Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload 2 / Bitcache Fundraiser Only Accepts Bitcoin
Potentially in an effort to avoid any censorship or seizure of funds to get his new project off the ground, Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload2 and Bitcache funding round at Bnk to the Future is only accepting Bitcoin.
While most investments on the platform allow for investments in various currencies, to invest in Megaupload 2 and Bitcache, investors will have to acquire Bitcoin first. Given that the outside goal for this funding round is $5 million, a successful round could already produce a notable spike in the price of Bitcoin, as Dotcom has previously speculated on Twitter he’ll be able to induce. At the time of writing, over $250,000 worth of Bitcoin had already been invested, or more than 400 bitcoins.
More details about the platform’s aims have come to light, as well, including some of its mechanics. Essentially, a basic file transfer will cost the downloader around five cents, whereas uploading will be free. The platform could be useful to many types of content producers, including new musical artists and software developers, who would be able to charge more if they so chose.
The Bitcache platform also promises to go beyond basic file transfers in an effort to help a web media landscape which suffers from the worldwide growing prevalence of ad-blocking software. Blocking ads is no longer simply a matter of convenience, but many users also do it to avoid malware . Universal blocks are actively costing media outlets money, and any solution which might rectify the balance would be well-received by content providers.
For instance, at current rates a site could charge just 81 satoshis per pageview and still pull in around $50 per 10,000 page views. In some cases ,this might prove more popular than traditional advertising. Other platforms are either being tested or worked on for such a solution, but few have the name recognition of Kim Dotcom, whose infamy and history of success both lend to investor confidence in his new ventures.
One of the investor advertising documents on the project’s funding page describes their methodology as using Bitcoin “as the glue” to keep the end-to-end encrypted file transfer project together.
In an interview conducted with Simon Dixon and Max Keiser for the Bnk to the Future project, Dotcom told Dixon:
Very simply, we are going to be the most private cloud solution on the market. We will not know where the users are, we will not their IPs, and we will not know the contents of their files. There’s no other service that offers that to you.
He then went on to discuss the benefits of monetizing file transfers via Bitcache. Watch that interview below.
Current estimates for how many people actually use and hold bitcoins are somewhere in the single millions, but a system which is attractive to many millions of people and also requires them to acquire Bitcoin could, indeed, produce a much higher value for the world’s first major cryptocurrency. It would seem that the ongoing block size debate could produce problems for such a platform, which is part of the purpose of Bitcache.
In essence, Bitcache will only register transactions on the public blockchain when users are withdrawing funds. In the meantime, the microtransactions will be handled by Bitcache, at least according to the foregoing video. It would seem that later on, other cryptocurrencies could be introduced to the platform, or alternative platforms using other cryptocurrencies could be developed to compete with it.
Dotcom says he is “confident” that Megaupload 2 will have somewhere in the neighborhood of Megaupload’s former glory – around 50 million users a day – and with a current Bitcoin cap of around 7 transactions per second, this could lead to severe congestion. Solutions like the Lightning Network will also likely come into play as the the user base develops and matures.
Images from Shutterstock, Twitter/KimDotcom and YouTube/BnktotheFuture.
