8 questions answered about a coin which might be a good buy today: Siacoin.
1. What is the current price of one token?
$0.0134 for 1 Siacoin
2. What is the total amount of tokens?
Siacoin (SC) has built-in inflation and so differs from other crypto's like Bitcoin. Inflation basically means that there is no fixed supply cap and new coins can be generated, and so brought in circulation, by mining or staking.
3. Can more Siacoin be mined?
Yes, Siacoin rewards an X amount after each block.
- Initial block reward: 300,000 Siacoin
- Block 2 reward: 299,999 Siacoin
- ... one Siacoin deducted from the reward each block
- Block 269,999 reward: 30,001
- Block 270,000 reward: 30,000
- Every block after Block 270,000 will have a reward of: 30,000 Siacoin.
4. What is the current marketcap?
$367,095,671 (Number 17).
5. What is Sia(coin)?
Sia conceived at MIT in 2013 to see if it was possible to take advantage of all the unused storage space in the world and combine it into a worldwide free market for data. Today the major players in storage space, like Amazon AWS, Dropbox and Google drive, are still hosting everything on central servers like they where in 2013. Sia aims to change this by setting up a decentralized cloud storage program on which users can mine, contribute, rent storage and earn for renting out unused storage space. It makes use of blockchain technology to enable distributed networks to reach consensus. Sia's smart contracts, which are cryptographically secured, will transfer and encrypt data making it impossible for anyone else to retrieve that data or interfere in any way. The cryptocurrency used by Sia to enable decentralized payment via file contract is Siacoin.
Sia's business model is not to create their own data storage company like Microsoft, Google and Amazon. It is rather aiming to be the backbone storage layer of the internet by allowing anyone to host their own decentralized cloud. Sia's code is open sourced and so anyone can built on it. However, indirectly Sia will be competing with the 3 storage giants as on paper Sia is a much better alternative than any centralized data storage company that is out there at the moment. Each company on the Sia platform will charge their users independently in Siacoin as this is the only currency used on the platform. Sia itself will not be the one accepting payments.
Do note that there is a second crypto called Siafund. Anyone holding a siafund is entitled to his share of the '3.9% of all successfull payouts storage contract payouts'. All 10,000 Siafunds are in circulation of which Nebulous Inc. holds around 8,750. The other 1,350 were sold in a crowdfund to finance the development of Sia at it's early stages.
6. How can I purchase and store Siacoin?
On their main website you can download the wallet software after which you can purchase Siacoin and buy data storage space. You will also be able to rent out and unused hard drive space and earn Siacoin from it.
7. Who is in the team behind Siacoin?
The founders of Sia are David Vorick and Luke Champine of Nebulous Inc. which is a VC-funded startup in Boston. There is not a lot of information to be found about these two individuals. David Vorick seems to occasionally be the one to show his face in the media. The VC that funded Nebulous Inc. also seems to be legitimate so there is no need to worry about a scam.
We believe data should be free. We aim to liberate the unused bits of the world and construct the largest storage superserver on the planet.
8. Buy it or not?
Spreading data over a whole network of devices that have unused storage space is a better solution then the way data is stored nowadays as it's faster, cheaper and safer.
- Cheaper as each file is split into multiple peaces and spread over the network of unused (rented out) hard drive space.
- Safer as each piece is encrypted and even if they get their hold on it and encrypt it it is useless for anyone without the other pieces.
- By using many hosts to store a single file means that downloads can be massively parallel and so much faster than before. As it is a decentralized network users can also be given the option to choose hosts in their area and that are the fastest instead of the other side of the world.
As all the data is open sourced technically Microsoft, Google and Amazon could all expand or move their data storage to the Sia platform. If Sia can get some big names to use their platform to built an app or sell storage space on the coin can explode. As using Sia means you need to own Siacoin, it's price will go up as the usage of Sia grows (considering it grows faster than the inflation). Therefore when people massively start storing data for billions of dollars on Sia they will also need billions of dollars in Siacoin. However, at the moment there is competition out there who have given their own twist to the concept of decentralized data storage like Storj, Filecoin (IPFS) and Maidsafe. At the moment I don't know enough about these companies to say which one is best or if they are a threat to Sia but I can dedicate the following 'Up and Coming' series to analyzing them and answer those questions.
Thank you for reading, please share your thought and don't hesitate to leave a comment, follow me or upvote my posts!
Sources
http://sia.tech/
htttp://coincap.io