What is Nxt?
Nxt is an advanced blockchain platform which builds on and improves the basic functionality of pioneering cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
Nxt advances the financial technology, crowdfunding and governance industries by providing not only the NXT crypto-currency, but also a powerful, modular toolset to build with in any way Nxt users can imagine. Nxt gives users complete freedom to create their own applications.
Features of Nxt include an asset exchange, a monetary system, data storage on the cloud, a voting system, and account control.
You can check out the website here.
Nxt Background
Nxt is an open source cryptocurrency and payment network launched in November 2013 by anonymous software developer BCNext. According to reports the cryptocurrency was staked with just 21 BTC. And the genesis block was published on November 24, 2013. Nxt is coded in Java.
It uses proof-of-stake to reach consensus for transactions, the first cryptocurrency to do this. The static money supply is 1 billion coins. One of the benefits of proof-of-stake is that you don’t need hashing power like you do with bitcoin, so it’s energy efficient. Instead, consensus is reached through forging. Anyone with an open wallet and the Nxt server client can forge Nxt. All open wallets on the network have a proportional opportunity to generate a block and when they do they get rewarded with the transaction fees.
When Nxt came on the scene it quickly rose to over $0.07 by the end of 2013. In 2014 it traded over $0.09 on a couple of occasions but has since faded into obscurity. For much of 2015 it has traded for less than a penny.
However, on June 19 Nxt announced its Ardor project. The price has since moved to under a penny to near $0.03. Ardor is a child-chain technology which incorporates the technologies of the Nxt platform. It’s an exciting development which I’ll dive into in later posts.
Summary
Nxt is the cryptocurrency piquing my interest right now. In future posts I’ll talk about Ardor, proof of stake vs proof of work, use cases and even how to mine your own Nxt. I’ll also delve into my projections for Nxt, I think it’s going much higher.
Follow me if you're interest in Nxt ;-P
How to Get Nxt
You’ll want to start by getting yourself some bitcoin. I use Coinbase.
Then you’ll need a Nxt wallet. You can get one at MyNXT.info.
One way to purchase Nxt is through a cryptocurrency exchange such as Poloniex. You transfer bitcoin to Poloniex and then buy Nxt on the exchange. For safety keep the Nxt in your Nxt wallet.
The other option is to use ShapeShift. It’s a way to exchange cryptocurrencies without signing up for an exchange.