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The DFINITY Foundation, which specializes in blockchain-based cloud computing has rolled out the much-anticipated ICP token. DFINITY released the token on May 10, and upon launch, the coin got listed on multiple leading exchanges. At the moment, ICP is listed against various trading pairs on five exchanges. These are Huobi, Coinbase Pro, Binance, OKEx, and Coinlist.
Following this warm welcome into the crypto market, the ICP token depicted wild trading with prices going as high as £522.2 before plunging to £103.8. A strong buying force then took over the market forcing the coin to recover some of its losses to trade hands at £333.5, at the time of writing.
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ICP has a market cap of £40,573,281,873, which has made it the fifth-largest cryptocurrency in terms of capitalization. Since its launch, a mere 14 hours ago, ICP has recorded a volume of £1,191,233,854.3 with 123,747,068 coins in circulation.
Despite these wild price swings, ICP is outperforming both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) as most of the crypto market continues bleeding. The coin is up 5.44% and 4.3% against BTC and ETH, respectively. Meanwhile, BTC and ETH are down 5.19% and 4.17% against the US dollar, respectively.
Breaking the web monopoly
Reportedly, the ICP token is a utility token that plays three vital roles in the Internet Computer Protocol. These are enabling network governance, producing cycles for compute, and rewarding participants, such as voters and node providers. By powering the Internet Computer network, the token helps it push forward in its ambitions to become the main compute platform for building software in the future.
By achieving this feat, DFINITY’s founder, Dominic Williams, believes that Internet Computer will be able to edge out Bit Tech’s closed proprietary ecosystem. While he believes Big Tech will remain a big force, Dominic said Internet Computer will power the Open Internet, which will grow to be significantly larger than Big Tech.
According to Williams, Internet Computer does not seek to compete against other blockchain protocols that have a similar goal. However, he believes that the network will solve the blockchain trilemma, seeing as the project will operate at web speed and at an unlimited capacity. As such, it will be able to create a blockchain network that is decentralized, secure, and scalable.
Apart from this, Internet Computer does not depend on AWS to run data centers and instead of using Proof of Stake (PoS) or Proof of Work (PoW) consensus algorithms, the network rewards independent data servers for the time they spent to correctly run standardized computer nodes.