What Is Walton Coin?

If you aren’t already familiar with Walton Coin, you probably weren’t too interested in cryptocurrencies during 2017, when many new altcoins and cryptocurrency projects were launched from the ground up, trying to tap into the booming market opportunities opened by the crypto bull run and the ensuing FOMO. 

Thousands of new cryptocurrency projects emerged in 2017, with thousands of ICOs raising millions of dollars for daring and visionary projects based on blockchains and cryptocurrencies. Fast forward a couple of years, and most of these projects are either dead or have only continued to hang on to the edge of internet relevancy through sheer spite of angry investors who never got the products they thought they were investing in.

Walton Coin had been quite big in the cryptocurrency circles back when it was first launched, its vision of combining blockchain technology with RFID technology generating a lot of buzz around its name. Crypto-veterans probably remember WTC’s bitter rivalry with VeChain, a project that also focused on the Internet of Things (IoT), only too well.

Walton Coin’s fall from grace lasted a couple of years and even the once-faithful proponents of the project have little hope that it will amount to something in the near future. Let’s take a stroll through the digital currency’s history to see how it all started and where it is at the moment.

The Walton Coin Project

The Walton Coin or Waltonchain (WTC) project was announced in 2016 as a cryptocurrency and blockchain-based project that centred around the Internet of Things (IoT). The China-based project promises a new business ecosystem (modelled after Ethereum) that connects IoT with blockchain technology through the Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology, which enables object identification and tracking through microchips.

The project took its name after the late Charlie Walton, the inventor of RFID technology who died in 2011. 

The Waltonchain project at its heart promised better information transparency and smoother tracking for a variety of goods and services across several industries, including supply-chain management, communication, and healthcare. 

The proposed system included innovations to production management, warehousing, and consumer end. At the production phase, RFID chips record encrypted data about the production environment that is also uploaded to the Waltonchain blockchain.

Warehouse RFID reader-writers also record product status during its housing and shipping periods, uploading all the information to the blockchain. Finally, users can simply scan RFID chips to view product information.

What Is Waltonchain?

At the time of inception, many considered Waltonchain the Chinese version of the IOTA project, another blockchain-based Internet of Things initiative that has been transformed greatly in the years after its launch. 

According to the project developers, a combination of IoT and blockchain technology would lead to the formation of an entirely new business ecosystem with information transparency at the centre.

The project promised a parent blockchain, i.e Waltonchain, a platform that would enable other businesses to connect their own child-blockchains to take part in the parent-blockchain’s business ecosystem and conduct their transactions. In other words, it seemed like the developers had found a way to adjust Ethereum to the Internet of Things.

The four-step development plan announced in the 2018 Waltonchain White Paper V2 included the creation of the parent blockchain and platform, data circulation, cross-chain architecture and offering custom services to the business ecosystem.

The Waltonchain Token

Walton Coin is an ERC20 token based on Ethereum standards and the first official Walton Coin that was in the market during Walton Coin ICO. The ERC20 token can be swapped for WTC mainnet tokens now but that wasn’t an option for the first couple of years since Waltonchain mainnet wasn’t launched until 2020.

Originally, there was a total supply of 100 million Walton coins and they could be used to distribute dividends and exchange assets and voting rights on the network. Later on, Waltonchain developers also launched 500,000,000 Waltonchain Autonomy tokens.

WTC used to be available on Coinbase and could be purchased with Bitcoin and Ethereum. Currently, WTC is available on some other crypto exchanges. WTC is listed on Binance with USDT and BTC pairings. It is also listed at Huobi with ETH, on OKEx with USDT, on KuCoin with BTC, on Bithumb with KRW.

You can’t buy WTC with USD or any other fiat currency directly. You should also know that the liquidity pool for WTC is not very large on any of these exchanges, so it might be hard to sell your WTC if you purchase a large amount. 

Waltoncoin Team and WTC Trending On Twitter

The value of Waltonchain crashed back in February 2018 due to a Tweet by the official Waltonchain account, following an all-time high in Waltonchain prices and market cap.

The event is generally seen as the beginning of the end for Walton Coin as the cryptocurrency’s Twitter account revealed the project had been faking the results of its awareness spreading campaign “contest”, and awarding promised rewards to made-up Twitter accounts that were controlled by the company. 

Project developers announced later that a company worker who was also in the contest had accidentally celebrated the news from the company account but the explanation obviously lacked conviction.

“A Waltonchain team member was among the winners and excitedly tweeted using the wrong profile. We officially state that this team member’s participation and prize (2.14 WTC among the total pool of 564.96 WTC) are canceled, and from now on, team members are prohibited to participate in any of our official campaigns.”

But it was too late as Waltonchain’s price dropped 30% immediately after the tweet.

What Happened to Walton Coin?

Walton Coin didn’t immediately disappear though. The project had a lot of clout due to good news surrounding the company, including the awards it received, both in China and in the US as the most promising blockchain project, the partnership rumours with China Telecom, and with Alibaba.

However, the Twitter mishap was probably the beginning of the end as the price continued to plunge and developers began to withdraw from the project, with less news and less communication springing forth.

Come 2019, there was still no product or let alone news of the mainnet for Waltonchain. WTC holders begin to give up on the project as well, which is well reflected in the project’s Reddit and Telegram channels. The Waltonchain Reddit board that witnessed many Vechain vs Waltonchain discussions years ago slowly went quiet and the community definition was updated as such: 

“WaltonChain is pretty much just a failed ICO project from 2017. “OMG!😭Can’t believe I won! Thank you Walton team! ❤️ keep doing the great work. 💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻🚀🚀🚀” – Waltonchain Twitter, February 28, 2018”

As you can probably guess, that was the tweet a company employee “mistakenly” tweeted from the Waltonchain Twitter account. WTC prices occasionally spike without reason as for example in 2019 but just for a brief while, movements that don’t seem to be connected with the project itself. Instead, the price changes could be due to old news about the project being recycled through the internet or current pump and dump movements.

A Few Words Before You Go…

Waltonchain mainnet launched in 2020 and developers started to reach out to the community once more.

The community seems to consider WTC a lost cause, or even a well designed Ponzi scheme but the developers are insistent that new days are ahead. There seems to be an NFT project that is in design, but it is not clear what will happen to the Walton ecosystem and sub-chains that were supposed to be integrated into the parent chain.

If you are considering investing in WTC, make sure you do your homework and you are up to date with the company’s latest plans.

Finally, be aware that previous experience has shown that the developers of the project are not completely honest with their community.

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