IOTA Token

e-Euro vs. IOTA token

This article is a translation of the German IOTA Beginner’s Guide by .

Could an e-Euro replace the IOTA Token?

The e-Euro considered by the European Commission will not be a communication protocol. It will be a 1:1 backed stablecoin that can be used on different platforms if necessary. In my opinion, an own Euro-Chain or something similar would not make much sense in our globally connected world. What would be the advantages?

The marketplaces will be international and therefore require a cross-country and cross-company medium of exchange, especially for micro-transactions. As I have often described, in my opinion the user will not even notice that he pays with IOTA tokens in the future. All transactions including autonomous conversions into different national currencies will run in the background and in almost real time.

If you want to implement cross-country and cross-company processes, trade or logistics between machines, these transactions can take place without much delay and without having to agree on a trading currency etc. The only requirement is that machines have direct access to a stock exchange either directly or through a financial service provider to make conversions. This could be, for example, the house bank of a company, which keeps the fiat accounts anyway and if the bank earns a small margin for this autonomous conversion order, this is perfectly fine. A machine could autonomously submit a conversion order to the bank at any time and then have its IOTA tokens available to send them across the national border. In this case, the higher volatility is completely neglected and a machine would not have to keep tokens in its wallet permanently.

> IOTA is an open, free of charge, decentralized and ultra-fast clearing system!

I can imagine the Euro and other fiat currencies as additional stablecoins on the Tangle, which could store the respective fiat-values over a longer period of time.

Original source

https://iota-einsteiger-guide.de/e-euro-vs-iota-token.html

Volatility

This article is a translation of the German IOTA Beginner’s Guide by .

Is volatility a problem for IOTA?

The following statements are based on my own considerations and do not have to come true.

First we have to clarify what volatility in the crypto market means.

Volatility shows the fluctuation intensity of the price of a currency within a certain time period. The higher the volatility the more the price moves up and down. Volatility is always measured relatively – One currency (crypto or fiat) behaves volatile in relation to another currency. For example, the foreign trade value of a cryptocurrency can be determined. This indicates how much fiat money you get for your cryptocurrency.

The trading volume on the crypto market is currently still very low. Therefore the volatility is much higher than for example on the foreign exchange market, which has a much larger volume (about 350 times the daily turnover). But also on the foreign exchange market there is sometimes high volatility. This could be observed not so long ago with the national currencies of Venezuela or Turkey.

Let’s take a look at the supposed problem of volatility of the IOTA token.

Many users see a problem in the fact that if, for example, I put the equivalent of 50 euros in IOTA tokens on the car wallet today. In three weeks’ time when I refuel, the car wallet could only have the equivalent of 30 euros because the price of the IOTA token on the stock exchanges has fallen sharply in relation to the Euro.

If the IOTA token were to be used as an old conventional means of payment (money as a store of value) this would certainly be a problem. Which buyer would like to issue IOTA tokens today on the assumption that the purchasing power next week will be 30% higher? Or what retailer wants to accept IOTA tokens today when the value could be 30% lower next week?

But the IOTA token is not like conventional money. Our civilization has entered the digital age. In the future everything will be globally connected and the most different systems will have their own wallets and pay each other in almost real time. Tokens will be bought autonomously the moment they are needed. IOTA is an unrivaled, open, free of charge, decentralized and ultra-fast clearing system.

Accordingly, the globally connected systems will be able to convert various values such as IOTA into Euros, USD or Rubles in the background. For this purpose, service providers (banks, stock exchanges, etc.) will certainly be found who will be happy to do this for a small fee. This might already be possible with the next wallet generation. The new wallet will be a platform that allows third party apps to offer different services.

Free your mind

Personally, some people lack the imagination for the technical possibilities and the ingenuity of resourceful entrepreneurs. Here is an example: Why does a car, machine or mobile wallet have to belong to the owner of the physical object? The wallet could also belong to a major provider (financial service providers such as banks, manufacturers such as VW, Samsung, …), which offers all payment transactions as services and collects the invoice amount as fiat money from the bank account at the end of the month. These large service providers would also have other possibilities to keep the price stable within their own account, for example by using hedges. Another possibility would be a Smart Contract that has access to a kind of money deposit (FIAT / stable coin) and permanently adjusts the equivalent value in Euro or another currency at the IOTA address based on the current exchange rate.

