from @themerkle https://themerkle.com/bittorrent-creator-will-switch-to-full-time-cryptocurrency-development-soon/
"BitTorrent Creator Will Switch to Full-time Cryptocurrency Development Soon" JP Buntinx April 26, 2017 Crypto, News
"It is not entirely surprising to learn Bram Cohen – the inventor of BitTorrent – wants to create his own cryptocurrency. Even though there are already several thousand currencies in existence, Cohen feels his creation will bring something new to the table. In fact, he will devote all of his time to developing and maintaining this new currency, which has not received an official name just yet.
THE BITTORRENT OF CRYPTOCURRENCIES?
There are quite a few reasons as to why people are attracted to the concept of creating a cryptocurrency. This is especially true for people who are actively involved in distributed and peer-to-peer technology as well. Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent protocol, has shown a keen interest in cryptocurrency for several years now. That is not surprising, considering both types of technology focus on the same aspects.
Cohen feels now is the time to create a completely new cryptocurrency, although not too many details are known about it yet. He told Torrent Freak:
“My proposal isn’t really to do something to BitCoin. It really has to be a new currency. I’m going to make a cryptocurrency company. That’s my plan.”
Given his focus on peer-to-peer connectivity and decentralized technology, Cohen is in a prime position to experiment with developing a new cryptocurrency. Moreover, it is doubtful he would be in it for the money, as he simply wants to bring amazing new technologies and concepts to the masses.
Over the past few years, Cohen has taken the time to share his opinions regarding the state of cryptocurrency. In fact, he recently presented a new paper on proofs of space and proofs of time, which was well received by the attendees of the Stanford blockchain conference. This goes to show Cohen knows what he is talking about and how he feels cryptocurrency can be further improved moving forward.
It is worth mentioning Cohen will not be looking to make any contributions to bitcoin or any of the existing cryptocurrencies whatsoever. Instead, he will create a “cryptocurrency company”, which could indicate he is not necessarily looking to cater towards most cryptocurrency enthusiasts. It appears this new currency will try to focus on storage-based solution and solving the 51% attack vector that looms overhead for bitcoin and other currencies.
It has to be said, cryptocurrencies focusing on storage are nothing new under the sun right now. Various similar projects exist already, although Cohen will certainly look to do much better compared to the other developers. It remains unclear how he aims to do so, though, as most of these other projects have a large team of developers and contributors helping out. Cohen will need to establish a team of developers to contribute to his upcoming project.
Further information regarding this project is expected to be revealed in the coming months. Cohen will first focus on wrapping up some other work related to the BitTorrent protocol before dedicating himself full-time to this new cryptocurrency venture. It will be interesting to see what we can expect in the future, that much is certain."
(I know utorrent got caught installing bitcoin mining software lol but imagine the power you could harness if you allowed users to opt in and didnt do it by shadey sketchy deceptive means)
This could be huge!!! Imagine a p2p file sharing system that uses the blockchain like siacoin, storJ or Gollum to store the data across many different machines so that oone can get in trouble for having a full copyrighted file! We allow the hosting of copyrighted files across multiple machines but where you can access the file using a system like Bittorrent but where bitcoin or crypto currency is given to users for hosting files and users maybe pay in a concurrency for ULTRA fast torrent downloading OR users can PAY for "Obfuscation" or the ability to become totally anonymous, saving you money by keeping you from getting caught an getting fines from your ISP etc....or users can pay for ultra fast speeds or anonymity AND we mine on everyones computer who uses the program! Also allow bit torrent users to tip big time Seeders etc...like steemit but with bit torrent! a blockchain file sharing system than MINES COINS on Leechers computer to basically pay for their downloads with cpu/gpu power !!
I have been LOOKING at that Utorrent logo thinking about how successful bittorrent has come since its start in 2002 and look how now BitTorrent is 20 percent of global upload speeds! And I have been THINKING about how bittorrent needs some sort of blockchain integration...maybe to pay with bitcoin or altcoin to access higher torrent speeds for fast download!? I looked this up and found JoyStream: a BitTorrent Client that Incentivizes Seeders with Bitcoin
JoyStream works by rewarding JoyStream’s seeders with micropayments using multiway payment channels in bitcoin.Users who choose to download content in the JoyStream client are known as leechers, and are required to pay the seeders directly in bitcoin, in exchange for downloading files or streaming large HD audio or video files.The unique feature and payment system of JoyStream provides the seeders with an opportunity to charge higher prices for rare and highly demanded content, thus providing a more competitive market and a more equitable system for seeders
I was also thinking about how even the word "Bit" prefix in BitTorrent is associated with Bit Coin and the whole idea of having a p2p decentralize system is just so cool and powerful! Even Uber for decentralized Taxis, Youtube for decentralize TV production, Kickstarter and GoFunMe/IndiGoGo or Patreon for decentralized Crowdfunding, things that become decentralized become popular and generate ALOT of value which with bittorrent was hard to really count in dollars...people would count how many billions bittorrent file sharing has cost copyright holders and music and movie and software industry...
but then when Bitcoin came out we finally had a way to put a real dollar amount(or now a Bitcoin amount ;) on our beautiful awesome p2p decentralized system! Over 20 BILLION dollars worth of bitcoin out there! And about 28 billion in total crypto currency thats Bitcoin plus ethereum plus ripple plus litecoin all of em combined is 28 billion US dollars of LIQUID transferable crypto cash that has just been created (not out of nowehere, many millions worth of computing hardware and cpu/gpus were bought and manufacture an run with high electricity costs to "generate" or "mine" these bitcoins and other altcoins...) but remember, bitcoin is from 2009 so we are only 8 years into this amazing adventure and theres PLENTY of time to still make your own small fortunes off buying cheap coins which will be worth alot more in the near future like the bitcoin gold rush many of us missed out on.....
