Filecoin versus Internet Computer Protocol. If you're holding Filecoin, you will definitely want to see this honest review and comparison to Internet Computer, because Internet Computer is the best cryptocurrency I've found in terms of market valuation versus potential contribution to humanity. It has the biggest research and development team in blockchain and the best technology in crypto. On the surface, you might think Filecoin and Internet Computer are similar, but they actually have very little in common when you look into the technical details.
What Filecoin claims to be, and the key problem with how it works
If you go to filecoin.io, it says that Filecoin is a decentralized storage network designed to store humanity's most important information. But there's a key problem with how that's actually executed, because Filecoin does not put all the storage directly on chain. When you're talking about a decentralized storage network, it needs to be directly on the blockchain itself, or there ends up being a middleman — a middle person — between the tokens on the blockchain versus the data that's stored off chain.
The way Filecoin works in a basic sense is that you get incentivized to provide data and you pay to retrieve data on Filecoin. However, all the blockchain is really used for is to send payments and to make basic hashes or tracking of using the data. The data itself is not actually stored on chain, which leads me to question how actually decentralized it really is, because who exactly controls the interactions between the blockchain and all the actual data storage?
Why Internet Computer is different: everything is on chain
When you compare that to Internet Computer Protocol, Internet Computer Protocol is the only blockchain where you can actually do compute of any meaningful scale directly on the blockchain. It's a true world computer with more than 1,000 human years of research and development effort. Everything is on chain — the data, the computation, AI, social networks, order book exchanges, everything's directly on chain. This then allows you to have all the security benefits that come from having the data on chain.
With something like Filecoin, you might as well use Amazon Web Services, because that's probably going to be cheaper and more scalable than having to mess around with Filecoin. And then you don't have to mess around with all the blockchain payments. Whereas on Internet Computer Protocol, if you build your application or you put your data directly on Internet Computer Protocol, then you can have it in smart contracts. I dig into how that on-chain hosting actually plays out in why I think ICP and Claude Code is the best web hosting setup online, and I keep all of these comparisons going in my ICP Crypto playlist.
The on-chain difference, using my own situation as an example
You might put your data in smart contracts if you're just dumping 16 terabytes of videos. I'm a full-time YouTuber and streamer — all the links are on jerrybanfield.com, where my website is actually hosted on Internet Computer Protocol. It wouldn't make sense for me to dump 16 terabytes of data directly on the blockchain, unless I wanted to make it directly on the blockchain. So I would have to make my own YouTube.
In which case, if I wanted to make my own YouTube, I'd want to build it on Internet Computer Protocol, because then I'd want to launch a token, and the token would give you real ownership over the actual code and all the data directly on the chain. Whereas if you want to launch your own crypto-based YouTube, you wouldn't want to use Filecoin, because with that network you wouldn't be putting the data directly on the chain — it'd be off chain. So in that case, you might as well just use Amazon Web Services and then plug it into whatever blockchain you're using. And then if you offered a token, or tried to do a token sale, it couldn't have real physical control by code over the application itself.
Why I think Filecoin gets left behind
Internet Computer Protocol is the way I see the internet being built in the future, which means Filecoin is likely to be left behind, because Filecoin I don't see making a very valuable contribution to the blockchain space. If you're using a token, you're not really getting the benefit, because it's not actually decentralized in terms of all being on the blockchain. So that leaves me thinking this is most likely to go down in value relative to Internet Computer, because Internet Computer has no competition. There's nothing else that does what it does. There's nothing else where you can put your NFTs, pictures, videos, and games. There's nothing else where you can actually put 16 terabytes of data directly on chain in smart contracts and launch a token to manage all of that. There's no other technology to do that.
That means, based on the tiny little market cap Internet Computer has, I think this belongs up where Ethereum is, because this is the third biggest innovation we've seen in crypto — Bitcoin number one, Ethereum number two. So I think ICP easily 100x's, in my opinion. Filecoin is only a little bit smaller than ICP, and it has the same disastrous price chart, because in my view ICP is manipulated. With Filecoin, I don't know exactly what happened with the price, but that chart scares people off hardcore. It has one single narrative: storage, or quote-unquote decentralized storage. Unlike ICP, Filecoin has that one single narrative, whereas ICP has pretty much every single narrative in crypto. Real-world assets on chain — it does that better than anything else. NFTs — better than anything else. You want to launch a meme coin? More functionality than any other place you can launch a meme coin. AI on chain — only place you can do it. You want to build a Web3 social network? Only place you can build one fully on chain, and you've got things like OpenChat and Taggr already fully functional.
Why I think Filecoin is overvalued
All the signals to me indicate Filecoin is probably overvalued, because the blockchain itself can't really capture the value of all that quote-unquote decentralized storage that's not actually getting any of the benefits of the blockchain itself. So I think Filecoin goes down quite a bit from here, especially because the more Internet Computer gets adopted, the more Filecoin becomes irrelevant. And if somebody wants to store data and it costs too much for them to put it on Internet Computer, they'll probably put it on Arweave, or put it on Amazon Web Services. I shared a similar take on that storage competitor in my Arweave (AR) review on why I think it's going to zero. So if you've got an app where you don't care about having all the data on chain, Filecoin is probably not going to be your first choice either. In the 10 years I've been in crypto, there are very few things I actually see that are really built with Filecoin.
I also have a concern with Filecoin in that it's not very easy to find out where the data is going to be, or to find the actual team behind Filecoin. Who are the people behind this multi-billion-dollar project? Now, if you look at Internet Computer Protocol and you see the team behind it, it is the most impressive, largest research and development team in blockchain. If you look at the DFINITY Foundation at dfinity.org, you can see an absolutely huge team. You can watch many of these people presenting and showing off the technology, and there are tons of engineers constantly upgrading the protocol. Whereas with Filecoin, I don't even see who's actually building with it, because the building isn't actually happening on Filecoin given you're not actually on the blockchain. If you're using stuff that's off chain, what does that have to do with the Filecoin blockchain? It's not real Web3, and we can't even easily see the people who are actually working on this.
That lack of transparency matters to me. I don't trust investing in anything — even Bitcoin — where you don't have transparency as to who exactly made it and which exact people are building and upgrading it. This is part of why my whole approach is built on watching what the team actually ships, and it's the same standard I apply when I share my honest opinion inside the Jerry Banfield Family. It also connects to how I think about valuation in general, which I broke down in why crypto market caps are a distraction and only ICP is real.
My honest verdict
This is why I've researched Filecoin, and there's no way I would hold Filecoin, because in my experience ICP is so far superior. I try to lead by example — almost 90-plus percent of my portfolio is ICP, and all of my portfolio is coins on ICP or ICP itself. I show you exactly what I'm doing. I've researched thousands of altcoins and I got burned, one way or another, for nine years in crypto. Then I found ICP and everything got easier. If you'd like to go deeper on how I value coins like this, you can find more of these breakdowns in my Money playlist, and if you want to talk through it with me directly, you're welcome to join me in the Jerry Banfield Family. This is just my own honest opinion and experience, not financial advice — always do your own research before buying or holding anything.