Following last week’s News about IOTA’s partnership with Microsoft, Fujitsu, Samsung and some other corporate giants, IOTA price has continued to surge reaching new all-time highs on a daily basis. Having surpassed Ripple and comfortably securing the position of fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market value.

IOTA Price surges over 1,551% in the past month

Fig. 1: IOTA/USD price chart, 6th Dec, 2017; 7:00 GMT (Source: coinmarketcap.com) IOTA has been on a roller coaster ride in recent weeks, with it’s price climbing more than 1,551% in the past month and 97% in the last 24 hours; bringing the value of the native currency for the Internet of Things to a present price value of $5.43 per MIOTA at the time of writing this post.

Fig. 2: Top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap, 5th Nov, 2017 (Source: coinmarketcap.com)

Fig. 3: Top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap, 6th Dec, 2017 (Source: coinmarketcap.com) Presently, over 80% of all IOTA volume is traded on Bitfinex, and about18% on Binance, with MIOTA/USD currently being Bitfinex's biggest exchanging pair — bigger than BTC/USD. In all, dealers have traded over $2.3 billion of IOTA today, shattering the digital currency's past untouched high. Quite significantly, the rally has caused IOTA’s market cap to surge to a total of $15.1 Billion, enabling it to overtake ripple to become the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, and now just $9.7 billion away from third-ranked cryptocurrency bitcoin cash.

IOTA, "the sleeping Giant"

Fig. 4: IOTA/USD price chart, 6th Dec, 2017; 7:00 GMT (Source: Tradingview.com) According to David Sønstebø, co-founder of IOTA, the cryptocurrency's price surge was because of its approach to blockchain and partnerships with established companies. Sønstebø said; >"IOTA's apparently 'out of the blue' sudden growth can be followed back to the way that it has been to some degree a sleeping giant," >"IOTA has settled the three noteworthy issues of blockchain — charges, scaling constraints and centralization — and developed true projects and partnerships with world-driving organizations since 2015." Sønstebø included that the digital currency's growth was likewise owed to its recently expanded publicity. He said; >"Dissimilar to the enormous majority of projects in this sphere, IOTA has not been involved in any paid promo, so now that there's a constant flow of these substantial news stories the major technological benefits of IOTA have become noticeably known to the wider audience," He also added; >"I trust this is the explanation behind the rally, and also the way that IOTA just entered China and Korea, which are normally colossal markets, which means a considerable measure of new individuals buying." As indicated by information from Reddit Metrics, /r/IOTA was the 6th quickest developing subreddit on Monday, setting it in front of all digital currency subreddits — even/r/bitcoin. Although we can’t be certain whether this rally would continue or not, one thing is certain – the sleeping giant is finally awake and has a lot to bring to the table. Looking at the fact that IOTA’s Tangle technology eliminates the major problems faced with bitcoin blockchain technology, IOTA seems poised to become bitcoin’s number one contender. Seeing the potential of IOTA, I wrote a post few months ago encouraging people to invest when IOTA was worth just about $0.33, I’m sure all who invested then are all-smiles now. You might also want to see “Best Cryptocurrencies to Invest in Before 2018” – Most of them have already gone up significantly since I published the post. However, there’s one more sleeping giant that might soon awake, Ripple. Don’t let me say “I told you so”.