Crypto-currency as a basis for preservation

Although I have great respect for the technology underlying crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin, I've been skeptical for some time as to its viability as a product in the market both as a currency and as the basis for peer-to-peer storage proposals such as Permacoin and MaidSafe. The attraction of crypto-currencies is their decentralized nature, but if they become successful enough to be generally useful, economies of scale lead to their centralization. It was easy to get caught up in the enthusiasm as Bitcoin grew rapidly, but:

Bitcoin was the worst investment of 2014, as its value halved.

Bitcoin's hash rate had been growing exponentially since the start of 2013 but has been approximately flat for the last quarter, indicating that investment in new mining hardware has dried up.

The reason for investment drying up is likely that the revenue from mining is less than a third of what it was.

The Bitcoin market capitalization dropped from $11B to $4.4B.

Even if you don't accept my economies of scale arguments, these numbers should temper your enthusiasm for basing peer-to-peer storage on a crypto-currency.