What is Siacoin?

Siacoin provides a decentralized cloud storage option that competes with centralized legacy competitors such as Dropbox, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. It allows anyone to host or access encrypted storage through the platform, and all contracts, storage proofs, and transactions are verifiable using the blockchain’s public ledger.

Siacoin assures its users that no outside company or any third party will be able to access your files unlike other traditional cloud storage providers. On the average, Sia costs almost 90% less than others offering storage of 1TB files. If you will look into other sites like Amazon, Sia is up on the game with just $2 a month cost compared to a usual $23 service cost.

What does Siacoin do?

1. Distributes and stores redundant file segments on nodes across the world, eliminating any single point of failure.
2. Siacoin’s software is completely open source with contributions from software engineers and thriving community of developers building innovative applications on the SIA APi.
3. Through the SIA blockchain, a decentralized storage market place for any business may lead to lowest possible prices.
4. Sia can unite a large amount of unutilized space storage and can pair it with a blockchain to make encryptedand decentralized cloud storage.
5. Sia implements proof of storage to protect traders from fraudulent or malicious providers.

The Nebulous Inc., which is the company behind Sia said that this currency has a unique supply mechanism. The system started as the developers mined the first 100 blocks. The first block has an equivalent of 300,000 Siacoins, and the succeeding blocks will exponentially decrease by one unit for each subsequent blocks.

Sia unites together a large amount of unutilized data storage space and pairs it with a blockchain to make encrypted and decentralized cloud storage. This process eradicates the need to trust centralized data centers.

How does Siacoin Work?

Siacoin is the cryptocurrency created to use the Sia platform. People can rent out extra space on their computer to the Sia decentralized network and get paid in Siacoin. Any user who wishes to use Sia storage has to pay Siacoins to the host.

The host in return will keep the files for an agreed duration and storage capacity and get paid after the end of the agreement. In some cases, when the host loses the files of the client, they do not get paid for their services. Part of the agreement is that both the client and the host are satisfied with the transaction.

At present, a unit of Siacoin costs $0.17867 which is an increment in price of 38,700% in just a span of 2 years. This led the Siacoin as the Top 14^th cryptocurrency by market capital.

Marketcap of Siacoins

CoinMarketcap said that Siacoin (SC) has a per unit price of $0.026 with a current market cap of $842,003,965 ($842 million) on a 24 hour volume of $46,592,400 with an available supply of 32,182,146,672 Siacoin.

How to Buy and Store Siacoins

1. The first thing that you should do is to get a cryptocurrency of your choice. You can either choose between Bitcoin and Ethereum. Convert your fiat currency to BTC/ETH on any cryptocurrency marketplace through using your debit and credit card.
2. Converting your cryptocurrency to siacoin is available on BitPanda, CoinMama, Poloniex, Shapeshift.io, and Bitsquare.
3. Move your coins to a wallet of your choice. (Check out our tips on finding the best wallet here.)
4. Download the Sia wallet and run the wallet right away. Wait for synchronization with the blockchain.
5. Create a new wallet in Sia. You can unlock it using a specific seed key. This will only take you several minutes to set up.
6. After you secure your seed key, click on the Receive Siacoin button and send the SiaCoin you bought from the exchange to this address.

Best Exchanges To Use

1. HitBTC

   

   The site is currently focused in the Estonian, and the European market in general, but also offers services to some parts of the world. A statistics by Coinmarketcap shows that the daily trading volume on HitBTC is roughly 28,000 BTC. HitBTC offers a wide range of trading pairs and support for EUR, USD, Bitcoin and more than 50 altcoins including some of the most popular ones such as Litecoin, Dogecoin, ripple, Ethereum Classic and Bitcoin Cash.

2. Poloniex

   

   Poloniex is one of the cheapest exchanges to use since it only accepts crypto deposits and withdrawals. Its main difference compared to other platforms is that this exchange offers more risk adverse crypto holders the option and flexibility of lending out their coins.
   

3. BitPanda

   BitPanda is a crypto brokerage service that is based in Austria. It allows you to buy bitcoins with your credit card. Once you already have bitcoins, you can use Bittrex to convert them to Siacoin in just ten minutes.

4. CoinMama

   

   Through Coinmama, buying bitcoins and ether with debit and credit cards is a breeze. It is also very accessible in almost all countries. Some US states however may not be able to access it due to local regulations. Once you get your bitcoins, convert them to Siacoin through Bittrex.
   

5. Bisq.io

   

   This exchange is suitable for traders who do not want to forfeit control or privacy to a central authority in order to trade with other individuals. Bisq makes it possible to trade over 60 cryptocurrencies and even buying bitcoins using bank transfer, escrow and trusted 3^rd party traders.
   

6. Shapeshift.io

   

   ShapeShift is a web and API platform formed to provide instant Bitcoin and altcoin conversion with the maximum level of consumer protection and efficiency.

   Traders do not need to create accounts, deposit funds, or provide private personal information. This keeps the users safe from identity or theft.

   This exchange has a strict “No Fiat” policy, meaning it does not use banks or political currencies anywhere in its operations.

Advantages of Using Siacoin

Compared to traditional cloud storage, Sia’s platform promises better things for traders. Sia implements proof of storage that protects traders from fraud and other forms of hacking.

1. Privacy and Safety

   All information processed on the Sia network is encrypted. No one can access the stored files unless a provider has the data’s private key.

2. Affordability

   Siacoin offers flexible, budget-friendly pricing options for traders. For instance, a 1TB data storage using Sia will only cost you $2 a month compared to Amazon’s services which costs $23 a month.

3. Security

   Sia has redundant storage. Sia protects the client’s data from a single point of failure.

Since it has been introduced in the cryptocurrency world, Sia has shown great potentials in helping traders make the most of their investments. Siacoin’s peer to peer ecosystem is directly in line with the decentralized, mind-opening nature of the blockchain technology. The main objective is to become the storage layer of the decentralized internet, ensuring privacy and redundancy through decentralization, and replacing existing cloud storage providers with a better one.