Bitcoin Forum

21 inc. Is going to give away free or cheap appliances that will mine bitcoin for you and them.  75% of bitcoins to 21 inc. And 25% to the consumer.  This will put bitcoin into ordinary people's pockets.  Can't wait to see that program roll out! 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/06/bubblicious_bitcoin_bonkers_business_bods/

It'll backfire on 21inc. It'll only be a matter of time before someone hacks/patches the one line of code that sends them their 75% and releases it 8n the wild.

Disclaimer: I didn't read the link since I'm on the road, so I may be talking out of my ass :P

The article is just speculation. 21 hasn't revealed their plan yet.

YOu know whether 21 inc is gonna do that or not, I think it really is a pretty great idea. It'll make profit for the company and bring bitcoin to more people. Win-Win.

This is an interesting thought. They really have to make sure people aren't able to do this. I think it's not enough to encrypt for example the transmission of the hashes, you'd have to limit the ASIC's capability of finding arbitrary hashes, which may be impossible... Also, I'm not really sure whether the appliances are active long enough to actually mine a significant amount of coins!

I don't think this will work. It seems to far fetched.

If I were 21 Inc I would just set it up like a pool. The toaster hashes away and valid shares are sent to a central server and that is the extent of the device itself. Then behind the scenes at 21 they divide up the bitcoins keeping 75% for themselves and 25% to the consumer so that it would be impossible for the consumer to give themselves 75%.

Electricity cost would put you in a negative profit every month.  I think the idea is to get these into peoples houses that arnt bitcoin experts and don't understand how much electricity ASICs use.

What if the consumer (a very malevolent consumer, e.g. thieves, criminals, etc.) manage to get those free appliances and just use the ASIC chips embedded in those devices. That way they would've gotten the mining hardware for free. The ASIC still has to solve hashes the good old way, they could just go and 'hijack' the ASIC, and circumvent the device transferring the PoW shares to the 21 server!

This. It might be beneficial to those few people who have "free" electricity, but the way things are now (difficulty + price) it seems only not-so-experts would fall for it.

Good point, I didn't think of that. Touche!

i'd be happier about turning on my air conditioner if it could get me some bits.

I think the point is that they're going to be using the electricity anyways.  (Heater)

you will lose more money then anything else, even if you actually need your air conditioner, because who is not aware of the earning, will keep turned on their appliances longer than usual

I think in the future we'll see mining done by "the internet of things". Like as Gavin said, even simple stuff like a coffee cup could generate energy to mine some Bitcoins. You get warm coffee while mining some Bitcoin. This multiplied to anything that generates heat due the mining and you end up making some decent sats for doing things you would be doing anyway.

They could just write it via a ROM.. then good luck "patching" it.  Once soldering is involved 99.9% of people won't mod it.

If the device is capable of hasing at like 400-500F.. the idea would be to use the heat to cook your food.  It would be a zero power change except you would be mining btc as well as cooking.. It is a pretty damn good idea.

If the idea is just to attach a miner to a toster it is the stupidest idea I have ever heard.

Putting a miner on an AC unit is a big no, that legit makes zero sense.