IOTA - why I think we are seeing a "New" IOTA token and IOTA Foundation... Just my opinion.

TLDR: There is a pump coming. IOTA and the IOTA Foundation is not the same that it was before mid-2020. We are seeing a totally new token, a new Foundation, most importantly a new team!

Here are my thoughts on why we will see a huge Pump and potentially nice consistent gains over the next month with IOTA.

1. It has been confirmed that there will be a big announcement in the next 24 hours. As well, that the IF has been working on this for the past 18 months. This was stated by Dominik Shiener, one of the founders of IOTA and on the Board of Directors.

2. Why will this announcement be different from the “Q” announcement from years ago? Primarily I believe that the IOTA Foundation has evolved (in a positive way) from the early days. They were known for hype without any results. They talked-the-talked but never walked the walk. The “Q” announcement was a dud and really hurt the IF’s image and reputation, especially to investors and traders. The fact was that “Q” was a great idea, but it was built on Ternary and required Ternary hardware. Will we one day see Ternary IoT Hardware chips? Maybe, probably in 10 to 20 years, though possibly never. Building “Q” was a disaster but was pushed by two particular IOTA Founders at that time. Since the IF let go of those two founders that held so strongly to Ternary development in denial that it is destined to fail, Dominik Shiener and the IOTA Foundation as a whole, has completely rebuilt the Tangle from the ground up. They didn’t just rebuild and reinvent the Tangle with Chrysallis on a technical basis, but they also rebuild the IOTA Foundation as a whole. They reinvented how they conduct marketing, announcements, and interact with the community. Saying all that, Dominik himself confirmed today that this announcement within the next 24 hours will not be anything like “Q”. On top of that, he reaffirmed that the IOTA Foundation is nothing like it was in 2018 such as with the “Q” days. I do believe they have learned from their past, let go of some of the dead weight, reinvented themselves, yet they still hold true to the vision of building a feeless, secure, and decentralized network (trilemma solved!), but a network that not only supports the growing IoT Machine economy, but also a network that takes DLTs to the next level with Web/Crypto 3.0. This announcement has been confirmed it will not be another “Q” disaster. I will make the bet that it is a chance to show the result, and will have the fact to back that statement up, “IOTA has grown and not the same foundation it was when it made the “Q” announcement”.

3. There are times when Fundamentals (ie: technology releases, partnership announcements, etc.) align with Technical Analysis. Lately, I have seen a lot of Crypto Twitter traders stating they see inverse head-and-shoulders and a massive cup-and-handle. I’m no TA expert but I certainly know and understand the concept of network reach, especially when it comes to trading and price increases. Over the past two months, I have seen an explosion of Crypto Traders talking about IOTA and stating that it is poised for a big break-out. These profiles have 20k to 200k followers. Now that isn’t a lot compared to many of the big CT players, but it has basically gone from zero to several CT Traders with hundreds of thousands of followers. It does seem that this positive TA analysis of the IOTA chart aligns with a big fundamental announcement, and thus sets up a nice unicorn price pump moment. What I also believe, is that this announcement will show that the IF has evolved from the past days we all will know that with a factual event.

4. As with everything, Bitcoin is the King and leads all others. Is Bitcoin set up for a short-term break out in the next 72 hrs? Will it hold steady or take a huge dump? To me, it looks like it’s going sideways, or, a breakout has a higher possibility compared to dumping to low $40k’s. If it does breakout and aligns with good a TA breakout of IOTA, combined with a big fundamental announcement, this pump could be huge!

5. This can lead to consistent gains pushing IOTA through resistance levels. This certainly won’t be the last big announcement of the year. There is a high probability of the EBSI announcement dropping this month in December. EBSI, where the EU-Wide blockchain has signed a declaration to “accelerate the creation of cross-border services for public administrations and their ecosystems to verify the information and to make services trustworthy”. IOTA has already been accepted and chosen for round one. Any time now they will announce who will be chosen for round two. In round 2 the chosen participants will start working and developing the DLT system for the European Union. Further announcements and events that will happen, as we know staking within Firefly for the SMR token airdrop will happen soon and most likely in December. Additionally, the NFT auction will occur on December 20th. If these announcements and potentially others start dropping throughout December we could see a nice consistent price gain throughout the month as long as the market doesn’t suddenly crash and go bear.

6. Lastly, why do I think we will see a big pump in the next 24 hours, when the announcement occurs and potentially the pump evolves into just a nice price gain throughout the month, liquidity has and will keep drying up on the exchanges. It was already announced that IOTA is building the Shimmer Network and will airdrop SMR tokens to IOTA holders through a liquid staking process. Essentially the Shimmer network is identical to Kusama is to Polka Dot. As we know, Kusama’s price has had a 10,000% increase since its creation. Regardless of if anyone thinks a testnet token should have value, or logically should have value, Kusama has clearly shown that this market will give a testnet token value. There is no reason to think SMR tokens won’t have value either. The great thing about it, you can get SMR tokens free simply by holding and doing liquid staking with IOTAs. The key point here regarding liquidity is that people must stake their IOTAs within the Firefly wallet, “Off the exchanges!” There has already been an exodus of IOTAs off of exchanges and each day we move closer to staking the more liquidity will dry up. This of course leads to a squeeze and raises the price as when people try to buy IOTA there isn’t anyone selling. This also adds to the support to the thought of a sustained and consistent price increase throughout December.

