Is Siacoin a real competitor to Dropbox?
Siacoin was one of the first altcoins that I was interested in outside of the top coins, and if you don't know what Siacoin is..
Siacoin is basically a crypto coin that is used to pay, and earn money by allowing or storing data on other individual's "free" space of their hard drives.
At first I was very excited at the idea, because who DOESN'T have free space on their hard drive.. I never use half of mine!
But I have recently been presented with an obstacle that crypto coins like Siacoin face.. Right after Siacoin's v.1.0 release on June 28th that was supposed to be huge for them!
I downloaded the UI and it took about 2 days to sync, but it was great!! However I started to notice the price of Siacoin starting to go down, and I started asking other people familiar with Siacoin why this was happening.. There was one answer that DID concern me about Siacoin, and other storage coins like it, which was.. "Why would people want to store other people's potential "illegal" content on their own hard drives."
Now I do a lot of research on blockchain and sidechain technology, but I still don't understand a lot of it. So I don't know if this is something to be concerned about, but for now I will hold my Siacoin that I have.. I would love to hear other thoughts on this risk with these types of altcoins.. and if they really are competitors for Dropbox?
Sia tech just became a hardware company yesterday... Looks like they won't be a competitor anymore!!
Lol oh wow this is like one of my first posts over a year ago! Thanks for the update though I will have to look into it!
Sia tech is definitely the future of cloud storage platforms
at the moment it seems it's still in early stages. the forum seems the best place for info, as the website is a bit short on it. to be used by customers it will need to have features like sharing links to files with colleagues and a synced drag-n-drop folder on the desktop. it could really be popular. and it's a bit like torrents but where you get rewarded for seeding.
This is a post I made the night the new Sia software was released. https://steemit.com/sia/@java1959/sia-coin-cloud-storage-releases-version-1-0-0-rent-your-unused-hard-drive-space
In regards to what content people choose to store, I have no control over that. Just like a company that rents storage for homeowners has no idea what gets put into those rental spaces.
In the case of a service like Sia, the files are chopped up into many pieces and stored on drives all over the world and encrypted. So in this case it would be very difficult for anyone to prove that you are storing anything illegal since all you have are encrypted shards of "some" tiny piece of a file.
I don't think illegal content should be a concern to the service provider since they have no control over the network. For that matter your hard drive could be in use now by some hacker to store some kiddie porn without your knowledge without Sia even being installed on your PC. These types will find a way to break the law with or without Sia.
People that use any medium for storage of illegal content will eventually screw-up somewhere and law enforcement will find out about them if they are doing their job.
Me not using Sia because of fear that it might store illegal content may as well apply to Google Drive, Dropbox, and Amazon servers. Any of those could also be used to store illegal content.
Sia has more positive aspects than negative ones for most people. Just like Bitcoin has more positive than negative aspects. Not using encrypted technology in this day and age to me is giving unnecessary access to our private information to those who wish to profit and exploit our personal data.
And finally, Cloud Storage is one of the most up and coming markets. Sia in my opinion is poised to be a great investment to capture a large slice of this pie, if the devs continue on their current trajectory. It also has the potential for hardware manufacturers to use the network for cloud storage of their services. So when the marketing kicks in at some point, again in MY opinion, this is a good company to invest in and a good network to join.
The software still has a few bugs, but the next revision should take care of most of them. You can download your copy here and make sure to join their Slack channel for the most up to date information:
https://sia.tech/
Awesome reply!
Thanks for the link I wish I would've seen that when I was having issues installing it.. BUT I reached out to them on twitter and they literally responded quickly with every question I had to get me up and running :D
Sia stores files in encrypted form, so there would be no way to know what kind of files someone is storing and whether or not they are illegal.
People store illegal files on Dropbox too, so it's really no different. People use the internet for illegal things all the time, we don't go around banning the entire internet because of that.
As for the Sia price going down, well before that it went up 500% in just one month. Just a temporary retracement. What goes up must come down.
Looking forward to it.. this makes a lot of sense. I'm excited to see how high they can fly ;D
Storj will be so much better then Sia.
https://storj.io
I actually have both on my POLO account, but Siacoin seemed like the better one of the 2.. why do you think?
Storj software seems easier for newbies to setup then Sia.