Most of the technical processes of the service providers will run in the background and the customer will not even notice which different technical transactions are running in the background using the IOTA technology. Today nobody knows how NFC works at the cash register. It just works. Let’s take the example of the e-charging station and take the idea a little further. The payment at an e-charging station would be done at IOTA using IOTA Streams. To do this, a private IOTA Stream channel is opened between the vehicle with the built-in car-wallet and the e-charging station to establish a data stream. Now, payment is made per data point with IOTA micro-transactions and payment stops as soon as no more power is received. During the charging process, the vehicle could purchase IOTA tokens in real time from a service provider (e.g. bank) to pay directly. The only requirement is that the car wallet and / or charging station have direct access to a stock exchange, either directly or through a financial service provider, to make conversions. This could be, for example, the charging station operator’s house bank, which keeps the Fiat accounts anyway. If the bank earns a small margin for this autonomous conversion order this is perfectly fine. The customer only sees the paid Euro amount at the charging station and in his vehicle. (see Jaguar Display)

Another possibility is the Digital Asset. This is tied to a specific purpose and would be immune to volatility. If I buy a Digital Asset ticket today for a concert in three months it doesn’t matter what the value of the IOTA token is in three months. The ticket has already been paid for. So with the Digital Asset ticket I will always have access to the concert.

What else could limit the volatility?

To increase the volume of transactions the ecosystem has to grow over time. As the adoption of the technology increases the demand for and trade of the token will also increase significantly. As supply and demand from as many applications as possible level off the high volatility will also decrease. However, this will still take a few more years during which we will see some strong volatility in the price.

Original source

https://iota-einsteiger-guide.de/volatilitaet.html

Token Economics

This article is a translation of the German IOTA Beginner’s Guide by .

Is the IOTA token even needed?

There are people who claim that the main innovation is the “Tangle” and that the IOTA token is useless. I will list a few of my thoughts regarding this in the following.

Token economics – Uses, benefits and value of the Token

The value of the IOTA token is based on people who believe in it, but there is a crucial difference from other cryptocurrencies. For example, those who own Bitcoin are not entitled to the resources of the Bitcoin network, but those who own IOTA tokens have guaranteed access to a portion of the network’s resources, regardless of its value in dollars, Bitcoin, or any other currency. In IOTA, there are no miners and no stakers who can charge a fee for processing transactions. Transactions are free because it is in the interest of all participants to exchange value in a feeless, permission-free, secure, scalable, and decentralized manner.

To ensure all of this there is a scarce resource called Mana in the IOTA network as of IOTA 2.0. It is best thought of as a tool that is used for various tasks in the network, such as defending against Sybil attacks or tools like FPC, autopeering, and congestion control. Mana can be thought of as a parallel reputation token to the IOTA token, which is held by addresses in proportion to the IOTA tokens. This is called pending Mana, which is pledged to the executing node in value transactions. When a certain amount of IOTA tokens is transferred from one address to another, an executing node selected by the issuer is rewarded with Mana, giving that node “trust”. The amount of Mana this node receives is proportional to the amount of IOTA tokens sent in the transaction.

One of the purposes of Mana is to give the nodes participating in the network a ranking / reputation, which makes it possible to distinguish honest working nodes with a secured history from new nodes (identities) that have just joined the network and, if necessary, to give the nodes preference in processing transactions if the network is close to its processing capacity. Most aspects of the new protocol (voting, peering, rate control, etc.) will therefore favor nodes with high Mana over nodes that cannot prove their honest work on the network. So even if an attacker manages to create 100 fake identities, his “opinion” will not be taken into account, because his reputation (Mana) will put him behind all honest working nodes in the network for a while, thus preventing identity forgery and sybil attacks, among others.

