This is the copy of the original post from Official HitBTC Blog.

HitBTC cryptocurrency exchange has recently added another promising digital coin– Siacoin! SC/BTC market is already available for trading on HitBTC!

The network

Sia is an actively developed decentralized storage platform. Technically, it represents a peer-to-peer network that consists of many hard disk drives, connected to the united network globally. The network is fully decentralized, and cryptographically secured. Similarly to other blockchain projects, Sia uses a cryptocurrency, called ‘Siacoin’.Unlike centralized cloud storage services (Amazon, Dropbox), Sia leverages blockchain to reach consensus in a secure and trustless way. A smart contract on the blockchain ensures through the use of cryptographic proofs of storage that hosts are only paid if they keep the file for the entire duration of the contract. Smart contracts also ensure data encryption, making third party interference impossible.

The mission

Sia aims to replace Bittorrent, Microsoft OneDrive, and all backend cloud storage services, in order to become the backbone storage layer of the Internet. According to the developers, this will be achieved by the consecutive appearance of small decentralized data centers that altogether will comprise the world’s fastest, cheapest, and the most secure cloud storage platform.

Sia enables such small, efficient data centers to sell their storage without market trust and marketing budgets. Sia lowers the barrier to entry, and in doing so creates a wealth of cheap storage for its users. Anyone with an Internet connection and a cheap source of storage can make money.

The cryptocurrency

The Siacoin cryptocurrency is a crucial part of the network, since all storage contracts and payment channels require having digital coins. Roughly, this means that the Siacoin price will be increasing together with the adoption of the network itself. The Siacoin’s value is tied to the amount of used Storage on the network. Siacoin’s market capitalization has already surpassed $9,000,000, affected by a rapid growth in the middle of June, 2016.

It’s worth noting that Sia has another cryptocurrency, called Siafund, 10,000 total, completely premined, and mostly owned by the Sia’s parent company. This cryptocurrency exists in order to provide a way to finance the further development of Sia.

Instead of conclusion

While Sia’s plans sound extremely ambitious, we still may rephrase a popular statement and note that technologies that believe can change the world are usually the ones that do. And in the case of openly traded token-based blockchain projects, such technologies are certainly the ones that grow in value. Check out the brand new SC/BTC market.