This new Bitcoin mining system would reward people for storing data

Researchers have proposed a system which could see Bitcoin users earning their trendy tender by replicating vital data sources rather than crunching pointless algorithms. The new system, dubbed Permacoin by a team of University of Maryland and Microsoft researchers, would substitute the current requirement to obtain Bitcoins through crunching mathematical algorithms with a system where punters replicated important datasets. It would function as a “free” guard against wholesale data losses from cloud providers, and could see valuable sources such as the 200Tb US Library of Congress backed-up if it were applied to the current Bitcoin network, researchers wrote in a paper (pdf). In the case of the recent US Government shutdown in which agencies were shuttered for two weeks, the network would have ensured the Library of Congress was accessible. PhD Andrew Miller said this would bolt-on a “massively diverse global replicated storage system” to crypto-currency mining.