It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no – It’s Iceland-based Auroracoin. For the past two years, Litecoin has been widely recognized as the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. But now there’s apparently a changing of the guard as Auroracoin takes the silver and turns Litecoin bronze.
Over the past fews days, Auroracoin’s market capitalization has surged to around $1 billion dollars. That’s more than twice the value of Litecoin and enough to make it the second most valuable altcoin in the World behind Bitcoin. The developers of the currency are hoping the coin’s soaring valuation will encourage Icelanders to use the currency once it’s distributed to the Country’s population on March 25th.
The prospect of the adoption of Auroracoin in Iceland is likely to create a price and value for auroracoins before the Airdrop. A higher price may in turn increase the likelihood of the successful adoption and use of Auroracoin by at least a part of the Icelandic population.
Auroracoin is 50% premined. These premined coins will be distributed to the entire population of Iceland beginning at midnight on March 25, 2014. About 330,000 Icelanders will be given 31.8 coins each, which at today’s price is around $3,000 USD.
Only time will tell if this coin will be a hit with the citizens of Iceland where cryptocurrencies are already extremely popular due to the Country’s cheap electricity. The one missing piece of the puzzle remains the yet-to-be-built infrastructure of merchants and exchanges that would allow the coin’s recipients to spend and trade their cryptocoin bonanza.
If these resources are built and made available in time, Auroracoin could give the National currency of Iceland a run for its money.
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