This week’s comprehensive market rally has injected billions of dollars back into the cryptocurrency market cap, and the number of individual coins boasting total valuations of at least $1 billion has subsequently swelled to 24. Bytom, a digital asset platform launched out of China, aims to be the 25th. First announced in July 2017, the lesser-known cryptocurrency aims to ease the friction between “tokenizing” real-world assets and trading them on and off the blockchain in a manner that can easily comply with local regulations governing securities and equities transactions. Since the platform will be dedicated specifically to issuing and trading tokenized assets, its developers argue it will be more efficient and useful than general-purpose smart contract platforms like Ethereum. Most of Bytom’s founders are affiliated with 8btc, a popular Chinese cryptocurrency news outlet and discussion forum that has raised $16 million in funding, according to CrunchBase. Duan XinXing, one of the project’s co-founders, formerly served as Vice President of cryptocurrency exchange OKCoin. Another, Chang Jia, was a well-known science fiction author prior to entering the cryptocurrency space and founding 8btc. Like most recently-launched cryptocurrencies, Bytom was bootstrapped through an initial coin offering (ICO), though one-third of its total currency supply will be issued through mining once the network launches. At present, though, the Bytom mainnet has yet to launch, so BTM tokens are currently just ERC20 tokens that represent ownership of coins on the future BTM network. Over the past seven days, the Bytom price has soared by more than 97 percent — the best return of any cryptocurrency ranked in the top 25 by market cap — and the token is currently trading above dollar parity for the first time in its approximately eight-month history. Source: CoinMarketCapThere’s no clear explanation for Bytom’s relative outperformance. Smaller-cap altcoins often see their prices fluctuate wildly, and market manipulation is not beyond the realm of possibility. Nevertheless, at present, Bytom has a $989 million market cap, making it likely that it will at least clip the $1 billion threshold, even if it does not sustain its present momentum moving forward. Featured image from Shutterstock