It is not entirely surprising to learn Bram Cohen – the inventor of BitTorrent – wants to create his own cryptocurrency. Even though there are already several thousand currencies in existence, Cohen feels his creation will bring something new to the table. In fact, he will devote all of his time to developing and maintaining this new currency, which has not received an official name just yet.
The BitTorrent of Cryptocurrencies?
There are quite a few reasons as to why people are attracted to the concept of creating a cryptocurrency. This is especially true for people who are actively involved in distributed and peer-to-peer technology as well. Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent protocol, has shown a keen interest in cryptocurrency for several years now. That is not surprising, considering both types of technology focus on the same aspects.
Cohen feels now is the time to create a completely new cryptocurrency, although not too many details are known about it yet. He told Torrent Freak:
“My proposal isn’t really to do something to BitCoin. It really has to be a new currency. I’m going to make a cryptocurrency company. That’s my plan.”
Given his focus on peer-to-peer connectivity and decentralized technology, Cohen is in a prime position to experiment with developing a new cryptocurrency. Moreover, it is doubtful he would be in it for the money, as he simply wants to bring amazing new technologies and concepts to the masses.
Over the past few years, Cohen has taken the time to share his opinions regarding the state of cryptocurrency. In fact, he recently presented a new paper on proofs of space and proofs of time, which was well received by the attendees of the Stanford blockchain conference. This goes to show Cohen knows what he is talking about and how he feels cryptocurrency can be further improved moving forward.
It is worth mentioning Cohen will not be looking to make any contributions to bitcoin or any of the existing cryptocurrencies whatsoever. Instead, he will create a “cryptocurrency company”, which could indicate he is not necessarily looking to cater towards most cryptocurrency enthusiasts. It appears this new currency will try to focus on storage-based solution and solving the 51% attack vector that looms overhead for bitcoin and other currencies.
It has to be said, cryptocurrencies focusing on storage are nothing new under the sun right now. Various similar projects exist already, although Cohen will certainly look to do much better compared to the other developers. It remains unclear how he aims to do so, though, as most of these other projects have a large team of developers and contributors helping out. Cohen will need to establish a team of developers to contribute to his upcoming project.
Further information regarding this project is expected to be revealed in the coming months. Cohen will first focus on wrapping up some other work related to the BitTorrent protocol before dedicating himself full-time to this new cryptocurrency venture. It will be interesting to see what we can expect in the future, that much is certain.
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