If someone asked me: What is IOTA? I would simply reply: "It's a solution to all contemporary blockchain problems. It's a complex technology - cryptocurrency of the future that was realeased way ahead of it's time and with it's potential it might even overthrough Bitcoin one day." On the following lines of this post I will try to justify this statement - explain you why I think so and try to convince you to think alike.
For the first time IOTA appeared on coinmarketcap.com was in June the 13th 2017 and it immidiatelly occupied the 8th place by the total marketcap. An interesting name, original logo and a high new entry position immidiatelly cought eye of many investors, tech geeks and cryptocurrency enthusiasts and there was pretty a lot of Volume on Bitfinex (currently the only market that worked with IOTA developers and thus acquired the information needed to have this coin listed on their exchange list) as well, so why exactly hasn't IOTA taken over the whole cryptocurrency market yet? Why it's price even went down since it's public appearence? The answer is rather simple - world is just not ready for it yet!
Just listen to this:
"IOTA is a revolutionary new transactional settlement and data integrity layer for the Internet of Things. It’s based on a new distributed ledger architecture, the Tangle, which overcomes the inefficiencies of current Blockchain designs and introduces a new way of reaching consensus in a decentralized peer-to-peer system. For the first time ever, through IOTA people can transfer money without any fees. This means that even infinitesimally small nanopayments can be made through IOTA. IOTA is the missing puzzle piece for the Machine Economy to fully emerge and reach its desired potential. We envision IOTA to be the public, permissionless backbone for the Internet of Things that enables true interoperability between all devices."
Source: official IOTA documentation: https://iota.readme.io/v1.2.0/docs
Mindblown! 3rd generation cryptocurrency working on it's own "blockchainless" technology called Tangle which uses Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) in it's core. It doesn't need the whole PoW system for creating sending and confirming of the transactions, because every transaction that is sent via IOTA network automatically verifies the transactions sent before it, making the whole process a lot simplier and faster - in fact the more transactions appear on the network, the faster it is. And that is why the fees are also not longer necessary making IOTA the ideal tool for micro and even nano transaction that can be sent in exact amount in matter of seconds around the world encrypted and secured by quantum computing proof. Go on and try to think of a cryptocurrency capable to do that...
Directed Acyclic Graph. In case you wondered - that's how it looks like. All squares represent the nodes in the network that send transactions and let the other transactions be verified by them at the same moment, creating a network where everyone is verifing everyone's transactions. Encrypted and quantum proofed.
The whole idea of implementing IOTA as a communication bridge between devices is also quite astonishing - with the world moving towards smart chips used in all kinds of electronic device around us, there is a "fillament" needed to manage the interaction between those chips. IOTA as not only the "digital monetary" source, but also a technology that allows lightning fast data transfers and basic communication level in form of network messeging is the perfect "guy" for this kind of work. What? You cannot come up with scenario where two machines could use Tangle network in order to exchange data with each other? Well imagine a "smart car" arriving to a "smart gas station" after you have finished refilling the gas the smart gas station sends the payment request to your car and your car automatically completes it via it's own IOTA wallet. That all without any 3rd party contributer (in this case - you) needed. Absolutely automatic. Another example - a sensor in the "smart fridge" has noticed that there is not enough milk in the fridge. It sends the signal to the eshop, let's say Amazon's Wholefoods (lol) and orders the 2 bottles of milk and instantly pays for it... Just stop for a while and try to realize the power that this technology offers the world. And while you do that - here is the point by point summary of all the key features that IOTA and it's Tangle scalable ledger offer:
Key features:
instant, feeless transactions
unlimited scalability
the bigger network - the faster
quantum proof - impossible to hack
binarytrinary data formatlightning speed data transfer
micro and nano transactions possible
network voting and messeging possible
extremely versatile scalable Tangle ladger
100% new code
high total coin supply: (333-1)/2 = 2 779 530 283 277 761 of IOTA*
*because of such an enourmous supply of monetary units exchanges and wallets will be using a unit MIOTA (million of IOTA) for the basic paying purposes.
I haven't seen anything like IOTA before - it absolutely amazed me how genius this technology is. If it is legit, and I more pretty sure it is, then in few years we might witness massive technological improvements - I still cannot completelly comprehend the full potential of this technology - the impact, that it could have on our world - in sphere of world economy, governance, Internet of Things, voting, privacy - It could revolutionize the way our world functions today from many different angles. And that is a very brave, beautiful and even a little bit scary vision for the future.
Thank you a lot for reading my post! Let me know in the comment section below your opinion on this magnificent piece of technology. Upvotes and resteems are also welcomed but not demanded :D
If you would like to continue further with your own research, I stronly recommend you to take a look on these web sites (which are also my own IOTA knowledge sources):
official web site: https://iota.org/
official documentory (readme) site: https://iota.readme.io/v1.2.0/docs
IOTA white paper: https://iota.org/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf
also if you like to watch rather than read I recommend you this video made by 
He explains the basic idea of IOTA very well in quickly summarizes it's top features.
