I can also see a point in time where company's/individuals would be willing to pay even more for SIA services because of its anonymity.
Can you elaborate on how SIA (or: Sia?) provides anonymity to hosters and/or renters?
What I understand of SIA thus far is that hosted files are split and encrypted. But this is not the same as anonymity.
Well the way I understand it is that an individual file upload will be split into pieces of data amongst 6 or 8 storage host somewhere in the world. The only way to see that file in a complete useful way is through the up loaders wallet. There is no way to actually view a file on any one storage host. (as its in a piece of the data) So that's really close to being anonymous I would think.
I think I misunderstood what you meant by anonymity. To me, anonymity implies that ones identity is hidden. You refer to the contents of files. The content of files are impossible to read, assuming the Sia devs implemented the cryptography correctly... So, your files are safe and readable only by you, no doubt.
However, your identity is not necessarily a secret. Your activity on the network is public on the Sia blockchain, and your IP address is known by all participating nodes. Thus, a nefarious 3rd party could operate 'honey pot' hosts in order to track uploaders. So, I don't think you can expect to remain anonymous on the Sia network, i.e. in the sense that your identity is protected. It remains to be seen, whether someone could go from an IP address to proving that you have uploaded a particular file. I mentioned comparison of the Merkel root hash in my other reply to you as one possibility. File size is another possibility, although that would not be definite proof. Both of these possibilities assume the tracker already has an identical copy of your file (e.g. which may be the case if you are uploading copyrighted content).