Blowing Away The Trend
Crypto markets are struggling, with only 1 of the 24 $1-billion-plus market-cap coins in the green for the 7-day period. Nano - the fast, free, infinitely scalable, minerless cryptocurrency is blowing away that trend with a 65% 7-day gain and a 25% increase over the past 24 hours.
Your Own Blockchain
Nano utilizes a unique structure called “block-lattice”, allowing each user to essentially maintain their own blockchain, effectively mining the coins as they use them. Instead of a long transaction chain recording the amount of each transaction, Nano transactions keep track of account balances.
Instantaneous & Free
According to the Nano whitepaper, this streamlined structure allows each user to update their own blockchain asynchronously with the rest of the network so transactions are instantaneous and free.
Tracking account balances instead of long chains of transaction amounts allows for "aggressive database pruning without compromising security”.

Mining is complicated, and the blockchain keeps growing - but Nano's block-lattice technology makes each account its own blockchain, delivering instantaneous transaction speed and unlimited scalability.
Embroiled In Controversy
Its unique architecture relegated Nano to trading on lesser exchanges and led the cryptocurrency to become embroiled in controversy. Nano accounted for about 85% of Italian-based Bitgrail’s trading volume - until a loss of $170 million worth of Nano was reported in early February, cutting Nano’s price by more than half. By mid-February, it was trading under $7, from a high of over $30 in early January.
Francesco "The Bomber"
Francesco “The Bomber” Firano, who operated the Bitgrail exchange, blamed the security breach on bugs in Nano’s code, which led to a very public feud between Nano developers and the exchange. Users on Reddit threads pointed out a withdrawal bug in Bitgrail's code that allowed users to withdraw the same funds twice while the transaction was in process.

Francesco "The Bomber" tried to blame Nano code for the $170 million loss. Nano developers weren't having it. Image: cointelegraph
Alleged Cover-Up
Another bug allowed users to transfer funds from other user accounts, leaving them with negative balances - Bitgrail's bomber allegedly covered this up by manually entering the “correct” numbers in his database.
Bitgrail became insolvent, but Nano has bounced back, currently trading above $14. Other news that may have help propel the price upward is the new Nano mobile wallet for android.
Binance now accounts for most of the trading volume in Nano, with its BTC and ETH pairs dominating. There are currently no fiat currency pairs available for trading with Nano.

Nano price took a huge hit in early February after the Bitgrail kerfuffle, trading from more than $20 to less then $7. But it has since bounced back and is now trading above $14. Chart: coinmarketcap.com
Ideal Blueprint
Nano was founded in 2015 by Colin LeMayhieu Originally called Raiblocks, it was rebranded as Nano this year. Its block-lattice minerless technology allows for transactions of any size to be processed instantly. Add to this the property of infinite scalability - there is no limit on the number of simultaneous transactions - and you just may have a blueprint for the ideal peer-to-peer cryptocurrency.
Images via Nano, Shutterstock, cointelegraph, coinmarketcap