What is Theta And Why It Has Grown By More Than 19,500% in a Year

Theta, an almost unknown crypto-token, announced its arrival in the big leagues by breaking into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap yesterday. It is now the 9^th biggest token with a market cap of $13.57 billion.

In retrospect, Theta token is the in-house cryptocurrency of the Theta Network Project, a blockchain-based infrastructure for video streaming and delivery. It rose by 19609% in the previous 12 months (at the time of writing), which has helped it rise over aged cryptocurrency projects like Litecoin, Chainlink, and Bitcoin Cash.

Theta Explained

Founded in 2018, Theta has attracted investors like Sierra Ventures, Heuristic Capital, Venture Reality Fund, etc., as well as Samsung NEXT and Sony Innovation Fund. It is a non-fungible token launched atop the Ethereum blockchain. There are about 1,000,000,000 Theta tokens in circulation at this time that provide users a host of functionalities. 

The Theta Network project aims to decentralize video streaming services. It incentivizes users to share their excess bandwidth and computing power to provide high-resolution video streaming. 

Founded by Computer Engineers Jeiyi Long and Mitch Liu, Theta boasts an advisory team that includes Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube; Kyle Okamoto, CNO of Verizon Digital Media; Justin Kan, co-founder of Twitch, among others. 

A reason why it has grown at such a rate is that the top 10 holders control 61% of the currency in circulation, according to Chinese journalist Colin Wu. He also tweeted that the token sees an almost irrational demand in South Korea, where it is at 4^th position in terms of the trading volume. 

It’s not only market manipulation that has led to the rise of the Theta token. The company’s performance has been quite stellar, as can be seen from a tweet by CEO Mitch Liu on March 18, 2021, in which he announced that Theta Project had surpassed Intel in terms of edge computing power.

An increased interest in NFTs may also be a factor in the rise of the token. NFTs are being touted as the future of digital art, and a lot of well-known names have started taking an interest in these blockchain-based art pieces. 

Theta Project’s head of strategy, Wes Levitt, told the website Decrypt that investors in Theta could have increased buying after the company announced that a secondary, staking token was on its way. 

Theta has seen tremendous growth in the market, even when other cryptos have reported losses, and thus is a token to keep an eye on.