逃亡黑客的比特币微支付平台抢先看|《财富》独家

玩比特币的都知道金·多特康姆的名字。这位天才黑客近几年龟缩在新西兰，为的就是不被引渡到美国，毕竟他在美国背下了侵犯知识产权和洗钱的官司，一旦被抓到美国受审，是绝对没有好果子吃的。与此同时，他也在忙着搞Megaupload之后的二次创业。Megaupload是一个在线存储服务，也正是令他在美国背上官司的原因。

据《财富》本周一报道，多特康姆正打算请几位YouTube的知名网红来测试他的微支付系统Bitcache。近日他又给《财富》做了一次在线服务K.im的内部展示。K.im也是一个在线存储服务，内容创建者可以把他们的文档挂在网上收费，每次有人下载他们的文档，创建者都可以收取一定的费用。

K.im类似一个在线网盘服务，用户可以将他们的歌曲、电影或文件上传至云端，然后通过一系列平台进行推广，比如像Dropbox和iCloud这样的云存储服务，Kickass Torrents之类的点对点传输网络，或是在中国十分流行的微信和微博等社交网络。用户上传了文件之后，就可以获得一个访问码，他们可以将访问码嵌入自己的网站上，然后邀请其他用户购买这个文件。总之不管是谁下载了这个文件，都避免不了收费这一关。

多特康姆解释道：“我们有自己的文件格式。所以要打开这个文件，你就得通过我们的应用程序，或是通过使用了我们的应用编程界面的第三方应用。通过这种方式，确保了不管你的文件放在哪里，内容的所有者都能获得报酬。”

K.im的内容上传者可以自己确定每个文件的价格（用美元显示）。另外用户也可以选择几个附加功能。它既可以“限时免费”，用户也可以在显示的价格之外进行“打赏”，而且文件也可以通过流媒体的形式展示，即限制下载。

K.im与其他网盘服务最主要的区别，在于可以使用比特币进行“微支付”。每次支付的数额可能是极小的，人们可能想也不想就支付了。对于内容的创建者，却起到了聚沙成塔的效果。

比特币是比较适合这种使用方式的。不过比特币的区块链系统经常出现堵塞，这说明现在的比特币交易已经需要较长的时间才能完成，如果每天再增加几千万次的“微支付”，只会让比特币交易变得更慢。然而多特康姆的方法却是将比特币分解成所谓的“比特”，一比特相当于一百万分之一个比特币。“比特”的交易可以在

Bitcache平台上进行，而不是在拥挤的主干区块链上完成。

“像这样的服务能充分释放艺术家的活力，因为他们可以将作品在任何他们喜欢的平台上直接卖给自己的粉丝群体，没有任何中间商抽成。”

说到这，我们有必要提醒一下读者，多特康姆这样一个天才创业者为什么是个争议不断的人物（不仅因为他狂热支持维基解密泄密者塞斯·里奇的阴谋论）。他创办的Megaupload被很多人用来非法分享侵权内容，从而在2012年遭到了FBI的取缔。FBI还冻结了多特康姆的银行账户，并搜查了他的豪宅，目前还在力争将他引渡回美国受审。据美国政府称，多特康姆及Megaupload的工作人员非常清楚该平台被用于不法目的，且还在从中获利。

那么，K.im怎样才能不重蹈Megaupload的覆辙呢？更危险的是，很有可能会有人上传其他人建立的内容，并且收费营利。

多特康姆称，K.im的内容商并不知道别人上传的是什么东西，因为文件在传输过程中已经被加密了。不过如果有人投诉的话，他保证会很快进行处理。“我们拥有强大的提醒和下架功能。”

在《财富》看到的展示片中还有一个奇怪的功能，那就是这些文件可以向《纽约时报》、CNN和维基解密等媒体进行发布。多特康姆表示，这个功能是专门为“泄密者”提供的。

他表示：“K.im对泄密者提供了近乎完美的保护。该平台可能每天会有几百万名使用者，情报部门不可能从海量的数据里鉴别出泄密者。另外泄密者就算被抓到，也可以辩称自己只是使用了K.im备份个人信息或者汇总文件，从而否认自己的泄密行为。”

K.im和Bitcache瞄准的是一个竞争日益激烈但前景尚不明朗的市场。很多媒体公司都面临着网络竞争日趋白热化和广告费率不断下调的挑战，“微支付”的理念也日益成为摆脱困局的一种可能手段。目前还没有哪个微支付系统取得成功，不过新的微支付系统还在不断涌现，有些微支付系统便是凭借更无缝的微交易功能，将目光瞄准了那些媒体内容的消费者。

比如在线打赏服务Flattr就是一个例子，这家公司今年被广告拦截服务Adblock Plus的母公司Eyeo收购。我们去年就曾报道过，Eyeo想让出版商采用Flattr的服务，使人们可以对阅读的文章进行打赏。另一个例子是浏览器创业公司Brave，这家公司是由Mozilla的共同创始人布兰登·艾克创办的。使用该服务的读者每月可以分配一笔小钱出来，浏览器会自动监测读者对他们所阅读的文章的参与度，然后根据读者的喜好，对内容的出版商自动进行打赏。

