Bram Cohen, founder of BitTorrent, has announced plans to introduce his own crypto-currency within the next few months.
The founder of the file-sharing network revealed the news during an interview on the ‘Steal This Show‘ podcast, in which he calls the current most popular crypto-currency, Bitcoin, “overhyped”.
Cohen’s own take on crypto-currency will not rely on the traditional process of using processing power to generate the currency – so-called “mining” – instead using the power of pre-existing digital storage.
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Speaking on the podcast (via), Cohen said: “My proposal isn’t really to do something to Bitcoin, it really kind of has to be a new currency.”
“…I have this plan, a slightly crazy plan, for making something that doesn’t have computers burning electricity as part of its mining.
“The short of it is what you do instead of computers burning electricity to mine you have storage space that’s mining.”
Bram Cohen
Cohen’s own crypto-currency would, he said, make use of cloud services and desktop computers with lots of memory to “mine” the currency and minimise the ‘waste’ caused by using traditional computing power for the same process.
The BitTorrent founder says he will be dedicating himself in the “next few months” to developing the currency, after finishing up some other work, saying he plans to work on the project full-time.
Cohen also took aim at Bitcoin during his appearance on the podcast, saying he considers it to be “still over-hyped”.
He added: “it’s getting a lot more media attention than the actual impact that it’s having so far… a lot of people get excited about Bitcoin because it’s gone up a lot in value and they have made money off it.
“I think most of these people barely have any understanding about what Bitcoin actually is.”
Storage-based crypto-currency of the type Cohen envisions already exists, with Burstcoin being one example, but it seems Cohen has plans to develop the concept further.
Stay tuned for more in the near future as we’re sure the BitTorrent founder’s exploits will be gaining some significant attention.
Let us know what you think of Cohen’s plans in the comments.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
