Stratis (STRAT): With New All-Time Highs, Where's It Go From Here?

After hitting an initial all-time high just under $12 in the summer of 2017, Stratis (STRAT) faded a bit into the background as a bear market in the early autumn made investors sour with many projects.

But people are starting to pay attention again. And, of course, that surely has something to do with the price, as Stratis is currently hovering over $16 at press time -- four whole dollars above the cryptocurrency's previous all-time high.

We'll walk you through the project so you can see what it's all about. Then, you can make up your own mind regarding whether you think you're buying at the top or if STRAT has a lot higher to go from here.

What is Stratis

Arising from an NBitcoin hard fork, Stratis is notable for relying on the coding language C#. Billed as a BaaS ("Blockchain as a service") platform, this blockchain project gives firms and programmers a "sandbox" through which they can experiment in creating their own blockchain-based applications ("dapps").

Naturally, then, these applications will be created through C#, which could catalyze adoption, as C# is ubiquitous across multiple industries. That means mainstream developers can hop right into Stratis and start building around.

The great advantage of this dyanmic? Stratis will appeal to companies and programmers that don't want to undertake the logistics necessary to create their own native blockchain to experiment with.

Teaming up with Microsoft

A lot of buzz happened in 2017 over partnerships, from Ripple's collaborations with Asian banks to Stellar Lumens' partnership with IBM.

But it really doesn't get much sexier than being able to download Stratis blockchain modules from the Microsoft Azure marketplace platform. That's a game-changer, no matter how you slice it.

This legitimizing opportunity bodes well for the future of the Stratis sandbox and for the adoption of blockchains in general. And it speaks volumes on how many regulatory / legal boxes Stratis had to check in order to meet Microsoft's standards. It's a major stamp of approval.

Strong community

Stratis has an organized, organic community that's committed to the project. And that's never a bad thing, right? The official STRAT Telegram channel has members into the five digits, which is almost unheard of for most cryptocurrency projects.

The project's team leverages this impressive network to communicate early and often with the community. They get high marks in this regard.

Competitors to STRAT

In being a BaaS, Stratis comes up against some pretty impressive competitors. Newer ones include "third gen" crypto platforms like:

• Cardano
• EOS

But, of course, you could also consider projects like Lisk and Ethereum as competitors to Stratis. This is just something to keep in mind when investing. Do you think one of these competitors will outgain Stratis over the short-, mid-, and long-term?

That's probably how you want to approach investing in STRAT, conservatively. Will its price go up from here? Surely. But there's also a strong change that, at percentage-wise, more dominant projects like Ethereum or EOS will vastly outgain STRAT.

As always, though, do your own research and come to your own conclusions.