Delete comment from: DSHR's Blog
David Gerard links to this post, saying I'm arguing that "all distributed file storage cryptocurrency schemes will eventually become less efficient front-ends to Amazon S3."
I can't have been as clear as I thought I was.
I don't think it will ever be possible for outsiders to make money running file storage nodes on S3. Amazon's margins on S3 are awesome, because of their economies of scale and their extremely low cost of capital.
My points were (a) that S3 pricing caps what storage networks can charge (with a cap that shrinks over time, causing a headache), and (b) if despite that they succeed in worrying Amazon, Amazon can use the infrastructure underlying S3 to run nodes on their own account, and vastly undercut outsiders' pricing because they can accept lower margins). This, in effect, puts a floor under what the outsiders can charge, because the only way they worry Amazon is by being so cheap that lots of people put up with the disadvantages.
Now I come to think of it, (b) is what Bitmain is doing to BTC.
Jun 25, 2018, 10:31:45 PM
Posted to The Four Most Expensive Words in the English Language