Also the author laments that bittorrent is not used for 1:1 transfers. Bittorrent's strength is in distributing bandwidth for popular files. Direct file transfers between people who know each other isn't really its target. So i feel that's a pretty unfair criticism.

You don't always need to take over the world to be succesful. Its fine to have a niche and just do that really well.

> As for crypto, I recommend people read about Bitcoin being used for the purposes of sending remittances to start.

I followed your recommendation and this is what I found: bitcoin might, in theory, work for the purpose of sending remittances, but in practice it doesn't.

So, returning to the original question, can cryptocurrencies offer an innovative solution for migrant remittances to developing countries? Yes and no. In theory, cryptocurrencies can really provide an effective and economical channel for money transfers to help alleviate poverty through remittances. However, there are two principle problems. Firstly, coins such as Bitcoin remain too volatile, in fact ten times more volatile than major currencies (Baur & Dimpfl 2021). This means that if migrants were to use such channel they would be exposing themselves to extreme risks. But, more importantly users of bitcoin may find themselves victims of speculative attacks, as the cryptocurrencies’ value remains completely speculatively constructed. Secondly, as with international bank transfers, cryptocurrencies need a bank account to buy and sell it. As explained above, having a bank account is not a given and represents a high barrier to entry for many of the poorest migrants.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/2021/04/29/cryptocurrenc...

Blizzard uses BitTorrent to distribute their games and patches https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Blizzard_Downloader

If bittorent is used by hundreds of millions of people, if thsts not mainstream then nothing is.

How it's being used is a different problem, but it's certainly effective and popular.

Aside from association with piracy and not being a dropbox alternative because you have to keep the seeder online, it's more expensive for network operators than CDNs, connections often have much more downstream bandwidth, and connections are still sometimes capped. If you're Netflix or an ISP, you're better off getting ISPs to put your hardware in their facilities than having users seed content. The most interesting, viable application I've seen for Bittorrent-like technology is Microsoft seeding updates on a LAN.

If BitTorrent is so great why isn’t it used more today for file transfers vs hosted storage? Also it is mostly used for piracy because authorities cannot shut down a decentralized system.

I think Windows 10 Delivery Optimization tech is a great example of (nearly) decentralized tech:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/w...

if I recall correctly, Blizzard's updater uses Bittorrent to distribute updates for WoW and other applications. So I'm confused by the fact people still focus on the piracy aspect of Bittorrent when there's been many commercial uses of the platform.

This article is laughably bad. I'm not even sure it's worth the time to give a counter response. The BitTorrent comment he made is objectively false and can be proven as such. Tons of game installers use torrents under the hood to distribute their massive game payloads.