Burstcoin (BURST) Price Goes 4x In 29 Hours. What Is BURST?

Meet the coin that's poised to burst back into the top 100

After a slight downturn yesterday, the crypto-mania is back with a vengeance. Many of the major gains we're seeing are again flooding into altcoins, with Bitcoin now trading healthily above $15K.

One such altcoin is Burstcoin (BURST), which grabbed "Biggest % Gain" spot on Bittrex, the popular cryptocurrency exchange, yesterday. Burstcoin is the native coin of the Burst network. According to CoinGecko, BURST was trading at $0.0260 at 11:33pm PST Dec. 21. At 4:51am PST Dec. 23, that price was $0.1004—marking 4x growth. Burst is still holding onto fresh gains this morning with a current price of $0.0728 and market cap of $131M.

What is BURST?
Burst calls itself the "green innovative cryptocurrency." It's a network that forked from Nxt, and its community sees blockchain technology as a revolutionary opportunity that often isn't being fully utilized by other cryptocurrencies. It seeks to address the "lack of decentralization, waste of energy, unfair releases, supremacy of big miners and corporations" witnessed elsewhere in the crypto world.

The story behind Burst is a journey within itself; if you have some time to spare, this video gives the backstory in greater depth:

One of Burst's claims to fame is that it—rather than Ethereum and Counterparty—was the first cryptocurrency to implement functional, "turing complete" smart contracts in a live environment. This also makes it the first-ever 'trustless' program running on top of a blockchain. More recently, Burst and Qora (another blockchain-based cryptocurrency) successfully established atomic cross-chain transactions. In laymen's terms, this means that Burst and Qora can trade across-platform with each other directly, in a completely decentralized fashion—without any exchange, brokerage, or otherwise.

Burst is also known for its unique 'Proof-of-Capacity' (PoC) mining, which we'll discuss at greater length below.

Community

Though this may be the first time many crypto newcomers are hearing of Burst, it's actually been around since 2014, and it sports a tight-knit community of diehards and believers. So much, in fact, that they actually "resurrected" Burst and brought it from abandonware to a thriving crypto community by building off of its open-source platform (see video on previous page).

Beyond general enthusiasm, though, Burst consists of technical experts who are constantly seeking to expand the capabilities of Burst, and in general what cryptocurrency can be. At a time when a host of newcomers are flooding the crypto market—often blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes—the dedication to excellence Burst exhibits is inevitably a draw for investors looking for coins that are both reliable bets and still stand to make big gains.

Emphasis on Innovation

The Burst community prides itself on its technical innovation. It does this foremost through what it calls "Proof-of-Capacity" (PoC) mining, the first of its kind in cryptocurrency. You may have heard of "Proof of Work" (PoW) and "Proof of Stake" (PoS). These refer to how transactions are processed and added to the ledger on the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks, respectively—and most other blockchain networks use (predominantly) one or the other (read more about them here and here).

Even if you're not a technical person, here's why PoC is relevant to you. Where PoW mining requires expensive ASIC miners, Burst's algorithm allows mining to be conducted at a much smaller scale: in unused hard drive space of "regular" computers.

That means that anybody can be a miner—which means everybody who participates stands to directly benefit—rather than seeing mining centralize into large-scale corporate enterprises like it has with Bitcoin. This also means that transaction costs are much cheaper because of the truly decentralized nature of the network.

Energy Friendly

PoC mining is also purportedly much kinder on the environment, "barely [using] more energy than just leaving your computer on."

This is set in stark contrast to the negative attention Bitcoin has received in the media and on social channels surrounding revelations of how much energy PoW mining actually uses.

Functionality of Burst Network

Burst envisions an expansive future for the network. The Burst marketplace will allow for direct peer-to-peer business transactions, while its crowdfunding mechanism makes it easier, safer, and cheaper to invest in crowdfund campaigns using BURST. There is also a use case in encrypted messaging—and given Burst's dedication to security and privacy, potential investors in BURST can put more faith in this type of system dealing with sensitive information.

Unlike many cryptocurrencies, which can "print" new money, BURST is set at a fixed supply, making the network truly decentralized (like Bitcoin).

This cocktail of reliability and scope of vision was likely a factor of this recent surge.

For more information about Burst, visit the official website. To keep up with current events, including Dymaxion news, subscribe to the r/burstcoin subreddit.

Editor’s Note & Disclosure: The author invests in cryptocurrency markets. Neither the author nor Forbes endorses participation in any token sale or cryptocurrency investment, all of which have significant inherent risk. Seek advice from a financial advisor as well as do your own due diligence before considering investment.

from Jesse Damiani, published at forbes.com

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