Sia Cloud... or C'ya Cloud?
Too Much Effort Will Make "Joe Average" Say C'Ya
I like the concept of Sia's decentralized online cloud storage. It's awesome. I know there are some others out there as well. And, as is the case with many crypto and blockchain technologies, I think a lot of I.T. guys and gals are going to get excited about the potential. In fact - I think corporate I.T. and CS types are going to HAVE to be the ones getting excited and making good use of these technologies - because the average consumer sure the heck isn't.
I know they are in fledgling development stages right now - still sorta working on the general functionality. But I think - as many others probably do - that these companies (like Sia) need to work on targeting the average home-based consumer from the very beginning. And that would entail removing highly technical "blockchain" concepts/lingo and complicated fiscal transition steps from the process ASAP.
For example... Step #2 here... people these days are NOT going to take the time to understand HOW to convert their fiat currencies into Bitcoin or Etherium - then learn the in's and out's of an exchange like BITTREX or POLONIEX, all so they can download a program and start uploading their files. It's far too complicated for the average person, and it is incredibly inconvenient. It also scares people... how do they know any of this is long term? Can they trust these "online" exchange sites? Then all the talk about hackers and hiding your keys and transfers going into the abyss because the address was wrong - or storing your coins on hardware wallets vs software wallets. It's really all for us investors at this point imho. But for it to take off or shoot to the moon - it needs to work for the populace!
Removing The Hurdles
Now, I know these guys are smart - and they likely know this already. But where is the effort to reach the average consumer? I do know Sia for instance, is indeed planning on building an application that works much like OneDrive or DropBox or SugarSync. That is essential of course. But where are the applications that remove the fiat conversions and all that hardcore stuff? This applies to all ICO's and crypto-driven endeavors in my opinion - not just Sia.
We need something that makes all that jazz transparent to the end user. Log into the site, download the client, use your credit card or debit card to pay for it (in the background it gets converted to Sia coins or whatever the particular company is using as a token. Tell them to store their secure key somewhere so they can access their "tokens" if there's an issue - fine. But get them straight to the tokens somehow. This should be one of the primary focuses from the beginning.
The group (or obsessed programmer) who comes up with that service - the one that ANY crypto company can utilize to convert directly from fiat to token WITHIN the client interface itself - will be the savior of many an ICO. Just my take. I'll admit... I'm new to this space. But this is the most glaring obstruction to mass adoption of blockchain services that I can identify.
Hopefully - and because I own a metric ton of Siacoins - they figure this out and get on it soon. ;)