For fullnodes, this means that unless the inbox is empty, each node processes messages at a rate specified in the protocol. This rate determines the maximum throughput. If the network is close to its processing capabilities, someone who wants to do a lot of data transactions in a short time will need Mana for the executing node to be favored over other transactions (possibly spam). This can best be compared to buying higher bandwidth from an Internet service provider. If you don’t have Mana and the network is congested, you can’t issue transactions and have to wait. Herein lies the economic model, which is unique compared to other cryptocurrencies.

How does it work? Just like everything in life. When a company needs office space, they have two options. They can either buy or rent the space. The same is true for IOTA with Mana. If someone wants to use the Tangle but doesn’t want to own the tokens, they will have to rent Mana from other people, the same way someone rents a property from a landlord. Some people often confuse this with a fee. It is NOT a fee. It is an allocation mechanism where people who contribute to the network by owning tokens and / or running nodes get priority in network resources.

In traditional blockchains, you have to pay a fee whether you hold tokens or not. It’s a permanent fee and you don’t get it back. In IOTA, you have the option of owning tokens and thus have a right to a portion of the network TPS. Even if you choose the approach of not owning tokens and renting access, you have fixed predictable costs and reliable throughput.

In traditional blockchain, you can own tokens and not know your operating costs because the fees are dynamic. Transactions compete for limited block space and outbid each other on fees to be considered in a prompt manner. So operating costs are not known in advance. With IOTA, you either have 0 operational cost or you know exactly your rental payments and can calculate reliably.

The Mana concept is similar to staking (Proof of Stake). The difference is that you don’t lock / stake tokens to earn from them and the returns are real returns (rental income). With PoS, the rewards are paid out through inflation (some may or may not come from fees, but most is from block rewards – inflation). This is the illusion of return. Payment is made by minting new tokens and thereby increasing the total supply.

Mana is pledged to a node ID. It can be acquired in three ways:

Hold Tokens: Node operators can buy tokens and pledge the Mana generated by these tokens to their own node.
Rent (Mana-as-a-Service): Mana can be acquired in exchange for rental payments from other token holders. This can be done with IOTA tokens or cash (as with Amazon Cloud Credits).
Value transaction processing: A node can process payments in exchange for the Mana pledged in those payments (tokens).

Summary of Key Points:

The only way to gain Mana is to convince a token holder to pledge it to you. In this sense, Mana is a delegated proof of token ownership.
Those who hold IOTA tokens are entitled to a portion of network resources, regardless of their value. This is very important for safety-critical industrial and real-time applications whose information must pass through the Tangle in a timely manner.
Renting (Mana-as-a-Service): Mana can be purchased in exchange for rental payments from other token holders. This can be done with IOTA tokens or cash (as with Amazon Cloud Credits).
There are currently two separate types of Mana. These are called access Mana and consensus Mana. While access Mana can be lent / leased, there is no reason to do so for consensus Mana.
Value transactions always bring their own Mana for processing by the nodes, so there are generally no restrictions here.
It will still be possible to send data transactions without Mana. Mana will only be used in times of congestion to give more priority to nodes that have more Mana to ensure a minimum guaranteed bandwidth in the infrastructure. Mana will not be a requirement to send transactions for a long time, because currently even systems with FPGAs cannot spam that many TPSs to push the network to the edge of its processing capabilities. In the future, Sharding will also significantly increase network capacity and solve the problem of theoretically possible congestion.
For security in business use cases, suggestions have been made (transactions despite congestion) to run your own nodes, hold the token and also use it.
Those who do not own their own node and IOTA tokens may have to pay to use other people’s nodes if the network is busy and many transactions are to be made in a short time.
Those who own IOTA tokens can rent out Mana and generate a kind of passive income.
If a company does not want to have anything to do with cryptocurrencies, Mana can also be purchased with cash from a service provider.

Other applications that require the IOTA token:

Digital assets

IOTA is a multi-asset ledger. Most DLTs fall into the single-asset ledger category as they are only able to track ownership of a specific base currency within their ledger. Multi-asset ledgers, on the other hand, are able to manage multiple native tokens in the same ledger as the base currency. Since IOTA’s base ledger allows for feeless transactions, IOTAs multi-asset ledger is able to perform feeless transfers of any native tokens, which is a unique innovation in the field.

