I am surprised at the level of research people have been doing. Someone mentioned to me its the hot new thing, microsoft is onboard with cisco etc. So then I went to check.
I checked, lots of talk about working with other companies, and this is everywhere, but the suspicious thing is it is all only from IOTA team. Not a single statement of support from their so called partners. Cisco is mentioned in this very thread, but i can't find any evidence that cisco is involved. No press statement, etc. Can someone please provide these? Maybe my skills just suck, but all it seems like is terrible journalists blindly reporting IOTA press releases without getting statements from the 'partners' on what they intend to use them for.
I also then discovered some big bugs where the network has failed.
I then read of the concerns of the network scaling, the ease of attack, etc. and the Tangle network being highly unproven.
Then finally, I read that its theoretical and its not actually working yet outside of a lab environment.
Then i have my own thoughts, such as the sheer expense of mining on the clients. We are talking about a highly, highly restrictive space here where devices need to be efficient. If this is for IoT devices that have no memory, power, run ASIC type processing, etc, why would an expensive network like this be of value? The use-case targeted doesn't shout blockchain at me, in fact distributed consensus is a very expensive process.
Therefore my predictions are:
1. People continue not to research and dump money in it, it will go up until it collapses when someone that everyone reads points out its BS. Forbes, Economist, etc. just takes a journalist that isn't a web blogger (no offence to web bloggers, some of them do a fantastic job, but that means they won't work for these big useless clickbait companies)
2. People continue not to research and dump money in it, it will go up and the IOTA team use the money to condense the vapour into something that exists, and it holds for a little while.
Putting money into it is like playing a broken casino machine, but in the house's favour.
I could be wrong and perhaps didn't find information required to be informed because of bad googling, but I am completely unconvinced.
I'm not going to bother discussing attack vectors with you--you can go onto stack exchange for those discussions or ping ComeFromBeyond and let him make you look like an ass. BUT what I will do is expand your research reading so your concerns (trollish as they are) can be put to rest.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201712/how-fear-is-being-used-manipulate-cryptocurrency-marketshttps://blog.iota.org/iotas-data-marketplace-setting-the-record-straight-576fbf0b4513Bonus material: the CEO of Fujitsu Central Europe talking about Iota
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLzLTWwO26s&feature=youtu.beBonus 2: found ComeFromBeyond's "easy to understand" guide to attacks
https://blog.iota.org/equilibria-in-the-tangle-let-me-try-to-explain-b22ad6f00c13PS: you seem like a professional, so sorry about my quickness in handling your "concerns."