BitTorrent’s Creator Aims to make a Better Bitcoin

Bram Cohen, the founder of BitTorrent, introduced the idea of peer-to-peer file sharing when he crafted an refined protocol for transferring the data around the internet. Bram used this protocol for sharing pirated movies and songs which charmed many people but offended many entertainment personages. This time, Bram is determined to make another protocol for moving money around.

With his latest invention, digital currency and a startup called Chia, he wishes to make cryptocurrency acceptable to the financial industry. According to Cohen “I like hard technical problems,” the Chia network plans to move into its own space in a skyscraper built as the headquarters for Wells Fargo in San Francisco. This will require the repetitive technical success which he was able to achieve with BitTorrent.

The immense success of BitTorrent attracted companies like Facebook which used its protocols to speed the distribution of internal software updates. However, the victory of the BitTorrent Inc. could not be built into a business. In 2015 the company agreed to remove links to copyrighted content from its search engine in association with Motion Picture of America. Cohen, then, prioritised the formation of Chia in August 2017 and vacated his seat on the board this past July.

Cohen’s interests in Bitcoin led him to the creation of Chia cryptocurrency with the aim of trying to design substitutes that are less critical to the planet. Chia’s system is based on two new cryptographic protocol, one verifies the storage a computer has committed to farming, and the other that guards against fraud while determining which farmers win rewards for verifying transactions. Cohen has co-authored two peer-reviewed papers with academic mathematicians for curious users to get the hint of the details.

Because of Chia’s greater flexibility than bitcoin, it will have the potential to attract the financial institutions when it launches in the coming year. Chia is similar to other cryptocurrencies as it is built around a distributed, an unchangeable ledger of past transactions but in addition to this it supports custom add-ons that can automate contracts, holds funds in escrow, or implement features such as chargebacks that help the financial system to deal with fraud and these features are not supported by bitcoin. According to Cohen “The idea is to make Chia the premier cryptocurrency based off of our technology,” he continued “A competitor to bitcoin, but better.”