With just under 4% of Auroracoin "airdrop" complete, price rebounds

When the Auroracoin “airdrop” began yesterday, things did not look promising for the Icelandic alt-coin. A crush of users trying to claim their coins effectively caused DDoS attack on the site, and other technical glitches resulted in the site falling to the bottom of alt-coin value tracking site Coinmarketcap, landing just above CorgiCoin. And to top it all off, many of those who did manage to claim their 38.1 AUR instantly tried to cash out, causing the price to plummet from around $11 to $5.

With around 4% of the airdrop complete, however, the picture today looks a little more stable. Mid-sized Canadian exchange Vault of Satoshi officially added Auroracoin support this morning, giving the Icelandic cryptocurrency as much market credibility as the meme-based Dogecoin. Prices on exchanges like Cryptsy have recovered significantly, putting Auroracoin in the $7 range.

While that is a far cry from the $92 spike seen in early March when speculation began, it still means that every citizen of Iceland can currently claim $266 in alt-coins simply by logging into a website. By comparison, Iceland’s official currency, the krona (ISK), is trading at a feeble 113.85 ISK to the U.S. dollar. Indirectly, Auroracoin could be seen as giving nearly 30,000 ISK to every citizen of Iceland.

Should Auroracoin see real support among Iceland’s citizens and merchants, it could mark the first time a cryptocurrency has actually challenged a national one for viability.