On the popular show Silicon Valley, Richard Hendricks had an epiphany about the computing power of smart phones and how they could decentralize the Internet along with storage. “What if we use all of these phones to build a massive network, using my compression algorithm. We could build a completely decentralized version of our current Internet.” In this clip he talks about it around the 2:08 minute mark:

Whether fact or fiction, he is onto something. It seems like Sia is making that dream a reality. Sia is part of the virtual currency trend that is growing in part by the astounding growth rate of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The difference being that Sia is not just a cryptocurrency; It is also providing a platform for people to store their data in a much better way than current options such as Amazon S3, Dropbox, and other storage companies.

Over the past few years, there have been data breaches on these popular storage companies, especially since all of the data sits on their network. Additionally, since they have access to your important data, they can also sell that data to other companies to turn a profit.



It’s your data, and you should own it.

On their website Sia explains, “Sia splits apart, encrypts, and distributes your files across a decentralized network. Since you hold the keys, you own your data. No outside company can access or control your files, unlike traditional cloud storage providers.”

So basically your files are cut up into little pieces using meta-data and a “Sia seed”, which then sends all of these pieces to hosts (think AirBnB home renters), who get compensated for the extra room on their hard drives. Compared to paying upwards of $115 to Amazon for storage, you would only pay $2 in Siacoin (which you can mine) for the same amount of storage, roughly 1TB. Also, since the pieces are insignificant, and don’t hold any of your complete data, these hosts don’t have your data at all, just pieces of it, which means your data is 100% safe and completely private.

One of the things that shows where a company is headed, is in their documentation, support, and community. Along with a very busy Public Slack Channel Reddit threads , and Public Trello , it looks like Sia is on their way to reaching some pretty big milestones and important goals for the “New Internet”.

Personally I’ve built a mining rig that makes Siacoin and Ether too, so I’m betting on the future of this game changing technology.

At the time of this writing, 1 Siacoin is worth roughly 634 Sats (Satoshis) on Bittrex.com – or 0.00000634 worth of a Bitcoin or $.02 cents USD per coin. Like Bitcoin or Ether, which both have jumped exponentially in value, only time will tell if Siacoin will have the same jump in value over the coming months and years.





What do you think about the potential for Sia’s decentralized cloud storage? Let me know in the comments!