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Honestly I can't wait until that filecoin ICO thing becomes an epic disaster. Like most of the ICOs I've seen, it is flawed on basic principle and lacks a clear

Honestly I can't wait until that filecoin ICO thing becomes an epic disaster. Like most of the ICOs I've seen, it is flawed on basic principle and lacks a clear business model, and is ill-positioned for the future. Just because you can make a big splash and raise a bunch of money does not mean you have created anything of value for the world. ICOs seem to be a new way to raise from unsuspecting investors aka a way of separating people who have too much money and not enough common sense from their money. The fact that it is utilizing a blockchain technology has nothing to do with the actual mechanisms at work here, focusing on the use of blockchain in negotiating ownership and value is actually harmful here. The real technology isn't glamorous at all and has been in operation ever since Charles Ponzi "innovated" the concept in the 1920's.

api 9y ago
That's one of the least questionable ICOs. Most of them are much more vaporous.
- TaylorGood 9y ago
  Bancor was also "too big to fail" but has primarily stayed below it's $3.50/token ICO price. Currently $2.19 People paid up to $5/token to participate in Filecoin. Steep starting point to actually increase market cap when there exists two hundred million Filecoin tokens.
  - AgentME 9y ago
    What difference does it make to the Filecoin users and network whether or not their tokens are overpriced right now? Some speculators might burn themselves on it, but speculation isn't the point of Filecoin, and its current price at any time won't affect whether or not the system is usable.
- hudon 9y ago
  It's the most questionable to me. The ones that are "vaporous", it's obvious to everyone so not many questions need to be asked. But about FileCoin... How can they compete with economies of scale? And how will they prevent data centers of disks being created (centralizing forces)? If they manage to stay decentralized, how will the very public team defend all the illegal and/or illegitimate content that gets hosted on there? How will they defend against the FBI ordering them to shut it down? Why would people pay more for a slower or less reliable storage solution? It's very questionable that they were able to make bold claims and get millions of dollars from people who do not have a clue that FileCoin and "distributed storage on the blockchain" is DOA unless you want to store your 3d printed gun designs in the cloud. But in that case, the team building it should've been anonymous...
  - anonymous5133 9y ago
    I don't use filecoin's network but I do use a competitor that is basically doing the same thing, storj. Also when I say I use the network I am talking about actually uploading and paying for data storage. To answer some of your questions, storj's network consists primarily of people who are renting out their unused hard drive space. Economic of scale doesn't really matter because the people renting the space are just trying to make a few extra bucks per month and they have already paid for the hardware. They have no way of preventing centralization of disks but the whole network is decentralized. The file you upload is being hosted on thousands of different disks. Like all companies, they will probably comply with FBI/DMCA orders to the best of their abilities. The issue for them and the FBI is that all data uploaded to the network is encrypted at the point of upload so it is impossible for the FBI/DMCA to find it. These decentralized file hosting systems don't allow public sharing of the download links/keys (yet at least). Also the reason I pay for storj over say google is because storj is cheaper and has higher redundancy requirements. I have files that I absolutely can never risk losing and storj allows you to pay for the service anonymously while other services do not. In the world of data breaches everywhere, the less information the company has about you, the better.
    - hudon 9y ago
      > Economic of scale doesn't really matter because the people renting the space are just trying to make a few extra bucks per month and they have already paid for the hardware. OK so hypothetically, if this decentralized storage thingie made the sellers a profit, there would be at least 1 rational and greedy seller who would take that profit, invest it in more disks, and save on costs compared to other folks, right? In other words, if I have 100,000 computers in a data center with central cooling system, the total electricity costs will be less than the total cooling costs of 100,000 individuals each with their own 1 computer. Furthermore, the total bandwidth costs of the 100,000-computer data center will be cheaper than the total bandwidth costs of 100,000 individuals with 1 computer each (economies of scale). How can you say that "there is no way to prevent centralization" and then follow up with "the whole network is decentralized", when the cost structure obviously makes more sense for this distributed storage to all be controlled by a handful of resourceful entities? Then those 4-5 data centers just become an encrypted Dropbox, right? So like, SpiderOak?
AgentME 9y ago
>Like most of the ICOs I've seen, it is flawed on basic principle and lacks a clear business model, and is ill-positioned for the future. I thought the idea was extremely straightforward compared to almost every other ICO: you pay tokens to have files hosted for you, and you get paid tokens to host other people's files. Or are you saying that you think they won't manage to implement that?

api 9y ago

That's one of the least questionable ICOs. Most of them are much more vaporous.