Well I am here to tell you that gold rush was just the beginning an by buying up all the cheap 3 cent ripple, an buying all the other litecoins ethereum classic, maidsafe coins, siacoins, nxtcoins etc all those altcoins are all cheap an gonna go up maybe not a million percent like bitcoin but we can still make alot of money!
An here is an article from bitcoin.com about Zeronet a Hungarian startup that wants to merge bitcoin and bittorrent to replace Tor!
( @Zeronet Wants to Replace the Dark Web by Marrying Bitcoin to Bittorrent Over Tor - Bitcoin News https://news.bitcoin.com/zeronet-replacing-dark-web-marrying-bitcoin-bittorrent-tor/ )
A little over two years ago a Hungarian named Tamas Kocsis put together a completely decentralized internet alternative called Zeronet. Using the underlying cryptography behind Bitcoin, every Zeronet ‘website’ address is a Bitcoin public key, so any visitors can send bitcoin directly to the site owner, even if they have not set up a wallet yet. Bitcoin.com talked to Kocsis about his project and its current status.
Also Read: A Decentralized Money Needs A Distributed Web for Maximum Freedom
The Birth of A Private, Decentralized Internet
When the project launched in January 2015, the one-man effort had limited functionality Zeronet Replacing Dark Web by Marrying Bitcoin to Bittorrent Over Torwith a blogging system and a chatroom board. However, it could soon use the Tor network for privacy, and the ability was there from the start for anyone to make other kinds of websites inside Zeronet, including social sites with dynamically-updating content.
Today, many useful Zeronet websites called ‘zites’ have been designed to mimic popular websites and apps like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and Popcorntime. The utility of the whole system is now far higher with additions like zite search, a private email client, a file manager, and the Zeronet-wide newsfeed that keeps track of your conversations across all zites.
Using Bitcoin to Solve Big Problems
The way Zeronet hosts these private zites in a decentralized manner is simple but effective. Each is treated as a Bittorrent shared file, named by its Bitcoin public key. A user visiting a zite would instantly download it from nearby peer and start seeding for other users to visit. Unlike their Bittorrent counterparts, however, Zeronet files can be updated by anyone visiting the zite, so they can make comments on blog posts or upvote other people’s comments.
The end result is a slightly slower internet through a Zeronet browser window that never goes to any domain on the internet; all files are served locally from the folder they were downloaded to. To ensure that each file really came from the site owner intact, and is not edited by someone else on another peer, Kocsis turned to Bitcoin. He explained to Bitcoin.com:
Zeronet uses the exact same cryptography and mathematical calculations as the Bitcoin network to verify if the wallet owner started the transaction or not.
While it is certainly agreeable to address the power requirement issue of Bitcoin's (and others) PoW, you managed to have a quite long writeup without mentioning the single true PoC (Proof of Capacity) coin out there: BURST (https://www.burst-coin.org/)
probably because its garbage. It doesnt actually use the space for anything useful, its just a another wasteful pow, wasting hdd space. you cant actually store data on burst, it has the same "waste" problem as normal pow, just instead of energy its wasting hdd space (and some energy)... coins like storj, sia, filecoin, swarm and whatever this guys cooking up actually use the drive space for something useful instead of wasting it.
burst is really really dumb if you actually think about it for a while, and its a complete clustefuck of infighting, ddos and botnets... just ugh, terrible, just terrible... wasting all those harddrives that could be used to store useful data on what? guessing random numbers? thats the exact fukin problem these hdd farming coins are trying to solve: creating a pow that actually does something useful beside provide security: using harddrive space to create a decentralized cloud and incentivize people with crypto to provide their space to the network.
the moment any of these coins can generate more money per TB burst will disintegrate like the shitcoin it is.
While your info about "infighting, ddos and botnets" might have been true some 4 months ago, it is outdated now. I would suggest you "just ugh terrible, just terrible", smoothen your reaction, because based on false premises it makes you look funny.
I agree, that the HDD space in Burst is used for "nothing useful but ensuring transactions". Well - still the advantage to energy-intensive PoW remains: Burst is about 400x more energy efficient.
At the moment "Chia" is purely on paper and a "former famous guy" somehow involved in it.
They are actually looking for developers and from what I see they have not yet much of an idea how to implement their stuff.
So for the time being, Chia is vaporware. You may think Burst is a shitcoin ... well - your preference to dwell in fecal matter is ... your preference. I for one prefer a real existing and working "shitcoin", than vaporware.