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>Why not just earn dollars? Theory of pricing arbitrage already takes into account coordination irrespective of the currency. What is the distinct advantage of

>Why not just earn dollars? Theory of pricing arbitrage already takes into account coordination irrespective of the currency. What is the distinct advantage of earning Filecoin tokens over dollars? A decentralized trustless blockchain can't interact with dollars.

AndrewKemendo 9y ago
Ok, this is an interesting argument. Basically here is how I interpret the logic: 1. Filecoin wants to take advantage of unused storage by distributing data to it 2. To incentive the storage holder, they want to pay them 3. They want to ledger payment to storage holders through blockchain 4. Since you obviously can't do blockchain with dollars, they needed(?) to create their own digital currency What I am getting hung up on, and is the crux of your argument, is why they want to pay through a decentralized trustless blockchain. Why for the average storage holder, would blockchain based digital currency be better than just getting a few cents per MB used. If you said, they are anarchists (the good kind) that want to democratize currency, and are doing it on the back of a useful case, ok that's a great argument and one we can make. However that can't have been the pitch for the 200M they raised.
- beambot 9y ago
  Existing financial infrastructure isn't very conducive to micropayments...? So rather than trying to hack a solution using existing infrastucture, blockchains (filecoin) provide a tailor-made solution to this problem.
  - rficcaglia 9y ago
    Apple (PayPal) would disagree.
    - beambot 9y ago
      The merchant on a sub-$1.00 transaction would disagree -- after Apple & PayPal extracted their fees (esp. if transaction used CreditCard).
      - rficcaglia 9y ago
        they batch their transactions. not hypothetical... i ran merchant gateways for many of them
    - rrecuero 9y ago
      Actually, check what the former COO of Paypal said here about blockchains https://cointelegraph.com/news/paypal-ex-coo-bitcoin-crypto-fulfilling-our-original-vision https://cointelegraph.com/news/paypal-ex-coo-bitcoin-crypto-...
      - rficcaglia 9y ago
        as i read it, his point is about centralization, not micro payments blockchain - decentralized (.)payments paypal, many others - centralized (.)payments nothing disruptively new here re: payment part, just the decntralized part
- AgentME 9y ago
  It would be relatively straight-forward (technically anyway) to make a regular business around matching up consumers willing to pay and others with hard drive space willing to host for money. But the benefit of a trustless decentralized system is that it can run without depending on a company. Once it's going, you as a user don't have to worry about the company going out of business, making changes to try to squeeze profit out, or getting bought out by a company who doesn't care about keeping the system running. You don't have to worry that it will get censored: you don't have to worry the company may decide they don't like content with nudity being hosted through it, that the company decides content has to all be reviewed for copyright infringement, that the company gets pressured legally to not do business with your country, that the company closes its APIs and cuts off your business built around helping others use the system in specific ways, etc. A system completely fragile to the whims of a single company can never become a standard like HTTP. (Though obviously right now the company is pretty central as the system doesn't exist yet. They're necessary to get it developed, make the tooling, do marketing to get the initial users in, and throw man-hours at making sure the system is good. Maybe they'll code in a small fee that goes toward themselves and people will accept it. Once the system is working in a fully decentralized way, people could choose to move to a fork that disables the fee if people thought the company was taking too much or was pushing for bad changes.)
  - posterboy 9y ago
    > you as a user don't have to worry about ... the company gets pressured legally to not do business with your country Still the country can pressure you not to do business with the network, e.g. if you happen to live there, e.g. because they don't like your way of thinking.
lmm 9y ago
Fair enough, but in that case wouldn't it be more convenient to earn Ethereum proper?

AndrewKemendo 9y ago

Ok, this is an interesting argument. Basically here is how I interpret the logic: 1. Filecoin wants to take advantage of unused storage by distributing data to it 2. To incentive the storage holder, they want to pay them 3. They want to ledger payment to storage holders through blockchain 4. Since you obviously can't do blockchain with dollars, they needed(?) to create their own digital currency What I am getting hung up on, and is the crux of your argument, is why they want to pay through a decentralized trustless blockchain. Why for the average storage holder, would blockchain based digital currency be better than just getting a few cents per MB used. If you said, they are anarchists (the good kind) that want to democratize currency, and are doing it on the back of a useful case, ok that's a great argument and one we can make. However that can't have been the pitch for the 200M they raised.

beambot 9y ago
Existing financial infrastructure isn't very conducive to micropayments...? So rather than trying to hack a solution using existing infrastucture, blockchains (filecoin) provide a tailor-made solution to this problem.
- rficcaglia 9y ago
  Apple (PayPal) would disagree.
  - beambot 9y ago
    The merchant on a sub-$1.00 transaction would disagree -- after Apple & PayPal extracted their fees (esp. if transaction used CreditCard).
    - rficcaglia 9y ago
      they batch their transactions. not hypothetical... i ran merchant gateways for many of them
  - rrecuero 9y ago
    Actually, check what the former COO of Paypal said here about blockchains https://cointelegraph.com/news/paypal-ex-coo-bitcoin-crypto-fulfilling-our-original-vision https://cointelegraph.com/news/paypal-ex-coo-bitcoin-crypto-...
    - rficcaglia 9y ago
      as i read it, his point is about centralization, not micro payments blockchain - decentralized (.)payments paypal, many others - centralized (.)payments nothing disruptively new here re: payment part, just the decntralized part
AgentME 9y ago
It would be relatively straight-forward (technically anyway) to make a regular business around matching up consumers willing to pay and others with hard drive space willing to host for money. But the benefit of a trustless decentralized system is that it can run without depending on a company. Once it's going, you as a user don't have to worry about the company going out of business, making changes to try to squeeze profit out, or getting bought out by a company who doesn't care about keeping the system running. You don't have to worry that it will get censored: you don't have to worry the company may decide they don't like content with nudity being hosted through it, that the company decides content has to all be reviewed for copyright infringement, that the company gets pressured legally to not do business with your country, that the company closes its APIs and cuts off your business built around helping others use the system in specific ways, etc. A system completely fragile to the whims of a single company can never become a standard like HTTP. (Though obviously right now the company is pretty central as the system doesn't exist yet. They're necessary to get it developed, make the tooling, do marketing to get the initial users in, and throw man-hours at making sure the system is good. Maybe they'll code in a small fee that goes toward themselves and people will accept it. Once the system is working in a fully decentralized way, people could choose to move to a fork that disables the fee if people thought the company was taking too much or was pushing for bad changes.)
- posterboy 9y ago
  > you as a user don't have to worry about ... the company gets pressured legally to not do business with your country Still the country can pressure you not to do business with the network, e.g. if you happen to live there, e.g. because they don't like your way of thinking.

lmm 9y ago

Fair enough, but in that case wouldn't it be more convenient to earn Ethereum proper?