All native tokens are standalone tokens in the ledger that are brought into existence by foundries and can be held or transferred from any account in the ledger. Native tokens are injected into the IOTA ledger by users. Therefore, they are also referred to as user-defined tokens. They consume valuable resources of the nodes that maintain the network, primarily storage space. As a result, each account holding native tokens must post a deposit in IOTA coins to compensate for the excessive resource consumption.

Or in other words, storage space in the IOTA ledger costs IOTA tokens (deposit). When the storage space is no longer needed, the deposited tokens can be transferred or sold.

Micro payments

The absence of miners makes IOTA transactions completely charge-free transactions. Send 1 MIOTA = receive 1 MIOTA . This enables real micro payments for the machine-to-machine economy so that payment for small quantities or consumption-based payments can be implemented.

> No micro payments without the IOTA token.

Accounting

In discussions, there was always the suggestion that you could combine individual micro-transactions and then pay monthly, for example as with a subscription. If one would try this as a company it would require the creation of an accounting system that is able to handle millions of data-Tx.

These need to be…

evaluated (because they can all have completely different prices).
assigned (thousands of data tx would have to be assigned to the respective user).
calculated (for each user a final invoice would have to be made and possibly be charged with their data-tex if you are a user yourself).
check (that the payments have actually been made).

That would result in…

an immense staff body
a high risk of errors
a high demand for IT and office equipment for the personnel in question
thus high and hardly calculable costs.

Conclusion: Completely unnecessary effort of resources and personnel, which the protocol provides free of charge and fully automated with the help of IOTA Smart Contracts, IOTA streams etc.

Btw.: All companies have to document and tax value transactions. So all data transactions have to be recorded in blockchains for accounting purposes. With IOTA, not only the fees for data transactions are eliminated but also the associated accounting including Tx storage (up to 10 years) for the majority of all transactions.

Chain of events

Only with a system in which data transactions can be linked directly to value transactions the complete event chain of the data trade can be correctly traced. The IOTA token reflects the (potential) value generated by the data transaction. Therefore, it would make no sense at all if only the IOTA data transactions were used but the payment of this data takes place outside the IOTA protocol.

Payment in the same system is very advantageous for all parties involved, for example, if it is done in a digital decentralized marketplace. Let’s take a look at the current process for placing an order. As a rule, an order always starts a series of events that are based on each other. This could look like this: Order > Verification > Confirmation > Payment > Check receipt of payment > Processing and shipping. This process can of course be solved individually or partially automated but basically this chain of events is always the same.

The IOTA technology with the digital marketplaces enables a free, secure and trustless linking of unknown business partners. The technology offers a very cost effective or even free possibility to link the chain of events of an order in a single system at the correct time. If one were to outsource individual events, e.g. external payment without IOTA, it would be an additional effort to enter this individual event back into the event chain of the marketplace at the correct time. This would cause additional costs compared to the pure IOTA solution and the IOTA solution would therefore have competitive advantages.

Cross-country and cross-company exchange medium

If you want to map cross-country and cross-company processes, trade or logistics between machines these transactions can take place without much delay and without having to agree on a trading currency etc. The only requirement is that machines have direct access to a stock exchange either directly or via a financial service provider to make conversions. This could be, for example, the house bank of a company, which keeps the Fiat accounts anyway. If the bank charges a small margin for this autonomous conversion job this is absolutely legitimate. A machine could autonomously submit a conversion order to the bank at any time and then have its IOTA tokens available to send them across the national border. In this case, the higher volatility is completely neglected and a machine would not have to keep tokens in its wallet permanently.

> IOTA is an open, free of charge, not centralized and ultra-fast clearing system!

BTC

For years, the BTC experts have been saying that you can pay for everything with BTC. Among other things, this would bring all the disadvantages of BTC into decentralized trading such as incalculable transaction costs, long confirmation times, inaccurate timestamps and high energy costs. The IOTA token, which is firmly integrated into the protocol, was created to eliminate all these shortcomings and to enable real micro-transactions between machines. In addition, a BTC timestamp with an accuracy of 2 hours is completely unsuitable for the machine economy where transactions may occur every second. For example, the payment at an e-charging station could be done via IOTA Streams. For this purpose, a private IOTA Streams channel is opened between the vehicle and the e-charging point to establish a data stream. Payment is made per data point in micro transactions and payment stops as soon as no more power is received. This does not work with an external coin like BTC.

