What Is COTI Cryptocurrency?

COTI is what we can call a successful project. Over the past year, it has made significant technological achievements, such as COTI’s multiDAG, Global Trust System (GTS), Universal Payment Solution (UPS), and Payment Gateway. Also, it recently formed strategic partnerships with top companies like Cardano Foundation, Chainlink, Recruit, and Xangle. 

This article will cover everything you need to know about this cryptocurrency:

• What is COTI, and how does it work?
• What problems does COTI solve?
• Does it show promise?

How COTI Began and Who Invented It

What is COTI? It is a project that aims to create a scalable decentralized payment system. It stands for the Currency of the Internet, which hints at its usage – global online trade. Right now, it combines a multi-currency wallet, a trust mechanism, a crypto exchange, and a mediation architecture. 

The COTI network was founded back in early 2017. The team consists of 27 full-time members from a wide range of working areas. There are experts with mathematics and information technology backgrounds. There are also team members specializing in Economics and Finance that have worked for giants such as IBM, HSBC, and Credit Suisse. 

Along with the team, there are 17 official advisors involved in the project. These advisors came from areas like private equity, venture capital, and investment banking. The most prominent member of them is Greg Kidd (Coinbase, Ripple, Twitter, and Square). 

How COTI Works

COTI is a digital currency that solves problems in both traditional and crypto transactions. Compared to traditional systems, it solves the issue of high fees for cross-currency and cross-border transactions. Compared to digital payments, COTI mitigates scaling challenges and price volatility.

The ecosystem is made out of four participants: end users, merchants, mediators, and node operators. The roles of the last two are created to support a directed acyclic graph (DAG), which is used instead of a blockchain-based database. 

The key difference of this system is that for a transaction to be finalized, it needs to be verified. The more network users there are, the more quickly these transactions take place. Another major difference is that before the payment is released to the other party, the COTI system holds it as a mediator.

Applications and Services

COTI’s native currency serves several important functions: 

• It is a medium of exchange, i.e. an intermediary instrument to facilitate the sale, purchase, or trade within the COTI ecosystem. While the system doesn’t solely rely on COTI, it acts as a reliable zero-fee payment method. 
• The mediator’s payouts are paid in COTI coins. As such, authorized individuals are required to hold COTI coins to solve disputes. 
• Incentives are given to node operators who validate two previous transactions for the next one to be confirmed.
• All fees within the network are also denominated in COTI coins.

For consumers, the project can provide the following services:

• Wallets: These essentially act as bank accounts for multiple currencies. The good thing is that they support both fiat and digital currencies for all the check-out procedures within the network. The wallet is available as a web application and a stand-alone mobile app. 
• Debit cards: These are linked directly to COTI wallets. If users are dealing with merchants that haven't yet enrolled in the COTI network, they can use the COTI wallet as a virtual debit card. If a purchase isn’t in one of the COTI’s supported currencies, it will be automatically converted when checking out.

For merchants, COTI is developing a suite of tools:

• Processing tools: This will enable merchants to accept payments from COTI wallets. The tool features a dashboard with wallet-like functionality for commercial use. This should streamline transactional experiences for customers.
• Hedging services: COTI creates an internal derivatives market to offset the volatility of digital currencies. Participants can enter contracts in COTI coins and buy and sell put/call options. This ensures that the price stays fixed at the time of the settlement.

Advantages of the COTI Cryptocurrency 

COTI is a digital currency that showcases some outstanding features. While some of them are inherent to all cryptocurrencies, some of them are unique to COTI: 

• Scalable – COTI can cope with the influx of a large number of transactions at a time, more specifically, over 100,000 transactions per second. 
• Simple – It doesn’t require knowing the intricacies of the financial market. As long as users and merchants know crypto basics, COTI tools will be extremely easy to use.
• Economically efficient – COTI tokens aren’t mined. This cuts out intermediaries and eliminates the need for costly mining.
• Buyer/seller protection – The company is the first to implement a dispute resolution system for crypto. This means they provide a neutral arbiter when there are disputing parties. 

It’s also useful to consider the drawback of this project. Since it has been around only for a short amount of time, it’s hard to tell whether COTI can prove its value and hold on to its success.

Where to Exchange, Transfer or Buy COTI

What is COTI worth as of today? As of October 2020, COTI is valued at $0.029,879 and has a market capitalization of $16,972,510. Now let’s see how you can acquire it.

Being a relatively new coin, COTI isn't supported by a wide variety of exchanges. However, major platforms, like Binance, Binance DEX, Kucoin, and Bithumb Global, do facilitate transactions. 

Overall, the process doesn’t differ from any other cryptocurrencies:

1. Select the currency you want to exchange from.
2. Enter the amount you want to swap.
3. Select COTI as the currency you want to exchange to.
4. Confirm the transaction (buttons vary by exchange). 
5. Enter your e-wallet address and finalize the exchange.

COTI is also working on developing a currency exchange in a range of digital and fiat currency pairs. If all goes well, users will be able to make COTI transactions without having to withdraw their holding from their wallets. The system is also supposed to be designed to pay and receive funds directly in any currency the user chooses.

In conclusion, COTI might be the next widely-adopted payment service provider. With their innovative mechanisms, they have a good chance of evolving into a comprehensive solution. That said, we also have to take into consideration that such companies and technologies may seem very promising in the beginning. We will have to keep a close eye on COTI to see if it lives up to its initial promise.