A 23-year-old Australian gamer broke up with his girlfriend a year ago because he was “wasting money on stupid counterfeit coins on the Internet”. We are referring to the Twitter and Reddit user with the nickname “Grave”, who bought 100.000 Theta coins in April 2020, paying 17 cents each. However, this move of his finally worked out well. His $17.000 investment turned him into a millionaire. He lost the girl, but he had the money for consolation.
Grave has so far refused to reveal his real name. He said he has not even told his family yet. He claims to have withdrawn almost a third of the amount he earned in order to buy a new car and “live comfortably”, but he also intends to buy Theta whenever it recedes.
What is this Theta that jumped out of nowhere in the list with the top 10 cryptocurrencies based on capitalisation? What is so special about it that it has managed to increase its value 160 times in just one year, to $12 billion?
Theta is a new decentralised network based on blockchain technology that focuses on a video distribution network application. More specifically, it has found the way users provide the available bandwidth they do not use. Extra bandwidth is used to improve streaming quality, such as video streaming. Theta software has managed to take advantage of only the available bandwidth, so the user has no influence on his own streaming.
Since its inception in 2017, Theta Labs’ mission has been to create the first fully decentralised streaming platform on the planet, as it sought to increase global access to live video streaming by reducing the required infrastructure. The application is especially useful in places where they do not have high internet speeds. Many people, especially in developing countries, do not enjoy quality data flow, either because the current infrastructure is insufficient for their growing demands or because they are far from distribution centres.
Theta Network is designed to improve video streaming quality and reward those who offer computing resources. In order to motivate users to provide their bandwidth, they are paid with tokens.
Demand for streaming video has grown over the last decade. This is due to the growing use of platforms such as YouTube, which are significantly replacing television, and forecasts show that this trend will not slow down. The demand for high-definition video is growing rapidly as technology evolves. However, much of the video content on the internet is relatively low quality. While users are looking for higher resolution, content delivery networks may not respond.
