IOTA’s Grand Manifesto: Visionary Reset or Another Reality Check?

The IOTA price curve hit a historic low at the turn of the year and is stuck in the death zone. Foundation head Dominik Schiener has now published a manifesto – can this solve the problems?

Just eight months ago, IOTA attempted a fresh start using SUI technology. But IOTA Rebased fizzled out, and the price continued to plummet. Now, foundation head Dominik Schiener is making another rescue attempt, presenting an “IOTA Manifesto” entitled “The World onchain.”

While such pathetically worded manifestos are typically associated with communist organizations or artists’ collectives, Schiener’s focus is primarily on how the altcoin should develop value. A new website has also been launched, where Schiener explains in ten chapters why IOTA can expect a turnaround.

Global trade is supposed to save IOTA – Schiener’s manifesto sees no alternative

The manifesto is rather long-winded. But the figures are gigantic. IOTA is now focusing on global trade with an annual volume of 35 trillion US dollars, it states. By digitizing customs procedures and other details of cross-border logistics, IOTA aims to make itself indispensable in global trade, according to the manifesto.

It paints a bleak picture of IOTA soon experiencing so many daily transactions on its network that deflation will set in due to the fees and their “burning.” As head of the foundation, Dominik Schiener should know that it was only under his leadership that IOTA veered towards inflation in 2023. Back then, Schiener imposed an ” inflation hammer, ” thereby also reneging on his promise that IOTA would never increase the number of tokens.

Inflation is causing serious problems for the altcoin – the manifesto “forgets” Shimmer

For more than two years, the altcoin has been under significant price pressure due to the “inflation hammer.” The foundation and its subsidiaries regularly sell the tokens allocated to them every two weeks to cover their operating costs. Consequently, at the turn of the year, IOTA plummeted to a record low of just under $0.08 and once again finds itself in the death zone below $0.10.

It sounds like a cruel joke to investors when Dominik Schiener writes in the introduction to the Manifesto that elsewhere failed cryptocurrencies and scams have cost trust and billions. As a reminder: IOTA Rebased finally shut down the side project Shimmer (SMR). Shimmer’s demise had already been foreshadowed in the summer of 2024, and investors lost millions through SMR. But the failures of IOTA’s past are simply dismissed in the manifesto as “wild and chaotic”; neither the “inflation hammer” nor Shimmer are mentioned once.

IOTA uses creative pricing strategies – investors are advised to double-check their calculations.
Instead, Schiener tries to win over his audience with the simple formula “more usage = more scarcity = IOTA becomes more valuable.”

Meanwhile, until autumn 2027, approximately 12.5 million IOTA, currently still worth around 1 million US dollars, flow to the foundation and its branches every two weeks; this is the only way the organization can finance itself. The altcoin has incurred roughly 12 percent annual inflation due to this “inflationary hammer,” and since switching to rebased pricing, staking adds another 6 to 7 percent.

Experts have calculated that IOTA would need at least 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) on its network for fees to have a deflationary effect. In the manifesto, Schiener cites 650 million transactions per year as realistic if only one percent of documents in global trade are digitized on IOTA. This calculation is therefore completely inaccurate, and it’s also questionable whether IOTA Rebased can even handle 100,000 TPS. But the manifesto conveniently omits such details. Instead, it claims that the altcoin will become as “indispensable” to global trade as “container ships, GPS, or the internet itself.”

Conclusion: The IOTA manifesto has the potential to be a laughingstock

Anyone who, like Block-Builders, has been following IOTA for years will stumble across several inconsistencies in the manifesto, where fantasies are presented as facts. Let’s stick for today with the digitization of global trade, where IOTA sees no competition and pilot projects in Africa are intended to be the starting point. Kenya is already using the network for flower exports, and according to the manifesto, at least five more countries are to launch pilot projects with IOTA this year.

For Schiener, this will provide opportunities to jet around the world at the expense of the Foundation; he’s already flaunting a business suit on X. For a long-established altcoin like IOTA, which isn’t even among the top 100 most capitalized cryptocurrencies in the world anymore, this grandiose manifesto could quickly become another liability – because the monetary goals formulated therein are unlikely to withstand a reality check.

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(Featured image by Moose Photos via Pexels)

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