I gave up mining SIA a while back (and switched to a non storage based coin) simply because, I don't see a future for it. I can't see any large company wanting to go through the hassle (and risks) of exchanging cash for SIA then using it to buy storage. Currency fluctuations can have big effects on profitability (Lots of UK businesses after Brexit have seen profits squeezed, or even wiped out after GBP took a dive) Why would a large company already at risk of currency fluctuations increase that risk by also getting involved with crypto markets, and with something as important / essential as storage?
With high speed networks, falling SSD prices (and increasing capacities) along with super reliable HDD's does SIA really have a large scale customer out there? Perhaps content creators could find a use for SIA as an alternative back up space - but the likes of a large multinational with huge storage requirements would probably already have their own facilities in place. Honestly, I don't see enough small scale users to make up the difference.
So, that's why I got out - I don't think the demand will ever match the supply. I think it's important to have faith in any project you're investing in (whether it's buying coins or using resources to mine them, it all counts as an investment!) - I have a great deal of respect for all those who do believe that there's a future for SIA - perhaps you can see something I can't... (or maybe you are just smarter than me!) - however, for me - I think there are better options out there.
Soooooo wrong . Ive worked for two of the biggest storage manufacturers of storage in Silicon Valley and in the world. I'm not talking Terrabytes of data we are talking arrays which hold multi Exabytes of data, hosted in data centers the size of football fields. Every major company, business, hospital, stock market exchange in the world is on these arrays. When an array goes down its in the news as it impacts something huge and the downtime can affect the stock price of a company.
Now think about this, for every petabyte of data there has to be a backup of this petabyte of data , (government regulations dictate backups go back 7 years) , and to avoid a single point of failure this data has to be replicated to multiple branch locations throughout the world. Where do you think the XRAYS hospitals use are stored ? Do you really think the movie studios are storing movie data on a bunch of hard drives ? Nope, they are on multi-million dollar intelligent arrays the size of fridges which manage the data and its spread across several global locations.
One of the biggest challenges is how do you preserve this data, how do you provide cooling , the cost of electricity, security, product failures, data redundancy, real time replication, data deduplication, ete etc . These are issues which the major storage companies and enterprises struggle with .
SIACOIN solves a majority of these problems and is going to huge.
I have 675 TB of data I manage at home, which means I need to keep another 675TB of space for backups and another 675TB in case the main backup fails.
You can imagine my electricity bill, its up there and I try to offset it with solar panels and 20 x 12volt (256 Amp Hrs) solar batteries which run these NAS devices when the Sun goes down and the panels no longer supply energy.
In summer time these NAS boxes require a lot of cooling and im also mindful of what happens to the data if there's one of these California earthquakes . This is where SIACOIN comes in as I will archive the data to the SIACOIN network, and now I only need to keep 675TB of live data and my cooling and power requirement issues are now resolved - As a plus I also get to pocket a lot in savings. Another added benefit is its decentralized so I no longer need to worry about security ( As you need the wallet key and seed to get to the data ). Plus its decentralized so there's no need to worry about a single point of failure - And Even if SIACOIN team folds and gives up the project the network still lives on .
Think again @DanTheHam in the future I see SIACOIN on phones, in cars, watches etc ... this revolutionary and is going to be huge !
Another wonderful thing is no matter how much Dropbox, Amzon, Microsoft, Box etc try they can never complete with SIACOIN in the storage space. This is because there's no storage, cooling, security, power etc.. etc requirements for SIACOIN its all taken care of in their distribution model. There's never overhead as its decentralized. If Drobox, Microsoft, Box etc attempt to compete with SIACOIN they can never ever win as they have various financial overhead they can never avoid - you gotta love it . These are some smart Devs over at SIA - So SIACOIN will always undercut them in prices and will always be more secure .
Where do you think these enterprises are going to turn to cut costs and up their stock valuation ? .. SIACOIN network gives them this option