@frassmith Yes you are correct, you would have to buy BTC equivalent plus transfer fees and buy it on one of the markets that deals siacoin. If you have around 2000 you can start using the product.

@mkorevec I finally got to the stage of having siacoins. But Poloniex seem to have lost them in the transfer. It seems that I'm not alone in this too. There are many people on the sia support channels complaining about disappearing siacoins. It's a bit worrying, though, it doesn't seem to be a sia issue as such, they could be a bit more transparent in explaining how they are working with Poloniex to recover the missing coins.

@qberty1337 Sia actually beat Storj to market with a functioning product. Explanation from the founder, David Vorick, from 2015 (link: https://forum.sia.tech/topic/21/...): "The other major players in this space are Storj and MaidSAFE. Our biggest advantage over these solutions is that we work, today. For the past year+ we have been quietly designing, implementing, and refining the core Sia codebase. We are not interested in promoting a flashy product that does not work or has gaping security vulnerabilities. - Sia supports on-blockchain smart contracts that require hosts to store files in order to get paid. Once the contract has been created, the host is guaranteed to get paid, even if the uploader never accesses the file. This contract also allows us to enforce penalties on hosts that go offline or lose data. - Storj is similar to Sia, but does not feature on-blockchain storage contracts. Instead, Storj offers a pay-as-you-go model where hosts are paid with some frequency by the users. If the users disappear or go offline, the host stops getting paid. Storj is still running test groups, and has not yet implemented a network where you can upload files. - MaidSAFE is a very ambitious project that goes beyond just decentralized storage. They also have a much softer focus on efficiency. Sia's network should be both cheaper for uploaders AND pay its hosts more, due to smarter redundancy management. MaidSAFE also does not yet have a working global network where you can upload and download files. - MaidSAFE uses a completely novel scheme for achieving consensus (not a blockchain). This scheme is not proof-of-work, and has not been reviewed anywhere near as extensively as the Bitcoin protocol."

@jacek_spikes_wozniak Sia is built on a new, custom blockchain (the siacoin blockchain) built specifically to conduct & track these kind of data-storage transactions. When you start a new blockchain, you need a new currency - hence siacoin!

@nickabouzeid I see. Doesn't it mean though that a system that relies on a currency is prone to speculations? SC is cheap now but it's value is already spiking. How would currency price affect users of Sia? If I join right now when SC is cheaper, does it mean that if I buy enough currency for a long time I'll be paying less than those who join later?

@jacek_spikes_wozniak The price of the service is determined by the market. If you buy siacoin now & hold it, you're essentially investing in the service and will gain/lose money as the price of siacoin goes up and down. This is not to say that the actual price (converted into USD) of distributed cloud storage will go up in the future, just the cost of a single siacoin. Let's say storing 1GB costs X. If the price of siacoin goes up by 1000%, storing 1GB then costs 1/10 of X. The service doesn't get more expensive, but the currency used to transact for the service becomes more expensive (which doesn't matter, since you can just buy fractions of coins).

@antonio_bologna The files are kept in redundant locations - if one or two of the nodes aren't available, you can still get your whole file back. Not sure what the ratio of nodes that has to go offline out of all of the nodes that hold your file for this to be an issue.

@revhuff Storj & MaidSAFE are Sia's biggest competitors, explanation of their differences is here: https://forum.sia.tech/topic/21/...

@jean_luccrowther Far more immune than a centralized provider, I would imagine. Anything's still possible.