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Silicon Valley's Pied Piper is real thanks to cryptocurrency

Cape Town - With Bitcoin recently touching all-time highs at over $4 400 and the overall market cap of cryptocurrencies being well over $120bn, we couldn’t help but notice that the crazy-sounding startup of the Silicon Valley series is now actually real thanks to the technology behind Bitcoin. 

It’s pretty awesome and hilarious that HBO created the piedpiper.com website, which really looks like an official company page for the “Silicon Valley startup”. In fact, it looks better than most real company sites we’ve seen. 

What is Pied Piper? 

In the series, Pied Piper is a data compression company that stores your data across a network of devices, giving you instant access to your data even though that data is not physically stored on the device you’re using. 

So it saves space on your device by spreading your data across a larger network of devices but still gives you access to that data and keeps it safe. Sounds pretty cool and far-fetched, right? 

Well, thanks to the technology behind cryptocurrencies, this product already exists. 

Pied Piper in the real world

There are a few companies that can claim to be the “real” Pied Piper, but here we will be looking at two: Storj and Sia

These companies make use of blockchain technology, which is basically a global network of computers that processes and records Bitcoin transactions on what is called a public ledger.

Using this technology, Storj and Sia are able to split apart, encrypt and distribute your files across a massive decentralised network of computers around the world while still giving you instant access to your data. 

You’ll also hold the encryption keys, meaning only you can access your data, unlike traditional cloud storage providers. Plus, the encryption behind the blockchain tech makes it very secure. 

The services being developed on blockchain technology are seriously amazing, and as you see with Pied Piper, we could be seeing a lot more fictional products become a reality. 
Terminator, here we come! 

You can watch Silicon Valley on Showmax right now. Go to showmax.com to start your free trial. 

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