Who remembers the rise of Napster? Bittorrent? How disruptive those file sharing platforms were? Millions of people, hosting files for others to download, for little more than social credit.

What might happen if there was suddenly a profit motive for sharing files peer to peer?

Crypto dApp Upfiring creates an ecosystem where individual file sharers are incentivized to host files for others to download, via an appreciating token. Downloaders pay small amounts on a pay-as-you-go basis for the files they want. The whole ecosystem is decentralized, so in theory it would be quite difficult to manage copyright violations or track down users. You can’t take down the site — because it’s not a site, its a (soon to be open-source) self-contained ecosystem, running encrypted across potentially millions of machines.

It’s easy to imagine a new boom for P2P file sharing on the back of a new distributed profit motive and a seemingly safe, untraceable space. This could become a real nightmare for content rightsholders, and I worry about the potential consequences of this in the same way I worry about the implications of decentralized Youtube-like platforms (such as Flixxo and Viuly) given recent revelations around how people are using and abusing Youtube.

The market cap (number of coins x price) for Upfiring is 3.5 million dollars at the moment, which is quite low in this universe. It’s up 200% today because it was just added to small-coin exchange Cryptopia, which is why I noticed it.

I suspect some version of this will succeed, and soon.

Disclaimer and Disclosure: This is not investment advice and I am not a financial advisor; my opinions are my own and shared for purposes of discussion. Cryptocurrency is extremely volatile, trade at your own risk.