If bittorrent was invented today, it would probably be tied to a cryptocurrency scheme.
On private trackers, your download and upload is tracked. You are required to maintain a certain ratio.
Most tracker sites allow users to "donate" money to get extra ratio.
Most tracker sites allow users to request new files and pay a bounty, in uploads (i.e. ratio).
In effect, it is already a currency.
Trackers get seized from time to time, and if the entire state of a tracker is stored in a decentralised manner, then seizure is no longer a risk.
The dataset stored by a tracker, in the age of magnet links, is very small, and can be replicated amongst all nodes.
So, as someone who usually rolls my eyes at people saying "blockchain", this is actually a perfect use for blockchain technology.
http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0046.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12257065
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17306106
https://static.usenix.org/events/woot10/tech/full_papers/Wol...
The problem of how to solve how much currency each pseudonym has, and allows transactions between them, with no central intermediary or point of failure, is solved by a cryptocurrency.
Rather you mean, the ledger will be perfect evidence against all the users. Not sure why you need durability for “illegal” activity data?
It’s perfect except doesn’t require blockchain. It works well as just a simple semi-distributed database with sources of truth for who gets credit.
The trackers I’ve used are all different and a ratio on one site might be good to “vouch” for me, but the numbers are meaningless across sites and I don’t think one site would prosper mixing their ratio calculations with another.
I like your idea though and think that tracker ratios are a good example of something that meets the need that lots of coins are trying to accomplish.
No wonder most people don't deliver amazing things - it avoids the social pressure to keep producing, lest we believe that person is letting us down.
BTW, the article includes: "BitTorrent’s inventor is one of the driving forces behind the ‘greener’ Chia coin, which launched earlier last May."
But the main point of my heavily down-voted comment is that I can't conceive why anyone should feel let down by Cohen, even if he hadn't done a thing in the last 15 years.
I actually believe that view corrosively discourages people from doing something exceptional, for worry that they won't be able to maintain that output, and thus face social stigmas like "you let us down."
Thank you for the clarification!
https://www.coindesk.com/price/bittorrent
It's annoying because I want to look up technical details of BitTorrent and have to now scrub past all these crypto fanatics and their posts about it going to the moon or crashing.
So yeah, it is already tied to a cryptocurrency scheme.