beincrypto.com
The THETA token has broken into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. Currently, it’s trading in the $12 range.
In the past 30 days, Theta has nearly tripled in price. Towards the end of February, the coin had been trading around $3. As March began, Theta surpassed $4 before doubling to $8 by March 11. It hovered there for around a week, but since then has been steadily increasing. It is now trading around $12.
The Theta Network
The Theta Network is a blockchain-powered peer-to-peer (P2P) video streaming platform. It seeks to decentralize and optimize video streaming. It does this by addressing flaws it perceives in traditional content delivery networks (CDN).
Usually, content creators have to upload their work to a centralized platform to engage users. This creates several inefficiencies. Some CDNs may lack the necessary infrastructure in certain parts of the world, which leads to re-buffering and higher load times. Additionally, the higher quality streams that users are demanding create a bottleneck in a centralized system. Finally, the centralized nature of traditional CDNs means very little revenue returns to the initial content creators.
By creating a decentralized network on the blockchain, the Theta Network enables users to facilitate the network’s needs. Users can share their bandwidth and resources for which they are compensated with the Theta token. Also, video streaming becomes smoother across a decentralized global network. Content creators can be rewarded directly for their work with Theta tokens as well.
There are also plans to let entertainment companies issue NFTs. According to the project, such examples would include “a piece of all-time classic characters or moments from their favorite shows and movies or a part of an upcoming blockbuster.”
Appraisal
Despite its claims of decentralization, some analysis has contradicted this point. According to China-based crypto researcher Wu Blockchain, 61% of the currency is owned by the top 10% of users. This could make it easy for them to manipulate the market.
Additionally, “some of Theta’s investors and advisors have a poor reputation in China, but it is irrationally sought after in South Korea.” Wu Blockchain tweeted. Although trading across the most prominent crypto exchanges, the researcher also pointed out that Theta’s trading volume only had high authenticity on Bithumb, South Korea’s leading exchange.