TaylorGood 9y ago
Bancor was also "too big to fail" but has primarily stayed below it's $3.50/token ICO price. Currently $2.19 People paid up to $5/token to participate in Filecoin. Steep starting point to actually increase market cap when there exists two hundred million Filecoin tokens.
- AgentME 9y ago
  What difference does it make to the Filecoin users and network whether or not their tokens are overpriced right now? Some speculators might burn themselves on it, but speculation isn't the point of Filecoin, and its current price at any time won't affect whether or not the system is usable.
hudon 9y ago
It's the most questionable to me. The ones that are "vaporous", it's obvious to everyone so not many questions need to be asked. But about FileCoin... How can they compete with economies of scale? And how will they prevent data centers of disks being created (centralizing forces)? If they manage to stay decentralized, how will the very public team defend all the illegal and/or illegitimate content that gets hosted on there? How will they defend against the FBI ordering them to shut it down? Why would people pay more for a slower or less reliable storage solution? It's very questionable that they were able to make bold claims and get millions of dollars from people who do not have a clue that FileCoin and "distributed storage on the blockchain" is DOA unless you want to store your 3d printed gun designs in the cloud. But in that case, the team building it should've been anonymous...
- anonymous5133 9y ago
  I don't use filecoin's network but I do use a competitor that is basically doing the same thing, storj. Also when I say I use the network I am talking about actually uploading and paying for data storage. To answer some of your questions, storj's network consists primarily of people who are renting out their unused hard drive space. Economic of scale doesn't really matter because the people renting the space are just trying to make a few extra bucks per month and they have already paid for the hardware. They have no way of preventing centralization of disks but the whole network is decentralized. The file you upload is being hosted on thousands of different disks. Like all companies, they will probably comply with FBI/DMCA orders to the best of their abilities. The issue for them and the FBI is that all data uploaded to the network is encrypted at the point of upload so it is impossible for the FBI/DMCA to find it. These decentralized file hosting systems don't allow public sharing of the download links/keys (yet at least). Also the reason I pay for storj over say google is because storj is cheaper and has higher redundancy requirements. I have files that I absolutely can never risk losing and storj allows you to pay for the service anonymously while other services do not. In the world of data breaches everywhere, the less information the company has about you, the better.
  - hudon 9y ago
    > Economic of scale doesn't really matter because the people renting the space are just trying to make a few extra bucks per month and they have already paid for the hardware. OK so hypothetically, if this decentralized storage thingie made the sellers a profit, there would be at least 1 rational and greedy seller who would take that profit, invest it in more disks, and save on costs compared to other folks, right? In other words, if I have 100,000 computers in a data center with central cooling system, the total electricity costs will be less than the total cooling costs of 100,000 individuals each with their own 1 computer. Furthermore, the total bandwidth costs of the 100,000-computer data center will be cheaper than the total bandwidth costs of 100,000 individuals with 1 computer each (economies of scale). How can you say that "there is no way to prevent centralization" and then follow up with "the whole network is decentralized", when the cost structure obviously makes more sense for this distributed storage to all be controlled by a handful of resourceful entities? Then those 4-5 data centers just become an encrypted Dropbox, right? So like, SpiderOak?

AgentME 9y ago

>Like most of the ICOs I've seen, it is flawed on basic principle and lacks a clear business model, and is ill-positioned for the future. I thought the idea was extremely straightforward compared to almost every other ICO: you pay tokens to have files hosted for you, and you get paid tokens to host other people's files. Or are you saying that you think they won't manage to implement that?