The Rise of RaiBlocks 🚨 This article is 7 years old...
The Rise of RaiBlocks
4 min read
Updated: Jan. 11, 2018 at 11:49 am UTC
Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate. Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.
Bitcoin may have started the cryptocurrency party, but it’s all the uninvited guests that are having the most fun now. Throughout 2017, Bitcoin dominated headlines, gained followers, and increased in value by 1,500%. However, all this attention has increased Bitcoin’s resource usage, and there is much speculation as to how it will continue to scale.
Even so, the Bitcoin community has stuck with the original 1MB block envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto. Moreover, Bitcoin’s extremely high price is leaving many investors looking for cheaper investments that might blossom into the next Bitcoin-like boom.
There are literally hundreds of alternative cryptocurrencies (alt coins), ready to meet this surging demand. Now, RaiBlocks’ XRB coin is surging.
Even by crypto-standards where wild price swings can occur without warning or reason, this is a shocking price increase. In just a matter of weeks, RaiBlocks has emerged from relative obscurity to the twentieth largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
What’s Causing the Price Surge?
It’s always difficult to identify a single reason for a digital currency’s success, but RaiBlocks seems to have a few things working for it right now. It employs a rare approach to blockchain technology, it’s gaining increased exposure, and it’s becoming readily available through crypto-exchanges. According to its faithful following, RaiBlocks has been an undervalued coin for a long time.
For starters, RaiBlocks addresses any immediate concern for the crypto-community, a top one being speed of transaction.
As Harry Tucker notes in Finder,
“RaiBlocks is both faster and cheaper than even Bitcoin Cash, with zero fees and is essentially instantaneous.”
RaiBlocks accomplishes this by rejecting Bitcoin’s blockchain method, and instead implementing a system where every user is equipped with an individual blockchain. As a result, each block only includes a single transaction, and settlement times are instantaneous.
In this way, RaiBlocks rejects the “mining” concept popularized by Bitcoin. Recent reports on the obscene amount of energy consumed by Bitcoin mining and the emergence of alternative blockchain methods have made minerless operations like RaiBlocks more attractive.
Exposure
In methodology, RaiBlocks is closely linked to another digital currency, IOTA, which uses a similar minerless approach to their blockchain.
IOTA is the tenth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, so it’s possible that some of RaiBlocks growth can be attributed to its connection to a similar, more prolific digital currency.
Part of the alt-coin rise is a user preference for products that actually work. Increasingly, because of high fees and long transaction times, Bitcoin just doesn’t work as it’s intended. Since it’s no longer rising by thousands of dollars a day, investors may be expressing a preference for altcoins that might prove to be a better functioning Bitcoin.
Moreover, with so many crypto-enthusiasts desperately searching for the next Bitcoin-like price explosion, even a digital currency’s modest gains can attract investor attention, which increases the currency’s value and multiplies the exposure.
Availability
RaiBlocks recently concluded its captcha puzzle distribution. During this period, the only way to attain XRB coins was by completing their captcha puzzles, the RaiBlock version of crypto-mining.
Now, XRB tokens are available through currency exchanges, and they just received some great news in that regard. On Friday, RaiBlocks announced on Twitter that their token would be available on the popular crypto-exchange, Binance, which earlier this week began allowing new user registrations after a temporary halt.. An official trading date has not yet been announced.
RaiBlocks’ official Twitter account is very active, and they recently announced their inclusion on several other crypto-exchanges, so XRB is becoming available to a much broader audience. That’s sure to drive up the currency’s demand.
$XRB trading is now live on our biggest exchange to date, @kucoincom!
— Nano (@nano) January 5, 2018
We're also excited to announce that $XRB trading opened on @BitZExchange today!
— RaiBlocks (@raiblocks) January 5, 2018
2018: The Year of the Altcoin
In comments to The Wall Street Journal about Ripple’s incredible price increase, Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen said,
“It’s amazing what’s going on…You’ve got to be standing in the middle of the road when the luck-truck hits you.”
It’s hard to say if it’s luck or inevitability, but altcoins are making a serious run at the start of 2018, and they have definitely crashed Bitcoin’s party. As CNBC wrote last week,
“Bitcoin’s dominance of the entire cryptocurrency market is at its lowest level ever.”
RaiBlocks is just one reason that this is true, but they have put on a compelling show with their meteoric rise this week.
