Whats missing is proof of delivery, and thats the most important thing. I'm not just paying AWS to store my files, I'm paying them to deliver my files.
Maybe this could work as an alternative to glacier. But even then, I doubt it. I'd take Amazon with an SLA any day of the week.
That's the other way you get paid in Filecoin, payment channels for retrieving files. Although it's not technically "mining" it's easier to think about Filecoin having two types of miners: Storage and retrieval. Since it's incentivized there's a good chance you'll get your files back quickly if you're willing to pay more or if it's a common file.
As long as Filecoins is traded on a market, and not tied to actual cpu/bandwidth/storage costs, then if will ALWAYS be more expensive then AWS (and alternatives).
If I go out and spend $20,000 on a a 480TB file server and I were charging AWS prices ($0.023/GB), I could get $11,040/ month. After two months my investment would have paid for itself. I'm not sure why you think markets are inefficient and somehow AWS is superior, but folks could be getting paid 10x less than AWS and still making money on their investments.
Inversely, people could be storing their files for 10x cheaper than on AWS.
Because Filecoin being a tradable asset as well as a utility confuses how it's valued. If it rises quickly, it's better to sell then spend. If it drops, it's bad for those running servers. Both ups and downs are being driven by forces which have nothing to do with cost of services, that's the problem. Unless they fix the price of Filecoin against the USD to make it a real utility, it's a get rich quick scheme.
Not sure how thats true, If you and I can negotiate a price we are willing to pay for a given thing, it doesnt matter what the token is tied to or traded on.
You see Sia's Skynet announcement yet? It is the only technically 100% decentralized product and Downloading stuff from skynet is fast. check out their announcement that is on skynet.. 4k vid in there showing the speeds. It is impressive. https://siasky.net/GADwbULtGj2NuBXJrQPBkivr6etO5uD4BSToixUUS...
I gave a presentation at Berkeley a few years back, right before Bram Cohen (BitTorrent) presented his Chia proof, Proofs of Space and Time (before IPFS ripped the name from Bram).
Maybe this could work as an alternative to glacier. But even then, I doubt it. I'd take Amazon with an SLA any day of the week.