More Details

IOTA Tokenization Framework Specifications – IF

Sources:

Original source

https://iota-einsteiger-guide.de/wird-der-token-benoetigt.html

Buying Tokens

This article is a translation of the German IOTA Beginner’s Guide by .

Buying Tokens

By now there are many reputable exchanges for beginners. I can recommend Bitpanda and Omoku in the German speaking countries. Both offer good support and are easy to use. IOTA is also available on Bitfinex and Binance.

Bitpanda

Bitpanda is a platform and offers besides IOTA also other cryptocurrencies. All purchases or sales take place on the platform, which means that the purchased tokens must be transferred away later. Bitpanda also offers a regular exchange, Bitpanda Pro.

The biggest advantages of Bitpanda are:

Speed and ease of use combined with the highest level of security and reliability.
Purchases, sales and transactions are processed in real time; purchases usually take less than a minute.
Bank transfers are ordered by Bitpanda several times a day and the banks usually take two to three working days to complete them.
All website operations are also monitored on Sundays and holidays.
Support is available on a daily basis and offers individual solutions to meet the needs of their users at all times.
Numerous payment options in different currencies are offered. These include credit card, NETELLER, Skrill, IMMEDIATE, GIROPAY, SEPA, Amazon and many more.
On the market for over five years. Over one million satisfied users, Europe’s leading trading platform for digital assets.

The disadvantages for me are the intransparent fees including the spread. There are cheaper providers on the market but they are more complicated and not located in the EU.

Omoku

Omoku on the other hand is not a platform and offers the direct buying and selling of the cryptocurrency IOTA against the FIAT currency Euro. For this purpose the users FIAT bank account is directly linked to the receiving address of his IOTA Wallet. After the Sepa transfer is done the purchased tokens are directly transferred to the wallet. Once the bank account is linked to the Omoku account, you can buy IOTA Tokens with each new transfer without having to log in to Omoku every time. It is important that you enter a receiving-only address at Omoku.

In summary, the main advantages of Omoku:

Most favorable conditions for direct exchange of IOTA to Euro and back. Currently 0.9% for buying and 0.1% for selling per order – and without a spread between buy and sell price.
Direct trading without any detour via Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Buy and sell from your bank account or Trinity Wallet in a single step instead of manual deposits and withdrawals to your account.
SEPA payments arrive, depending on the bank, in over 90 % of cases within one business day and are paid out as IOTA tokens to your wallet immediately after receipt of payment.
Secure trading in a regulated environment. The custody of the credit balance takes place exclusively on your own bank account and your own IOTA wallet.

The disadvantage with Omoku is the price difference until the purchase is completed. The price that applies is the price that is quoted when the transfer takes place.

Every exchange requires you to register and verify your account, which is similar to opening a bank account. Usually you will need to provide an identity card, current invoices for address verification if applicable, a selfie with date or test transfers for the linked bank account. This may sound daunting, but don’t worry. Please take your time to read the instructions. Once you have understood everything and have the necessary documents registration will not take too long.

Original source

https://iota-einsteiger-guide.de/token-kaufen.html

Wallets & Security

This article is a translation of the German IOTA Beginner’s Guide by .

General security tips

The new Distributed Ledger technologies allow financial freedom like no other technology before. Users are now their own bank. But being their own bank also means a high degree of personal responsibility. Various security measures must be taken to make it difficult for hackers to access their assets.

These security measures already start with the basics as your email address. Please create your own email address, which you use exclusively for the purchase of cryptocurrencies. Also the e-mail provider should be chosen carefully. The privacy of most providers is zero. Everything is read, analyzed and sold. I can recommend the e-mail provider ProtonMail from Switzerland. They also offer their service with limited memory etc. for free. For our purposes this is sufficient.

You should also pay special attention to the various passwords. Please use different passwords with all service providers and under no circumstances use the same password for both your e-mail inbox and your account with the crypto exchange. For password management I can recommend the free open-source password manager KeePass.

