DigiByte is the native currency of a Bitcoin (BTC) fork also called DigiByte that claims to speed up confirmation times, improve Bitcoin’s original security and allow for the creation of smart contracts. Its ticker is DGB.

DigiByte launched in 2014. Its price flatlined at about $0.0001-$0.0003 until the crypto boom of 2017. In June of that year, DigiByte rose to about 6 cents, but those highs didn’t last. By October 2017, the price had fallen to $0.009. A few months later, the market swelled again, and digibyte soared to 12 cents by January 2018. Then the price sank yet again, and remained depressed until 2021.

When bitcoin hit its all-time high, so did digibyte, which rose to a high of 18.25 cents in May, 2021 – before crashing by 70% to 3.8 cents by late June. Although its price has been volatile, its peaks are impressive for a coin that in December 2014 was worth just $0.00002028.

DigiByte has a maximum, capped supply of 21 billion – a thousand times greater than bitcoin. Its circulating supply is inflationary; digibyte can be mined into existence in a similar manner to bitcoin. The DigiByte protocol, however, reduces block rewards by 1% each month, acting as a disinflationary measure to slow down the rate at which new DigiByte coins are introduced into circulation.

Half a percent of all digibyte were pre-mined, meaning they were mined before the public launch of the blockchain. Half of the 0.5% pre-mine was spent on developing DGB’s mobile wallets.

DigiByte is much faster than Bitcoin. While Bitcoin blocks take about 10 minutes to confirm, DigiByte blocks occur every 15 seconds. And while Bitcoin can process about five transactions per second and a transfer can cost a couple of dollars, DigiByte claims to process up to 1,066 transactions per second with negligible fees.

DigiByte, like Bitcoin, is a proof-of-work blockchain, meaning that new coins are mined into existence when computers expend energy. DigiByte uses five algorithms to discourage the kind of ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) miners that dominate bitcoin mining: Sha256, Scrypt, Skein, Qubit and Odocrypt. Since these algorithms support different kinds of hardware, miners will come from all backgrounds, making DigiByte less reliant on a single kind of miner.

DigiByte also implements something called DigiShield, a method that prevents pools from easily mining lots of DGB. DigiShield prevents the mining difficulty from readjusting abruptly and keeps the blockchain operational. DigiByte was also one of the first blockchains to adopt SegWit, a method of decreasing transaction times. Bitcoin adopted SegWit in 2017.

Although Bitcoin doesn’t support smart contracts of substantial significance – it isn’t as programmable as, say, Ethereum – DigiByte can support a whole ecosystem of decentralized finance protocols. DGB is supported by cross-chain bridge Ren (as is Bitcoin).

Among these DeFi protocols is DigiAssets, a proprietary layer 2 tool that sits atop the main DigiByte blockchain. It allows users to create digital assets that represent physical objects, such as real estate and cars. DigiByte has also produced Digi-ID, a security protocol that uses blockchain technology for easy sign-ins through a QR code.

DigiByte was founded by entrepreneur Jared Tate in October 2013 and mined its first block in January 2014. DigiShield launched a month later and extended its protection over all five mining algorithms by December 2014.

In December 2014, DigiByte cut its block time to 15 seconds. In April 2017, it activated SegWit. Bitcoin miners locked in SegWit three months later.