Well I guess there is room for both ;D
yeah, for sure. competition is good for new features. they should both be a great alternative to the company services.
In a country like the US I would not touch this software, although I was told the files are encrypted and divided, I am pretty sure some pervert will use it to store his kiddie porn, even if I am protected by encryption, I would not want this kind of filth on my hardrive. Freedom and privacy does not mean supporting illegal content. If someone ends up getting prosecuted for something like this and his defense is " the file was encrypted, did not know what it contained " I will have a hard time accepting such a defense, because he stood to gain from storing it. I would like to hear from a criminal lawyer about supplying this service, maybe SIA devs should have one submit an argument in their favor to say the least.
Sure, would be nice to have statement from the devs about this kind of issue. I don't see this as a huge issue personally, but I can see where you're coming from.
Webhosts, for example, are not responsible for the content that their users put on there. Internet forums like reddit, etc. neither. They should do their due diligence in supporting prosecution (logging IPs, etc.), take down offending content when it's discovered, but that's where it ends. These rules can be applied to ISPs, image hosts, and so on. Dealing with 3rd party content is nothing new.
Sia is the same thing, it's just a medium, a protocol, nothing more. Not to mention that there is no one entity that you could "sue", you would have to sue the entire userbase, or the developers.
In the case of a web service, the offending person is storing the illegal content on the server and violating the TOS he signed, which protects the web service. Your personal computer does not offer the offender a TOS to sign. Even if you use a free wifi in a coffee shop these days you have to sign an agreement not to use it for illegal purposes. Like I said I would like to see a criminal lawyer look into this and make a statement whether you can or can't be prosecuted for this.
Yes, this is true.
I don't think SIA as a competitor of dropbox at all. Maybe some whale has spread the word and people are buying it.
See and this was the downside argument that concerns me about cryptos like this.. :/
don't worry about it. the criminals will be around no matter what. it's worth having VPNs and TOR for privacy even though people hosting nodes would inevitably be routing illegal stuff. it's for everybody to have their privacy.
I have been on Sia since the 0.51 beta. I bought in much earlier, Im not saying that to make you feel bad, but I think the reality was that the price stayed low for a long time. As soon as the release date came close then it got pumped and overpriced a little bit, to the extent that by shortly before the 28th, there really wasnt enough support for it to go anywhere but down. However I think this project is massive impact wise and holding your SC for a while will give you a return.
Re the legal issues, I too have called for a statement or 'comfort letter' from Nebulous. However my belief is you dont store a whole file, the files are broken into parts and then encrypted. So you arent storing a porn image for example, you are storing part of a data set that on its own cannot be reconstructed. Please have someone technical confirm, but thats my understanding.
This is great info! And nice you were an early bird.. I've only had it since like April
Buy early and hold on for dear life, thats my 'trading strategy' ha ha. I think Sia has plenty of upside left, but for renting price stability it needs to grow slowly.
What do you is a sustainable rental price?
I don't really think illegal content will be an issue, at least for the file hosters. The files are split up and heavily encrypted. If in the distant future, somebody would decrypt alle the data you are storing, they probably wouldn't even have a visible portion of an illegaly stored image, without aquireing all the other parts first.
There will always be people who abuse such systems, but should it prevent us from a more comfortable, independent, exciting future?
I don't think so.
Good point.. if not Sia then someone else will do it.
I would hate to go to jail over stuff stored on my computer.
Thanks for being the first reply.. but hopefully some of this restores your faith in storage cryptos :D
Most likely yes. Sia has a lot of potential to grow even more in value. Sia has today a Marketcap of 10 Million, Dropbox is valued at 10 Billion. Thats 100x potential on your investment.
Very good point.. So I hope these are risks Siacoin has taken into consideration to prevent.
Excusez moi. 1000x
That would be crazy!
MMNXT jumped up 10x today and that was exciting for me :D
I know this post is old but i just came across it while doing some research on siacoin .... i didnt realize dropbox is valued at 10bln damn and honestly i feel dropbox is great it was the first cloud storage i used like a decade ago .... but theres still aways to go !
What if dropbox develops an api for users so they can upload their stuff encrypted?
Seriously tho how could they do both coming from a non-crypto platform?
That would be like Visa coming out with like a "Shift" card right..