Personally, I am an IOTA holder and have been since 2017. I trade (poorly.. lol) with 20% of my IOTA holdings. The token doesn’t do much day-to-day, but during these moments, where TA aligns with a good tangible announcement, that is when a huge pump occurs. This could also be like the 2017 moment where IOTA simply goes parabolic and shoots up into the top 10. Are the stars aligning for such a move? Not sure about that one, but a decent pump nonetheless.

I hold IOTA (and soon SMR) for the fundamentals and their ambition to solve a problem despite the challenge. I really do love the vision of a feeless DLT, more so because they are building it while no one else is even trying. It’s a big challenge that brings huge risks for sure. Many may have given up when the Ternary failed. Yet the IOTA Team and community had the fortitude to get up and keep fighting. They didn’t stop when the challenges or failure arrived, they overcame and pushed forward where others threw in the towel. The IOTA Foundation, the leaders, the developers, the project managers, administrators, the marketing team, and the design team; are the team that is crawling through the mud, swimming upstream, and moving forward despite hate and anger being thrown their way daily in social media. They are the team fighting the trilemma war. Their endurance and ambition as an organization are like a few others. It’s that extreme determination within a team that changes society and makes history. Gates, Jobs, Bezos, Brin, Sage, Tomlinson, Newcomen, Savery, and Watt; changed society not just with a vision, but by completing that vision with a team that pushed through adversity and overcame failure. The “new” IOTA Foundation is one of those teams, and that is why I hold and have faith that they indeed will solve the trilemma. The Tangle & ShimmerNet will be the basic protocol for governments, global corporations, and a network that spans the earth. It will be a feeless network entangled allowing other fee-based blockchains & DAGs to interact with interoperability and most importantly, be able to scale! The Tangle will not be the only DLT that is for sure, but it will certainly be one of the major ones.

The major criticism of IOTA and the IF is that they don’t produce. I can agree with that with their past actions up to mid-2020. Until mid-2020 there really weren’t many facts to argue that stance, not much of anything was tangible or any technology really worked. However, since 2020 the IF has shown they have taken a new course. They have listened to the crypto community experts and admitted their technological faults. They reinvented their protocol while reinventing the way they interact with partners and the community, and more importantly, they did this transition from the top down. The leaders that wouldn’t follow the plan were let go. The leaders that stayed have led by example. Today there is an IOTA Devnet 2.0 based in binary, without a coordinator, running day-to-day without fees but also maintaining speed, security, and decentralization. The mainnet was transitioned from Ternary to Binary with UTXO’s to allow for present-day use! The IOTA Smart Contract Protocol was released as an Alpha version. Not only does it work, but it allows for Metamask integration and NFT drops completed “ZERO FEES”; this was completed and proven by IOTAbots. Currently, the fact that backs up the statement that Dapps can now be built using the Devnet2.0 and Smart Contracts, we this by Dapps such as: a Defi Exchange is being built by Tangle Sea (TangleSea.com) & Tangle Swap (https://tangleswap.exchange), an NFT market place (https://nftiota.org), IoT Sensors (Oracles) that payout to owners (https://govs.io), the Alvarium Project by Dell and Intel (https://www.lfedge.org/projects/alvarium/) and so much more. Through the IOTA’s Foundation and the Community development, there is now a basis for the community and partners to build on. It’s no longer about what possibly can be done in the future, it’s about what can be done now.

There is no doubt that over the past year the IOTA Foundation reinvented everything from the technology to the organization itself. They have reinvented the protocol, marketing, PR, and simply their professionalism and attitude as to how they interact with the community and partners. Before they made announcements of partnerships and technology developments that went nowhere or simply didn’t work. This year's announcements show delivery. Partnerships are moving out of the Proof-of-concept stages and being executed. Technology developments are being implemented, work, and allow for Dapp development. The facts back up these statements as we see with community Dapps (mentioned above), advancing out of Proof-of-Concept stages as we see with EBSI, Alvarium, Telco (TM Forum), Ensuresec, Trademark East Africa, EPCIS 2.0, and many other events currently progressing out of proof-of-concept stages. It’s these facts that support the new IOTA Foundation and its delivery. We aren’t seeing much anymore where VW builds a PoC but then doesn’t deliver anything. Now we are seeing partners build PoC’s and then move on to execution. That they don’t just talk-the-talk (as they did in previous years) but they are now back up the talk by walking-the-walk. I used to say, “next year will be the year for IOTA”. I said this each year since 2017… lol, but this year “was” the year for IOTA. This year they delivered and proved they have reinvented themselves with the specific focus of delivery and adoption. As they keep the current progress going every year will be the year for IOTA. They will keep delivering, PoC’s will be moving to execution, and the market adoption percentage will grow. As we have seen the broader community outside of the IOTA bubble start to change their sentiment towards IOTA and the Foundation. We see the broader community starting to trust the IOTA Foundation delivers on its promises. Now we see they believe the IOTA Foundation is walking a new path, one of delivery and adoption, we continue seeing more and more outsiders see this new view and start supporting IOTA and SMR. It won’t just be developers and partners supporting the tokens but also crypto traders and investors. I am looking forward to tomorrow’s announcement, the month of December as a whole, as well as next year. It’s not just exciting to see developments and delivery in Real-time, but I also love getting Free SMR Tokens from the Airdrop!!! Good times ahead.