Dear crypto investors!
Ever heard about Sia? It is a blockchain-based file storage platform, completely decentralized and without using third parties. Cloud storage 3.0 so to say.
Just recently we saw with Parler how quickly it can go to be offline if a company is dependent on a centralized storage system like from AMS (Amazon Web Services)!
Instead Sia is based fully on peer to peer - users who need file storage are connected with other users (called hosts) offering their underutilized hard drive or server capacity. The storage agreements are fixed in the background with smart contracts and the service is paid with Siacoins. The files are blockchain-secured, stored redundantly and encrypted, so no host can see any content. The Sia blockchain allows this marketplace to run without any intermediary.
Quite clever technology, if you ask me! One of the few examples of a blockchain with an immediate use case and already in production (with 89K contracts ongoing (source)! Also there is currently a real NEED for decentralized, censorship-free cloud storage, isn´t it.
So how is the price of Siacoin doing? It is currently ranked #81 on Coingecko. Here is the max.chart, starting 2016 (yes, that old it is!):
Apart from a hype in late 2017/early 2018 (correlated to the Bitcoin spike) Siacoin was mostly languishing - until very recently:
I think it is not pure coincidence that Siacoin went quite up in price (116% in last 7d)! Yes, there is a hardfork underway with an airdrop of new Siacoins, and of course 1:1 replacing existing ones, but this is rather technical (and to found a newly created Sia foundation) and is not the main driver of the new interest in this coin.
Since I don´t believe in technical analysis, I don´t speculate based on historical prices (nothing else is TA, right), but the fundamentals and the community sentiment with democracy losing ground and censorship is more and more happening could well lead to much a higher adoption of decentralized cloud-storage. Only time will tell.
Summary:
+: Sia is a blockchain that is already in production, without reliance on yet-to-come fundamental technical breakthroughs like so many other projects
+: There is definitely a need for decentralized, censorship-free cloud storage
+: Unlike BTC and ETH, Siacoin is still far away from it´s all-time high
+: There is massive room to gain shares in the huge cloud-storage market
-: Siacoin is a utility token that is unlike all those DeFi tokens not subject (yet) of wild speculation and hype
-: Similar with Hive, there is not an effective marketing for Sia in place
-: The governance seems to be a bit fuzzy
So all in all, if you are not committed to DeFi stuff only, this less-known Top 100 altcoin has quite a potential and is worth to be added in a crypto portfolio!
Disclaimer:
No financial advice, do your own research!