Big partnership announcements have been thin on the ground for the major crypto projects for the duration of the bear market. That trend changed for IOTA today when the UK’s largest automobile manufacturer announced that it would be offering cryptocurrency rewards to drivers for data sharing.
IOTA Driven Up
MIOTA markets reacted pretty quickly when the news articles started doing the rounds. From a 24 hour low of $0.261 IOTA surged over 18 percent to reach $0.310 according to coinmarketcap.com. Daily trade volume almost tripled to just over $30 billion during Asian trading this morning.
Binance is currently getting most of that volume with a 40% share, primarily in BTC.
Along with the rest of the crypto markets IOTA hit a low point in mid-December of around $0.20 and it hasn’t really recovered much from that. This partnership announcement has revived the Internet of Things based altcoin which is currently one of the top performing ones in a generally flat crypto market.
According Reuters Jaguar Land Rover has begun testing software that will use a ‘smart wallet’ to collect crypto which has been awarded to drivers who share their data. The report added that automatic data collection for road conditions and traffic volumes could be shared with authorities and navigation providers. Drivers that consent to this will earn some IOTA which can be used to pay parking, road tolls or charging for electric cars.
IOTA/USDT prices 1 hour
The auto firm added that their goal was to “achieve zero emissions, zero accidents, and zero congestion.” The technology, currently being tested in Ireland, has already been installed on the Jaguar F-PACE and Range Rover Velar vehicles. Jaguar said that it currently did not have a timetable for when the tech would be rolled out to the public.
IOTA is the obvious candidate since the technology is focused on automated data sharing from internet connected devices. Project co-founder Dominik Schiener said;
“The smart wallet technology can be easily adapted into all new vehicles. IOTA wants to enable interoperability with all these different players. So there is no Jaguar coin, no BMW coin, but one universal token for this machine economy”,
The community reaction on Reddit was extremely positive with comments such as “This is great! Usually companies just take your data. Good approach to pay with crypto for sharing- hopefully it takes on and other do the same”, and “Sets an incredible precedent for a big company to reward you for sharing data. Also, it’s a great brand to be associated with… very high end.”
At the moment it is all good gravy for a cryptocurrency that has been battered more than most by the bears this winter.
