Forget Bitcoin and Litecoin; cyrptocurrency TRON is up 12755% in just one month

A month ago, hardly anyone knew about TRON (TRX). After all, that was the time all eyes were on bitcoin's blistering bull run. But the day of this altcoin seems to have arrived, and how. On December 5, the share price of TRX was $0.00215. As of this morni A month ago, hardly anyone knew about TRON (TRX). After all, that was the time all eyes were on bitcoin's blistering bull run. But the day of this altcoin seems to have arrived, and how. On December 5, the share price of TRX was $0.00215. As of this morning, it is trading at $0.276378. That's a mind-boggling 12755% jump in the virtual currency's value, a growth that eclipses surges posted by the far-better known Litecoin and Ripple in the same period.

Added to this, TRON's market capitalization has grown six-fold from $2.8 billion on January 1 to $18.7 billion today. The barely four months old altcoin is now the sixth most valuable cryptocurrency, but one of only three starting out in green this morning along with Bitcoin and Ethereum. Ironically, TRON's Initial Coin Offering (ICO) actually had a rough start since it coincided with China's crackdown on cryptocurrencies in September 2017.

So what is TRON? It is a blockchain-based decentralized protocol that aims to construct a worldwide free content entertainment system. The protocol allows each user to freely publish, store and own data, and in the decentralized autonomous form, decides the distribution, subscription and push of contents. It also enables content creators by releasing, circulating and dealing with digital assets, thus forming a decentralized content entertainment ecosystem. Content providers will, therefore, no longer need to pay high channel fees to centralized platforms like Google Play and Apple's AppA Store. And its official currency is TRONIX (TRX).

This fresh-on-the-big-league virtual currency has a lot going for it. The man behind TRON is Justin Sun, founder and CEO of Peiwo-the largest voice live streaming app in China. He not only brings to the table his experience as Ripple's Chief Representative in Greater China, but is also widely considered to be a protege of Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group Holdings Inc. Sun was one of the first students to attend Jack Ma Hupan University for entrepeneurs-personally invited at that-and the only millennial graduate. In fact, many of TRON's team have been roped in from Alibaba.

TRON is also betting big on partnerships. Even if we set aside old rumours about a partnership with Alibaba being in the pipeline, Sun has already tied up with the likes of Game.com, a leading online gaming platform, and Singapore bike-sharing operator oBike. Then on January 2, he mentioned the prospect of several partnerships in the coming year. "Even NASDAQ listed companies and the giant companies with 100 million users started to contact us. We will be huge soon," he tweeted. Just 20 hours ago came another tweet: "We will announce our partnership with a very prestigious public listed company next week. Looking forward to it!"

So things are certainly looking up for TRON, but before cryptocurrency enthusiasts rush to climb aboard this new gravy train, keep in mind that the Finance Ministry has recently announced that virtual currencies are not legal tender in the country. It also made it clear that the government or any other regulator in India has not given license to any agency for working as exchange. "Consumers need to be alert and extremely cautious as to avoid getting trapped in such Ponzi schemes," read the ministry statement, adding that virtual currencies are stored in digital/electronic format, making them vulnerable to hacking, loss of password, malware attack which may also result in permanent loss of money.