Cross post from
http://blog.storj.ioTo put it bluntly, Storjcoins (SJ0) will have value because they will be backed by a commodity—storage and bandwidth. Storage is a resource that literally every single computer user in the world requires whether it be cloud based or local storage. Bandwidth, while not used by everyone (let’s face it though, if you don’t have network access, you’re missing the best part of the computing world), is also a necessity for the majority of computer users. Right now we rely on manufacturers and corporations to provide these resources to us and, though we can set a market price through our demand, there are massive overhead costs we’ll always pay extra for in a centralized model (employees, data centers, shipping physical drives, etc).
Storj’s applications will dramatically reduce these costs by allowing Bob, who has an extra 100GB of storage available and who only uses an average 20% of his available bandwidth, to sell these previously wasted resources to Alice, who needs 50GB to temporarily hold her raw images while she edits them. Bob doesn’t have a massive data center that requires constant, industrial-scale cooling, and he doesn’t have employees he has to pay to manage that 100GB to make sure that it’s functional. He just wants a few extra Storjcoins to offset the cost of his internet service or to exchange for a frappuccino. He also hates to see anything go to waste. Alice, on the other hand, doesn’t want to shell out $100 for a new hard drive when she knows she won’t need that storage in a month’s time, and she doesn’t want to leave a copy of her photographs on an insecure iCloud server that will charge her $100 for a hosting plan she may not even fully utilize. The solution is for Bob to sell Alice the space for a fraction of the cost. If Bob’s hard drive happens to fail, the Storj network will automatically repair itself to maintain 3-times redundancy of Alice’s data, and Bob will no longer receive Storjcoins until his node comes back online.
Both parties benefit tremendously from this system as Bob is making an entirely passive income, and Alice can gain access to extra storage space with only a few clicks and at minimal cost. Also, Alice doesn’t have to worry about prying eyes viewing her data as it’s shredded across the network to hundreds of different users and fully encrypted so that no one can access it except for her.
Let’s get back to the value of Storjcoin. Referring to the above example, it’s clear to see the benefits a decentralized cloud storage solution offers to both storage consumers and providers over traditional, centralized methods. People are already paying (too much) for insecure cloud storage with high overhead costs right now. Storjcoin will become the new unit of account for disk space and the bandwidth required to access it because this system is clearly superior to the one in place. Instead of paying $2/GB to Apple for an inferior product, you can pay a fraction of that to someone just like you.
