Cryptocurrency-based cloud-storage platform Storj raises 910 BTC in crowdsale

Distributed data storage service Storj announced the results of its first crowdfunding effort this week. The company raised 910 BTC in its first round, which ran from July 18 to Aug. 18, bringing in the equivalent of $470,200. Storj has a long-term funding goal of 9,800 BTC ($5 million). In a post-crowdsale report on Storj’s website, the team said that they were “very pleased” with the outcome of the sale, and that it had “beaten the best of our expectations.”

The Storj report also gave details on how the funds raised from the crowdsale would be used, including reimbursement for existing expenses, further development of Metadisk and DriveShare technologies, marketing costs and various legal expenses. As one of the first significant non-monetary applications of block chain technology, much rides on Storj’s success.

The decentralized, cloud-based data storage system allows users to essentially share storage space on each other’s machines, and uses bitcoin-like public/private key encryption to secure the data. Customers who contribute more storage to the network than they use can also be paid for contributing, most likely via the Storjcoin X altcoin.

Storj owes much to the Satoshi Nakamoto whitepaper that gave birth to bitcoin, but it also serves as a test of just how practical a block-chain based model can be for real-world software. It’s only fitting that the first major round of funding for Storj come from a bitcoin-powered crowdsale. If their first round of results is any indicator, there is plenty of demand for what Storj brings to the table.

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