Digibyte Guide | Learn Everything About DGB

What is Digibyte?

Digibyte was founded back in 2014 by Jared Tate, making it one of the older cryptocurrencies still growing and thriving in today’s market. The currency is industry, especially considering its age, because it seeks to beat both Bitcoin and Ethereum at their own game. Until Digibyte, cryptocurrencies tended to specialize. A coin like Litecoin might endeavor to be the best kind of digital money that it was possible to be, while ignoring the “new internet” possibilities of a coin like Ethereum. In other situations, coins like NEO would emerge as competitors to Bitcoin, but were by their very design impractical to serve as payment coins. Digibyte DGB aimed, and still aims, to be both. Many aspects of its design optimize the traits that would make the perfect global digital payment system – lowering prices, adding speed and scalability, and increasing decentralization when compared to Bitcoin. And while Ethereum remains a very powerful platform for the building of smart contracts and decentralized applications (Dapps), Digibyte corrects some of its problems, especially speed and (increasingly) decentralization. Digibyte is right around the #30 in today’s top cryptos (that is on July 9, 2018). Its ongoing upward trajectory in price speaks to the excellent ideas and development prowess of the Digibyte team,  the ongoing interest of the Digibyte community, and adopting in the real world of Digibyte and its associated technologies.

What is Digibyte’s Purpose?

Though Digibyte’s use cases are many, let’s first consider its role as a payment coin, as this is the purpose for which it is best known. Digibyte wants to be a worldwide payment currency, and to remove Bitcoin from the throne in the process. So how in the world would Digibyte accomplish this goal?

By being better and faster than Bitcoin in almost every way. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Bitcoin is pretty slow. Bitcoin can handle only about 7 transactions per second. Compare this to the VISA payment network which can handle at least 2000 tps. Bitcoin can never be a true global payment system that’s reliable enough for real world vendors if it cannot surpass this sluggish space. Digibyte, on the other hand, already boasts tps of about 600, with near endless scalability possibilities beyond this. Theoretically, Digibyte could hit nearly 300,000 tps by 2035. Digibyte is also more decentralized and, in the process, practical for use as money than Bitcoin. There are only 21 million in the world, and after loss and other issues, this number practically speaking is probably somewhere closer to 18 million. Last we checked, the world’s population was 7.6 Billion. That means, to be a global currency, each individual user could have only minuscule fractions of a single Bitcoin. Imagine paying for a cup of coffee for the price of 0.000847 Bitcoin. That’s not a number that will exactly roll off the tongue. Contrast this with Digibyte. With its 21 Billion tokens (1000x Bitcoin), pricing is much more practical. 1.5 DGB for a cup of coffee is something we can wrap our minds around. Furthermore, having more Digibyte means that it can be distributed to more people, contributing to decentralization. But that’s not the only way Digibyte can be decentralized. Digibyte can be mined a bunch of different ways, even on a smartphone. Bitcoin can only be mined by expensive, increasingly rare hardware. The people who already have it are the ones able to bring new Bitcoin into the system. With that money they can buy more hardware, thus centralizing Bitcoin further and further as time goes on. The Bitcoin community has no good idea of how to solve this problem.

The Team Behind Digibyte

Jared Tate is the most recognizable face behind Digibyte, and is truly its creator and visionary leader. Back in 2014, lots of people were starting to notice the cracks around Bitcoin’s world dominating facade, but very few were willing (or equipped) to create an alternative. Jared Tate was one of these few, and he created Digibyte to upgrade Bitcoin’s speed, security, and versatility.

He wanted to create a truly decentralized coin, that no single actor or group of actors could corrupt for their own purposes. 4 years later, it looks like Tate has been successful, even though Digibyte has a lot of work to do before it accomplishes its goals.

How Does Digibyte Work?

A full technical analysis of Digibyte’s technology is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice to say, Digibyte uses a complex range of mining algorithms to keep mining in the hands of the people, not the mining cartels of China and other centralized regions, as with today’s Bitcoin.

