With nearly 2000 different cryptocurrencies out there, as an enthusiast in this space it’s difficult to get round to actually learning about even the top 100 cap coins. There are a lot of great coins that tend to not get the recognition they deserve, DigiByte (DGB) being one of them. DigiByte, founded by Jared Tate in 2014, is a mineable cryptocurrency that prides itself on being one of the fastest, and safest coins in the world. DigiByte is currently ranking at number 35 on coinmarketcap.com and in this blog post I’ll explain why I think it will make it to the top 10.

1. Speed.

As a mineable coin, DigiByte’s transaction speed is unparalleled. Have you ever sent some Bitcoin to someone and it’s taken hours to actually reach the receiver? With DigiByte this is no issue. It’s 40 times faster than Bitcoin (BTC), and 10 times faster than Litecoin (LTC). Yes, there are other coins on CoinMarketCap such as Ripple (XRP) that might be as quick, but how many of them are actually mineable, decentralized coins? None.

At present, DigiByte has 15 second block times, compared to Bitcoins 10 minute block times and can handle over 560 transactions per second. That’s not far off from VISA at 2,000 TPS! The best part, these speeds are supposed to increase to over 200,000 TPS by the 2030s.

2. Security.

As you may or may not have seen over the last year or two lots of cryptocurrencies have fallen victim to a 51% attack. It’s clear that more and more people are becoming educated on the importance of security in the blockchain space. DigiByte is one of the, if not the safest blockchain in existence. This is due to it being designed to use five, equally-weighted mining algorithms. Not only are there five different algorithms, but each algorithm uses a DigiSheild (MultiSheild) where they have their own, personal, real time, difficulty adjustment. Because of the way this blockchain is designed it is almost impossible for it to fall victim to a 51% attack. Since founding DigiByte, Jared Tate (@jaredtate) continues to express his concern with cyber security in the blockchain space. This awareness is only good news for DigiByte.

3. History.

DigiByte has history! After being created in 2014, the DigiByte blockchain has been around for 4 years now. Because of the 15 second block times DigiByte holds the longest blockchain in existence. The fact that DigiByte has been around for a while, investors are able to look at 4 years of historical data (financially & technologically) before investing

4. Highly Decentralized.

Think back to what made Bitcoin such an amazing technology; it was built to be a decentralized currency. Bitcoin is run on one algorithm that has lead to huge amounts of mining power coming out of certain countries (Russia & China), making it less and less decentralized every day. As the DigiByte blockchain uses 5 different mining algorithms, the blockchain is spread over 200,000+ servers, computers, phones and nodes worldwide. No other major cryptocurrency can match that. No entity can ever shut down DigiByte.....unless of course somehow the entire internet across the planet is shut down.

4. Cheap Transactions.

DigiByte’s transactions are extremely cheap. Again, think back to what Bitcoin was designed to be; a cheap way to send money peer to peer. For anyone that’s sent DigiByte, you’ll know it costs fractions of a cent, and if you haven’t you should definitely give it a go!

6. Continual Development.

While people are depressed at the prices of cryptos during this bear market, it’s been a very good thing for the space. Take a look at all the cryptos that increased on price in December-January without any working product, that *shock*, still don’t have a working product. I’m quite happy to sit back and watch the development of real, awesome technology like DigiByte unfold.

DigiByte is not just a fantastic currency, it’s blockchain is also good for the development of smart contracts and decentralizes applications. The technology behind the DigiByte blockchain is way ahead of the game here. It allows for the development of Dapps in one of the most secure and cheapest blockchains in existence.

DigiByte is leading the pack with development. With it’s awesome community of developers it’s typically first to implement or fix things in the blockchain space. For example it was the first blockchain to implement SegWit and has recently become the first to fix UTXO blockchains bug with DigiByte Core v6.16.5.

7. Growth in Awareness.

I hear a lot that DigiByte is amazing but it lacks marketing. You’ve got to remember it’s a completely community driven project. There was no ICO to raise billions of dollars to fund the project. All growth is organic and in the space of 4 years to have a valuation of $272 million dollars is huge!

There are two projects I think have been really cool in raising awareness of DigiByte.

The Venezuela projects: The DigiByte community has helped fund a few trips to Venezuela, where hyperinflation has got out of control. The funded trips involve a lot aid work and outreach involving education to show the people of Venezuela how the use of a more stable DigiByte could benefit them and potentially, slowly remove their dependence on their failing local currency, the Bolívar.

The DigiByte Awareness Team: This community driven initiative has a goal to help the community and serve as a long standing awareness campaign. They strive to promote DigiByte and its use cases while instigating adoption across a range of platforms. You can read more about the DGBAT here:

https://medium.com/@DGBAT/introducing-digibyte-awareness-team-dgbat-43e94aeef58b 

8. DigiByte Socks.

Probably the main reason DigiByte will make it to the top 10 is because of these socks. I joke, but if you’d like to buy a pair, head over to our store page. You can pay in fiat or DigiByte. If you choose to pay in DigiByte choose the CoinPayments option at checkout.

5% of our profits from our DigiByte socks sold on our website goes towards the DGBAT I mentioned above.

Thanks for reading and I hope you’re all as excited as I am to see what the future for DigiByte holds.

Chris.