchain in existence,” according the official website.
Because DigiByte blocks occur every 15 seconds, DigiByte has earned the title of fastest UTXO blockchain in the world, clocking speeds of 40x faster than Bitcoin.
The DigiByte blockchain is made up of three layers: the applications layer, the public ledger (digital asset layer), and the global network layer. The applications layer is what most people will interact with—it’s where they’ll find Dapps (decentralized apps) and Digi apps, and establish smart contracts.
The asset layer is what brings the platform a greater degree of security. These assets, a digital byte of data, are unique, non-counterfeitable stores of value. This is enforced by five separate mining algorithms, which deter hacking by an exponent. And the underlying global layer supports communications and operations across the global network.
At 10:24pm Dec. 22, DGB was trading for $0.042612, according to CoinMarketCap. By 10:04am PST—just under 12 hours later—that number hit $0.090332, a record high for DGB. The current price is $0.071391.
Why is DGB Surging Right Now?
The “McAfee Effect”
As with BURST yesterday, tech influencer John McAfee (of McAfee cybersecurity fame) is the “inciting incident” for the surge, tweeting about DigiByte the morning of Dec. 22 as his “Coin of the Day” to his 342K followers.
This is complicated by the fact that there have been allegations that McAfee takes a fee or tokens in exchange for promotion, and it remains to be seen the scope of impact McAfee’s “Coin of the Day” series will have. He has also recently recommended privacy coins Monero (XMR), Verge (XVG), and Zcash (ZEC), which caused a major spike for Verge in particular, which is now trading for more than 24x what it was at the time of the tweet.
Rising Value of Security
But John McAfee isn’t the only reason privacy and security coins are having a moment in the sun. With recent hacks like the one on Youbit, in which nearly 20 percent of all its holdings were stolen, there’s a greater desire than ever to protect crypto investments.
DigiByte’s asset layer, which employs five separate mining algorithms, grants buyers a high-degree of trust that their transactions are secure.
Transaction Speed
As more and more people find their way into cryptocurrency, many networks—especially Bitcoin and Ethereum—are experiencing massive delays.
As indicated by the recent interest in Litecoin, Ripple, and Reddcoin—speed matters to new and old buyers alike, whether it’s for everyday use, investment, or trading. With operating speeds of 40x over Bitcoin, it’s no wonder DigiByte is drawing new buyers.
Cutting Edge Tech
The DigiByte Foundation is constantly seeking to expand what DigiByte can be.
Included in their projects is Emma AI, which was announced this summer. She was created by the DigiByte team to:
…help lighten the communication burden for everyone. This is the very first version of Emma. Over time her DGB Knowledge, AI and usefulness will grow. She will get smarter as she learns from interactions and her capability to be of assistance to you will continue to grow as well.
This progressive approach demonstrates that DigiByte is invested in future-proofing, and capable of evolving with new developments in computing.
For more information about DigiByte, visit the official website, join the community Telegram, or subscribe to the r/DigiByte subreddit.