Digibyte also implemented important innovations early on that have made it much more scalable than Bitcoin. Digibyte was the first public blockchain to employ Segregated Witness, something the Bitcoin community is only now starting to unleash in force on their own blockchain. Digibyte also allows for difficulty increases after every 15 second block, as well as block size versatility, as with Bitcoin Cash. The blockchain also supports smart contracts, and has a lot of exciting development at the time of this writing. Amazingly, it accomplishes all of this while being more secure and decentralized than the major currencies it is up against, as Digibyte is able to be more diversely held and mined than either of the two major world cryptocurrencies.

Real Life Application

Digibyte is already an accepted payment solution through dozens of vendors online and in the real world. It also has many functioning smart contracts and Dapps, and is a very attractive option for new developers who may be choosing between NEO, Ethereum, Qtum, and the like.

If all goes well, all of these real life applications will mature and advance in tandem, elevating Digibyte to the top of its industry.

How Does Digibyte Compare to Bitcoin?

As you can already tell, we believe that Digibyte compared favorably to Bitcoin in almost every respect. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that Digibyte will conquer the mighty Bitcoin. In every conceivable way, Bitcoin is more widely known and used than Digibyte. It has one serious “first mover advantage”, and this is not likely to chance anytime soon. But Digibyte has time. Bitcoin’s market dominance has been steadily slumping since the introduction of altcoins. Many envision a day when Bitcoin will no longer occupy the top spot in the industry. Though there are many other qualified blockchain projects which are vying to take the crown, Digibyte is definitely one of the best among them.

How Can You Get Digidibyte?

There are a couple of different ways to get Digibyte. Here are the most important.

You Can Buy and Trade It

As one of the most popular cryptocurrencies in the world, Digibyte is widely available from cryptocurrency brokers like Bittrex, Poloniex, and Kucoin. In all of these cases, you’ll have to first buy Bitcoin to trade for Digibyte, using brokers like Coinbase. Coinbase takes fiat currencies like the US Dollar and exchanges them for Bitcoin and a couple of other major currencies (Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin). These coins can then be transferred to exchanges that accept only crytpocurrency, and traded via crypto robots for Digibyte.

You Can Mine It

Digibyte is one of the best coins to mine, because it’s expensive enough that the mining is highly profitable, it’s not nearly as competitive as Bitcoin, and you can mine using lots of different technologies. As we stated earlier, Bitcoin can only be mined by very expensive and specialized equipment. Digibyte brings can the good old days by being minable by everything from smartphones to graphics cards to ASICs like AntMiners.

How to Store Digibyte

Every digital currency on planet earth has to be stored on a piece of software called a digital wallet. There are tons of different digital wallets, some of which are used for a single kind of cryptocurrency, and others which store dozens. Make sure to do your research and find a high quality Digibyte wallet from an authentic source, even before you buy Digibyte for the first time. We cover a lot of different wallet options on our cryptocurrency wallet page.

Digibyte Price, Market Cap & Supply 

Digibyte has a supply of 21 Billion coins that will be mined over 21 years. Almost exactly half of this supply has been mined to date. Each Digibyte coin is worth a little less than half of one US Cent at the time of this writing, and the market cap is almost half a billion US Dollars. We use general numbers for these amounts because (as any experienced crypto trader knows), they tend to flop around quite a bit.

Digibyte Advantages & Disadvantages

Pros

✓ Decentralized ✓ Fast ✓ Secure ✓ Low Fees ✓ Good for Money and Smart Contracts ✓ Minable by anyone

Cons

✓ Not as widely adopted as it must be for long term success.

Should You Invest in Digibyte or Not?

We can’t tell you what to do with your own money, but we really like Digibyte as an investment for 2024. Digibyte isn’t so oversold that there’s no meat left on the bone. Very often, people buy hyped coins because of what they may do in the future, not what they have already done. This increases the price into the fantastical realm, and here investment doesn’t make any sense. Digibyte isn’t like this. It has accomplished a great deal and has a lot of hope for the future, but Digibyte is old enough that it’s not as new and fascinating as it once was. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t a world-class platform. We think that as the market recovers throughout 2024 and beyond, that Digibyte will be one of the big winners. Further updates to the platform will only as more value!