Raiblocks(XRB) is a relatively new cryptocurrency that has steadily been getting a lot of attention lately. The concept of instant feeless transactions has gotten the attention of a lot of people who are invested in the cryptocurrency. If bitcoin is the first generation of cryptocurrency, Raiblocks would be in the 3rd generations as it rejects the idea of a singular blockchain, but combines a commonly used data-structure in computer science known as a DAG(Directed acyclic graph) along with the blockchain called the blocklattice. This will in theory, solve some of crypto's issues of scaling. For reference, here is a visual illustration of the theoretical transactions a second that Raiblocks will be able to handle.
In early January Raiblocks was able to hit an all time high of around $37.62. This was largely due to the surrounding hype with winning the Binance vote and getting more exposure. This all changed when the crypto markets crashed January 16th, and Raiblocks fell to around $11. Although every cryptocurrency was hit, raiblocks also dealt with a lot of additional FUD (Fear, uncertainty, doubt) due to issues with exchanges not being able to withdraw funds. It should be noted that these node issues were fixed in just a few short days, and that the Raiblocks team was very transparent throughout the whole process.
Since then, Raiblocks has bounced back and has hovered around the $18-$20 mark, a far cry from its all time high of $37.62. Right after the node issues were fixed, Bitgrail, one of the exchanges with the most traffic, stopped allowing users who were not verified on the exchange to withdraw any funds. This led to a lot of people being locked out of their funds, causing even more FUD and a giant drop in volume.
So with all these exchange issues, what do we have to look forward to? What does Raiblocks have to look forward to? The answer is, a lot.
Binance
The most notable one is that Binance plans to list xrb in the very near future. The issue with xrb's current exchanges is that there's not much volume. These lesser known exchanges, such as Bitgrail and Coinfalcon simply don't have enough people buying and selling xrb, which leads to a lot of market manipulation, and a single whale can influence the direction of XRB. Kucoin, while more known than the other exchanges listed, still does not provide nearly enough volume for the every day investor to make an impact against the whales manipulating XRB. Binance on the other hand is one of the most used exchanges in the world, and would provide the market with enough volume to xrb increase to it's actual value. Below are some examples of what happens to a coin's value, the moment that a coin gets listed on Binance.
The community
Raiblocks has a huge following on reddit, and in a few short months, many projects have emerged using raiblocks. You can find a list of the Raiblocks community projects here. They range from scripts that allow your website to take raiblocks as a form of payment, to exchanges that focus on raiblocks. https://www.allthingsrai.net/
New wallets
One of the biggest complaints that Raiblocks has is that, the UI for the wallets are horrible. It functions really well, but the design looks like an application that's being run on windows XP. This will soon change as the Raiblocks team has already confirmed that the iOS wallets are nearly ready to be released. The Ledger NANO, the leader in the crypto hardware multi-wallet scene has also announced support for Raiblocks to be released sometime late February. With this, your XRB will be safer than ever.
Possible rebrand
There has been a lot of speculation of Raiblocks rebranding to Nano, a name that in my opinion is much easier to remember than Raiblocks. This was first dug up by the community on a reddit post which noted that https://nano.co/, a website that was launching soon was registered under the creator of Raiblocks. More information can be found in this reddit post. https://www.reddit.com/r/RaiBlocks/comments/7sz2pg/nano_rebrand_stop_speculating_its_real/
The Raiblock team
The Raiblocks team has been very active in letting users know what is going on, that is not under NDA. They communicate daily on their discord channel (https://chat.raiblocks.net/) and currently give a developer update every 2 days on reddit. Core members of the Raiblocks team are quick to respond to questions on their discord channel and their subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/RaiBlocks/). The team has shown over and over again, that they care about their community, answering any questions a community might have. With transparency comes trust. With trust, comes investments.
The tech
Raiblock's technology, while still very new, has been shown to be incredibly versatile. Questions recently arose about how Raiblocks would scale. If it was put to the test, would it scale? One of the community managers on their discord channel recently wrote this article, explaining what happened when they put the raiblock's network to the test. https://medium.com/@bnp117/stress-testing-the-raiblocks-network-part-ii-def83653b21f. In short, Raiblocks passed the stress test with flying colors. While it can definitely be tested further, given how new this technology is, passing this stress test is a testament of how solid the technology behind Raiblocks is.
Q: Will XRB be the next bitcoin?
A: It has all the tools to be everything that Bitcoin had ever hoped to be, but what we need to see is more adoption in the market.
Q: Will you be rich if you invest in XRB?
A: While I personally am very bullish on XRB, it's not something that is guaranteed. The crypto market is very volatile and can take a turn at any moment.
With these things in mind, I will say that you should never invest more than you can afford to lose. Raiblocks is still a young cryptocurrency, but has already shown to be very promising. Take these things into consideration, read the white paper (https://raiblocks.net/) and decide for yourself if XRB is a good investment. I for one, am going big on XRB.