IOTA Cripples After Microsoft “Partnership” Clarification

Over the past weeks there have been many controversies about what really is going on with the IOTA-Microsoft deal. In view of this, IOTA has recently come to clear the air: making everyone understand that it does not have a strategic partnership with the tech giant, but that Microsoft was only a participant.
Dominik Schiener, one of IOTA’s co-founders, said in an interview by TNW that:

“We have never mentioned that any of the companies which are participating in the marketplace are our ‘partners’. We call them participants. We are in touch with multiple divisions at Microsoft (Chicago, Paris, Munich). We are hosting two meetups today in Chicago and on Thursday in Paris which are hosted at the Microsoft offices.”

What Really Happened

The cryptocurrency market saw a 600 percent price surge last week in the value of IOTA according to a CNN report, leaving IOTA trading at about $4 worldwide. This increase came as a result of a rumoured “partnership” between IOTA and Microsoft. At the time of this one of Microsoft’s blockchain technicians, Omkar Naik, made a statement which bordered on the company’s participation with IOTA. It read

“This next generation technology will accelerate the connected, intelligent world and go beyond blockchain that will foster innovation real world solutions, applications and pilots for our customers.”

Schiener later made it known that IOTA’s development team had plans of meeting Naik’s team of workers to receive assistance that will enable the company establish sensors which allow Microsoft to sell their data directly on IOTA’s marketplace. There were also reports that “large-scale conglomerates including Samsung, Cisco, and Volkswagen also partnered with IOTA, to utilize its Tangle-based solution for data monetization”.

Dominik Schiener, Co-founder of IOTA

However, after the clearance of the controversy of the nature of the deal with Microsoft, IOTA’s price has dropped by 13 percent and is now behind rival cryptocurrencies like Litecoin and Ripple. This price drop is first of all bad of IOTA and is also very noteworthy because during the time of the of Naik’s statement release about the Microsoft’s participation, IOTA’s market value rose from $2.9 billion to a whopping $13billion.

No Partnership Means No Partnership

The initial press release a couple of weeks ago (received by TNW) which led to all these partnership rumours read:

“Participants from all sectors and industries are represented, companies such as Deutsche Telekom, EWE, Microsoft, Bosch, TINE, PwC, Accenture, Fujitsu, Schneider Electric, Orange, DNV GL, and many more have deployed sensors that directly sell the data on the marketplace.”

This makes it very clear then that Dominik Schiener, in his statement some weeks ago, was very particular and accurate and meant that IOTA had no actual partnership with Microsoft or any other conglomerates whatsoever. What remains subject to questioning is whether IOTA Foundation should let media outlets elucidate the very nature of whatever exists between them and Microsoft. This is because the original press release in itself did not also state specifically if there was any paperwork based on which a partnership had been formed.

What Next

What we know now is that in the weeks ahead, participating companies in IOTA’s Tangle testing will still continue on a long term despite the inexistence of any legal partnership per public knowledge. At least, this can be confirmed in Schiener’s statement
“The launch of the data marketplace was just the beginning. This project will continue for several weeks and is multi-staged”
IOTA has now dropped to a little over $11 billion in market cap after the 13% devaluation. However, this is still a substantially higher figure as compared to the $2.9 billion market cap it had and its sluggish growth in November.

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