Wallets

Before buying MIOTAs on an exchange you should deal with the safekeeping of your newly bought MIOTAs. The access of third parties to your assets should be avoided at all costs. Under no circumstances should you leave your balance on a crypto exchange because in this case you do not have the seed (private key) and entrust a third party with your balance. In case of a hack of the exchange itself everything is gone.

Your IOTAs are not stored in a wallet and certainly not on your computer. All credits are stored in databases (Tangle). These databases are stored in countless copies distributed over the network on the IOTA nodes. Your IOTA wallet only manages addresses. You can delete them at any time and reinstall them later. A wallet is just a “browser” that retrieves data from a database (Tangle) to show your credit balance. Your transactions are “signed” with your private key. This data is distributed in the network and checked. If everything is in order the sent amount of IOTAs is received by the recipient’s address and stored in the database (Tangle).

Before using a wallet please take a detailed look at how it works. If you make any serious mistakes your MOTAs will be lost. Even after the first purchase I recommend to send a small amount of IOTAs (1 IOTA is enough) back and forth between different accounts to get familiar with the use of the wallet.

Different types of IOTA Wallets

Desktop Wallet: This wallet is located on your computer. This assumes that you protect your PC properly because it offers a relatively large number of attack points for hackers, for example via compromised emails or links. Currently I recommend to use the official Firefly Wallet (Successor of Trinity) and to get it only from the official website. This wallet has already passed external security audits and is under constant development. In the future the wallet will get further features like a messenger function.

Smartphone Wallet: Again, the official Firefly Wallet is the first choice. It can be installed directly from the respective stores. From a security perspective, this wallet should only be used to manage small amounts of money. Your cell phone is relatively easy for a hacker to crack.

Browser extension: Extensions are currently being worked on (e.g. Metamask).

Paper-wallets consist of a printed sheet of paper containing a cryptocurrency address and a private key that is accessed with a QR code. The advantage of a paper wallet is that it serves as cold storage meaning that it is not connected to the Internet and therefore there is no danger of being hacked.

With a paper wallet your funds are safe until you use a computer. If the computer you use to access your funds is compromised and you enter the private key from the paper wallet your accounts could be hacked and your funds stolen. If you lose your wallet and have not made a backup copy there is no way to restore your access to your currency. Also, it can be quite tedious to have to get the Paper-Wallet out of hiding for each transaction to enter the private key manually on the computer.

I wouldn’t use a paper wallet and I can’t recommend it to a newbie as this requires that your computer is not compromised (key logger etc.).

Hardware Wallet: A hardware wallet is a physical wallet that stores the user’s private keys offline and securely (cold storage). Hardware wallets contain a special security chip that stores the seed (private key). This stored key never leaves the wallet. Not even the owner knows the stored keys. To access the wallet with the keys a PIN code must be entered, which means that even trading on a compromised computer is more secure. Although each transaction is entered via a terminal device and specific software via a browser the action itself is encapsulated by the system and signed by the hardware wallet. If the hardware breaks down or is lost, you can still access your currency by entering the previously written recovery code (24 words, in a specific order) on a new device. Hardware wallets such as Ledger Nano S or X are mandatory when managing larger amounts of money.

Please pay attention to the following points when buying a hardware wallet:

Only buy directly from the provider, like Ledger. Never buy from Amazon or Ebay (too many unknown persons may have access to the wallet)
If there are traces of use on the package or the hardware wallet itself please do not use it and return it.
Is the paper for the seed (24 words) already filled out? If so, please do not use it and return it.
If the device is already pre-configured and asks for a pin code when first switched on please do not use it and send it back.

How to store the seed correctly?

How can the seed or the recovery code (24 words) of the hardware wallet be protected against theft, environmental influences and loss?

In the following I will write down a few points that everyone should keep in mind:

Paper is not a good idea. It can be damaged over time by external influences such as water or fire.
Please use weatherproof solutions like https://easy-passphrase-saver.de/ or similar solutions.
Store the seed in a safe place, e.g. a bank safe or a proper safe.
Do not make the seed available to any other person even if they ask for it directly in order to help them with problems.
Do not store your seed in a cloud or online.
No photographing of your seed.
Do not print your seed. Printers can be read out if necessary.
Do not enter your seed into a cell phone.

