People use Dropbox and the like for a reason, they want certain to be available even in the event of a computer crash or hard drive failure.  Cloud storage like Storj also allows retrieval from any devices which is really where computing is going.  If I work on a presentation on my laptop I may want to present it from my iPhone with my micro projector for the iPhone.   I think the fact that people will have more drive space, just means that they will have more files that they want to protect files.

Cheaper hard drive space does mean cheaper Storj drive space because more people will put space online through farming.  That is what the network wants.  The money that can be mad will undoubtedly be driven by market forces.  In the beginning there will likely be more drive space than consumption.  As it catches on that will change.  I think over time there will be one or more decentralized storage options and there will be an open market for the consumer.  that is good no matter how you look at it.

The files are broken into pieces called shards.  Each Shard is written to 3 or more computers, similar to how a RAID drive does.  This creates a fault tolerance to the network.  A heartbeat is sent to each node and if the node is found to be offline then the shard that were on that node are replicated elsewhere.

So a file that contains 5 shards could be saved to 15 different computers.

I only wish I had found this back then.  I'm glad to have found it now.

Did you get in on this?

The cost of space on the Storj network will depend on the availability of space.  If everyone and their neighbor is providing but no one is really consuming it , the price will be cheap.  If there is more demand that space available it will be expensive.  Supply and demand.  The thing here is that the supply is drive space.

A separate market will exist for the SJCX in the same way.  I might have lots of SJCX and want to hoard it, thus taking it out of circulation.  If many people do this the available supply with diminish thus creating an upward movement in the valuation of SJCX.  If then at a later time there is a flood of SJCX back in to the market the valuation will drop.

Until such time as there is a market directly between USD (or any other currency) and SJCX, BTC valuation will matter.  So the valuation will be USD (or other currency) -> BTC -> SJCX -> Cost of Drive space.  Each node of that map can fluctuate affecting the cost.

SJCX and the price of drive space are more connected than say BTC or USD to the price of drive space, but they are all disconnected.

No problem, I was just trying to help you out.  It takes time :-)  STORJX (user on the forums) has corrected me on a few things.  That's how we keep it all straight.  I would rather be corrected than continue to be wrong.

Bitcoin was just the leading edge of the wave.  Decentralization is the surge that is pushing the wave.   A Tsunami is coming.  Not just Stroj, Drive Share, Meta Disk, Maid Safe, but a whole suite of products will follow.  these are just the leaders in the pack.   It's about efficiency.  Create an open market for commodities and you will create efficiencies.

I can see a future when decentralized VM's will be available.  I know on my computer I could easily sell off 1 or 2 CPU and 2 to 4 gig of memory.  The drive space will be through Storj.  The user could fire up the image which is stored on Storj and run as they needed.  Then when done they simply shut it down and only pay for the time they were running.  

I think you meant fewer SJCX, which is the Crypto currency used by Storj.

One of the complaints of other CC is that there is nothing backing it other that the fact that paople want it.  Here we have a currency that has something backing it.  I think this is the future.

I thought the 10,000 SJCX to be involved in Test Group C was just to rise barrier and have the parties show active interest in the technology.  I didn't think that was going to be an on going requirement.  As you noted that would limit the number of nodes to 50,000 and remove all SJCX from the market place.

Keep in mind that price for space is on Storj is one thing and the value of SJCX is another.  Both will be controlled by the market.  the valuation of SJCX will be factor into the cost of space on the Storj network.

You can vote for it on BTER.  It currently has a little over 1400 up votes and one down vote.  It needs about ten times the up votes i order to be in the running to get listed.

It certainly is an exchange they are trying to get listed on.

I second that.  With the built in redundancy, it will also be more fault tolerant.  With the Encryption where We hold our keys it will be more secure to boot.  With the integration with other projects like MAID SAFE, Meta Disk and Drive Share it will be easy to use as well.

After the test groups are complete, and it is released to the general public you will be able to earn with out first having 10K SJCX. 

follow this link and it'll tell you everything you need to know.   

https://storjtalk.org/index.php?topic=2202

"Social Ops Week" SJCX Bounty

https://storjtalk.org/index.php?topic=2202

What is SJCX, you ask?  It's an alternate Cyptocurrenct used to buy space in the decentralized cloud.  The technology project behind this is Storj.   http://storj.io

Other related projects include
- Drive share : http://driveshare.org
- Meta Disk : http://metadisk.org
- Maid Safe : http://maidsafe.net/ (Decentralized Internet)

There are a couple of exchanges that trade in SJCX:
https://poloniex.com/exchange#btc_sjcx

That said this week they are running an awareness champaign and you have a chance at earning some free SJCX.  It's only available to the first 50 that read the thread and then reply.  As I write this half the slots are gone.

I found the write up earlier, someone posted to the thread I had made.  I did a search on the site and it didn't turn up.  It is an excellent write up.  I followed the instructions and had my own image up and running.  Then I saw that there was img file :-0 already made.   

I'm Glad to see there is a growing supportive community around Storj. 

Done!

https://storjtalk.org/index.php?topic=2206.0  A thread where we can talk about building out on Raspberry Pi.

I'm interested and have one pi and two drives ready to commit. :-)

SJCX has been on the rise since December 4th.  December 21 the first test started, things are looking good.  There are a number of outlets for the consumption of the drive capacity that will be provided. 
- MAID SAFE
- Drive Share
- Meta Disk

Then there is just the need to store stuff securely and in a volume with built in redundancy.  Drop Box revenues a year ago was $200 Million

http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/19/if-dropboxs-2013-revenue-is-200m-an-8b-valuation-is-pretty-steep/

If Storj saw 200 Million in revenue each SJCX would be worth $0.40 currently with BTC at $315 and SJCX at 0.00015 BTC that's $0.047.  So the coin would grow to 10 times its current value.

Storj is more than  Drop Box in that the data is store across many drives in a RAID like storage deployment, this makes it fault tolerant.  Drop box is not the only storage  company in town.  There is apple cloud, amazon, google and a host of others.  So my speculation is that  SJCX will rise much higher than $0.40.