IOTA price moves lower as IOTA Foundation clarifies it has no official partnership with Microsoft

The IOTA price (MIOTA/USD) has seen a significant decline on Wednesday, following its failed attempt at establishing a stable position above $5 in the previous session.

On Tuesday the ‘Internet of Things coin’ rose to a four-day high of $5.03, but lost momentum in early afternoon trading and eventually finished the session at $4.72. Shortly after the beginning of today’s session, the price commenced a rapid descend, losing more than $0.50 over a few hours. It now appears to have stabilised around $4.30, according to data from cryptocurrency tracker Coinmarketcap.

The Berlin-based IOTA Foundation yesterday clarified that it had no formal partnership with Microsoft, adding that media reports had misinterpreted its Data marketplace announcement.

On November 28, IOTA seemingly announced that it had partnered with a group of large corporations, including the Redmond-based tech giant, to create a secure way for businesses to sell and buy data. Among the companies listed in the announcement were also Samsung Group, Bosch, Cisco Systems, Volkswagen and others.

However, in a yesterday interview with The Next Web, IOTA’s co-founder Dominik Schiener, insisted that those companies were “participants” in the project, rather than partners.

“We have never mentioned that any of the companies which are participating in the marketplace are our ‘partners,'” Schiener told TNW in an email. “We call them participants.”  

Despite the lack of a formal agreement, the IOTA team have been in touch with several divisions at Microsoft and is hosting meetups at the Microsoft offices in Chicago, Paris and Munich to showcase the potential of the Data Marketplace and the underlying Tangle protocol.

During these meetups, IOTA’s development team plans to assist a team led by Microsoft blockchain specialist Omkar Naik, in setting up a scanner that would allow the US tech giant to sell its data directly on the Data Marketplace.

In today’s trading, the IOTA price stood at $4.24, as of 16:54 GMT. The coin has lost 7.7% of its value in the past 24 hours.