Original source

https://iota-einsteiger-guide.de/wallets-sicherheit.html

This article is a translation of the German IOTA Beginner’s Guide by .

IOTA Token

The IOTA Token is a digital currency (cryptocurrency) and a powerful tool for value transfers between machines (M2M), humans (H2H) and human to machine (H2M). The IOTA Token is a powerful digital asset. There is no mining or staking, which means that value and data can be handled without fees enabling a variety of use cases that no other digital asset can.

For many applications, the IOTA Token is mandatory, for example for payment of services or monetary compensation when trading data or goods. The reason why you don’t get IOTA but MIOTA at the Exchanges is that not single IOTA (1i is the smallest unit) are traded, but always MI (= 1 million IOTA). This form of currency makes IOTA especially interesting for micro/nano transactions since even the smallest amounts can be paid.

The maximum number of tokens is 2,779,530,283 MIOTA. All tokens were issued at the end of 2015 at the crowdsale and are in circulation. The company IOTA AS has collected the equivalent of $434,511.63 for the issuance of 999,999,999,999999 “old” IOTA tokens (1337 Bitcoin at that time). The range of IOTA tokens was later changed to 2,779,530,283,277,761 tokens. For 1 old IOTA token there were 2,779,530.2861 “new” IOTA tokens. At the time of the crowdsale IOTA could be purchased by Bitcoin and also by an asset called JINN. The FIAT conversion date and exchange rate of all BTC and JINN received is not publicly known. Therefore the $434,511.63 is probably not the exact amount received.

The IOTA token was fairly issued. There were no blocked tokens, no early stage corporate investors and no tokens were issued to the founders. The founders bought their tokens using their private assets. To ensure the sustainability of the project 5 % of the tokens were donated by the community to support the foundation.

Can the maximum number of tokens be increased?

For the IOTA ecosystem it was and still is important to have a high number of tokens available because the tokens will be used for micropayments between machines and therefore high prices per token are rather obstructive. If in the distant future, due to a very high demand, it might be necessary to increase the maximum number of tokens. This is possible by a trick: the decimal point could be shifted.

Why is this possible and what is the effect?

The value element in a transaction is 81 trits long, of which 33 trits are currently used. Exactly 33 trits are used because it has been determined (presumably by cfb) that the current max supply is the highest positive number that can be represented by 33 trits in the balanced ternary, which looks like this:

((3^33) – 1) / 2 = 2.779.530.283.277.761 = 2.78 x 10^15 (current max. supply, Oct. 2019)

Since 81 trits were reserved for the value the maximum supply can be increased to 81 trits if necessary, as follows:

((3^81) – 1) / 2 = 221,713,244,121,518,884,974,124,815,309,574,946,401 = 2.22 x 10^38

In this case each current owner would still have the same share of the total value but these amounts can now be divided into smaller units.

Explanation: 1 IOTA could be divided into 1000 MicroIOTA (speculative, other denominations are also possible). This does not change the total value of all tokens but there are now smaller units. Practically this means users who had 1000 IOTA in their wallet before the comma shift will still have 1000 IOTA in their wallet after the comma shift but IOTA is not the smallest unit anymore and therefore the 1000 IOTA can be displayed as 1000000 MicroIOTA. The above mentioned IOTA units system would have a unit (MC for Micro) added at the bottom.

Why should an increase of the maximum number of tokens be necessary in the future?

In just a few years experts expect more than 50 billion devices in IoT. Imagine how they will pay each other for services with small amounts of IOTA tokens. Currently (Sep’19) there are about 2.78 billion MIOTA at about 23 cents per MIOTA. Now imagine that the majority of these IoT devices contain on average the equivalent of 1 USD in Iota. This scenario means that there can be no doubt that the price of iota will have to rise due to scarcity, which also means that in due time, splitting into smaller units may be necessary in order to grow further. New applications (e.g. digital assets) could also make an increase necessary in the future.

https://www.iota.org

Original source

https://iota-einsteiger-guide.de/iota-token.html