Eyeo的公共事务经理劳拉·多恩海姆表示：“我们知道，很多用户都想给他们喜欢的内容打赏，但他们并不关注自己想打赏的文章采取了哪种金融交易服务。”

下一步，多特康姆将在今年第四季度进行一次“首次公开募币”，这也是目前方兴未艾的一种融资方式，投资人可以获得虚拟货币而不是股份。“我们在ICO结束后９个月里就会上线。”他表示。

只有那时我们才能知道，多特康姆的微支付梦想能否提供一种可靠的方式，使人们凭借自身的创造在网络上自由地赚钱——当然前提是到时他还没有被美国人抓回去。（财富中文网）

译者：贾政景

Kim Dotcom may be spending much of his time fighting extradition from New Zealand to the U.S., where he faces copyright infringement and money laundering charges, but he's also busy working on the successor to Megaupload, the online storage service that got him into this trouble.

As Fortune reported on Monday, Dotcom is looking for popular YouTube stars to test his new micropayments system, Bitcache. Now he's giving Fortune a sneak preview of K.im, a new online storage service that lets creators upload their files and make money every time people download them.

The idea behind K.im is to let people upload their songs, movies, or documents once and then propagate them across a plethora of other platforms: cloud storage services such as Dropbox and iCloud, peer-to-peer networks such as Kickass Torrents, and social media services such as WeChat and Weibo. When a creator uploads a file, they also get the code for a widget that they can embed on their own websites, inviting people to buy the file. Essentially, wherever the file goes, it takes with it the functionality to demand payment for using it.

"We have our own file type," Dotcom explains. "So to open [it] you will need one of our apps or third party apps that will use our [application programming interface]. That way we ensure that no matter where your file is hosted, the content owner gets paid."

People uploading to K.im can set their own price (shown in U.S. dollars) for each file, and choose from several extra features for the file's availability: it can be a "limited giveaway," people can pay more than the price that's shown, and the files can also be set to be streaming-only, obviating any downloads.

The key advance Dotcom is proposing here is the ability to use bitcoin for micropayments—payments that may be so small that people won't think twice about making them, but that will add up to reward creators for their work.

Bitcoin is generally unsuitable for this use case, because congestion in the bitcoin blockchain system means it already takes a long time for transactions to clear, and adding millions of very small payments would make things even slower. However, Dotcom's solution is to break the bitcoins down into what he calls "Bits"—each being worth a millionth of one bitcoin. Payments using Bits take place on the Bitcache platform, not in the main, clogged-up blockchain.

"Services like this will unchain the artists, because they can sell directly to their fan base on any platform of their choosing. No middle men," Dotcom says.

At this point, it's worth rewinding and remembering the main reason why Dotcom is such a controversial figure (apart from his championing of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory). Megaupload was used by many people for illegally sharing copyrighted content, which led to its takedown by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2012, the freezing of Dotcom's bank accounts and the raiding of his mansion, and the ongoing extradition case against him. According to the U.S. government, Dotcom and his colleagues knew full well that the service was being used for illicit purposes, and profited from that fact.

So, what's to stop people using K.im for the same thing—or, worse, uploading files made by other people and then charging people to download them?

According to Dotcom, the proprietors of K.im will have no idea what people are uploading to the platform because the files are encrypted in transit. However, if someone complains, then he promises a swift response. "We have robust notice and takedown features," he says.

One odd feature in the demo Fortune was shown was the ability to distribute files to media organizations such as The New York Times and CNN—and Wikileaks. This functionality, Dotcom explains, is for whistleblowers.

"K.im provides near perfect protection for whistleblowers," he claims. "We expect to have millions of users every day and it will impossible for spy agencies to identify the whistleblowers within that mass traffic. And whistleblowers have strong deniability because they can say they used K.im for a personal backup, file aggregation, etc."

K.im and Bitcache enter a competitive though as-yet-unproven market. As media companies struggle with online competition and falling ad rates, the idea of micropayments keeps cropping up as a possible route out. No micropayments systems have succeeded thus far, but new ones keep popping up—and some promise more friction-free methods for parting media consumers from their cash.

A notable effort is Flattr, an online tipping service that was this year bought by Eyeo, the company behind the ad-blocking service Adblock Plus. As we reported last year, Eyeo is trying to get publishers to adopt Flattr as a way for people to pay for the articles they read. As with Brave, a browser startup from Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich, the idea here is to get readers to set aside a certain amount of money each month, then monitor their engagement with the articles they consume and automatically reward the publishers based on that engagement.

"We know that many users want to pay for content they like. What we also know is that they don't want to think about a financial transaction after every article they've read," says Laura Dornheim, Eyeo's public affairs manager.

For Dotcom's latest endeavor, the next big step is an initial coin offering (ICO)—a trendy fundraising technique in which investors get virtual coins rather than shares—in the fourth quarter of this year. "We will go live within nine months after the ICO," Dotcom says.

Only then—and, presumably, only if Dotcom has managed to stay out of prison by that point—will we be able to see if his vision of micropayments really does provide a viable way for people to monetize their creations online.