Bitcoin Forum

Do you imagine to mine Bitcoins (or any other alt coin) using your own smartphone or tablet? This would probably be ASIC chips integrated on smartphones and tablets. I imagine myself mining with a smartphone at 200 GH/s (the hashrate is just an example) Could this be possible in the future? I'm curious to know....What are your thoughts?  ::)

ASIC chips on a smartphone or tablet is not going to happen, I think. Imagine walking with a smartphone miner on your pocket, running at full speed will likely give you a device for cooking eggs on that, and because of the heat generated for mining, the other parts of your smartphone or table could be damaged as well. In the end, you'll have a paperweight smartphone because of mining. Not feasible I think, even if there is an embedded 10nm chip for mining on that. Temp issues is one of the reasons I see why it wouldn't be possible to create one.

Have you checked the size of newest ASIC devices? What do you see there? I see huge blocks. If it was possible to build them small, then they would have built em small.

Even if it is possible, how much do you think the price will be? I answer this for you too, It will be 10x or 100x expensive and which will make whole mining thing meaningless.

tldr: not worth.

Rumor has it that Qualcomm's 21Inc. is working on this.

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/10/bitcoin-company-raises-166m-including-qualcomm-investment-report.html

It is not logical to put miners into portable devices. Why would you want that? They consume to much power and produce too much heat and it is basically useless to carry them around when you can have them safely sitting at home..

I totally agree. However that seems to be what qualcomm wants anyway. The theory is that they could sell you a router cheep, however the router will work for them, hashing away for the rest of it's life. I guess they think it will be very profitable over it's lifetime?
I would rather see hardware wallets in all sorts of electronics. Maybe that is in the plans also, but they are not saying. 

Well the last thing I heard is that you can mine with your toasters at home. It could happen to your phone to but it wouldn't be feasible to say the least.  ::)

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

That might be possible, just not for Bitcoin. There are much softer algorithms and who knows? There might be a new one (mobile device friendly) around the corner. The device would need to be connected to power to run the chip, however

Despite this, I don't see anything similar happening in near future.

I tried running a mobile bitcoin miner on my smartphone (quadcore 2 ghz) and I got 7mh/s haha. After a few minutes, my phone gets hot so I stopped. Even if it's connected to a power source, the main issue on such a device would be overheating (unless manufacturers of this kind of device would find a workaround for this).

It all depends of demand and possible business. If some of the big players will see opportunity then they will put focus and money there. I do not think it will happen as there is not such demand on the market now.
With today technology and power consumption of ASIC chips it is not possible.

There are a few reasons why I believe this won't work.

1. The heat produced from it. You could not hold it in your hand because you would actually be burned, so the smartphone is rendered useless as you could not hold it. Plus the noise it would make.

2. You would get an insignificant amount of Bitcoin. Your phone would mine so little that it wouldn't be close to worth it. I have a few miners hooked up for fun just to get a few thousand satoshis worth of crypto every now and then. But with a phone I estimate it wouldn't mine any where near that amount.

Cool idea, maybe portable miners would be cool. About the size of a raspberry pi that you could take over and show to your friend run off of a battery that charges like a phone. But having a phone be a miner, not yet.

It is completely unfeasible.

With the mining difficulty going up and the halving approach, it would be simply a waste of hardware and energy.

Besides, with the heat generated the device wouldn't last long...

Mobile devices can be used for staking coins. And that is one of the developments we will be seeing in a near future!

This is a decent idea, but it will have to remain an idea.

As mentioned by other people in the past:

The heat generated will destroy the machine, as well as burn or melt most things to come in contact with it burning daily use.
This can be hypothetically circumvented by having an external attachment connected to the phone be the ASIC and have it be cooled via liquid nitrogen or similar elements, however it would be incredibly inefficient when you compare the profit of the mining to the operating cost of the machine.

The BTC generated from the ASIC mining within the phone would be minute, multiple times worse than mining on some low-to-mid range CPUs, which are already inefficient when it comes to mining.
This can't be changed until phones reach the same power high-end PCs currently possess. Integrating an ASIC to a phone at the factory won't make sense until cryptocurrencies are mainstream, which still seems far off.

The biggest issue I have is the cost. Instead of integrating an ASIC into a phone, why not take the same cash and buy a GPU or similar hardware and mine off of that? Sure it may cost a bit more to start with, but it'll do better in the long run (not against a single ASIC but in comparison to a phone and ASIC combination) and may be used for other purposes, to an extent.

That's why such a thing will be impossible for Bitcoin, and it's not feasible with current technology chips... Although I still think it will be difficult to implement such a thing, it probably won't be technically impossible in the future. And we all know that some smartphone makers like to pile up their newest flagships with things that might not be of general use just to be the first ones...

Yep, even though it is not a necessity to be included, smartphone manufacturers like to embed something out of the ordinary.. just to be the first in that field. It is not even worth it to put a mining chip in a smartphone because just what I already said, the heat generated from the mining chip would affect the nearby parts of the phone.

But who do you think will be the first in this field? Samsung? Google? Sony? or Nokia?

Depends who wants to make their own currency first.

We never know, there might be a silent race among all the technology companies to develop an ASIC that can be put in phones, and we'll get big reveals in a few years. Personally, though, I'd doubt that would happen for a fairly long time.

Besides the heat, I'd never do it because I want my battery to last more than an hour.  It dies fast enough as is it.  Add to that mining plus constant wifi use and kiss that battery goodbye.

Not for Bitcoin directly but perhaps for a low energy side-chain to communicate with other phones like a mesh network.
But that is development that will happen sometime a bit far out in the future.

Mesh networks like this could thrive on mobile, provided the app brings something new to the table

Google is open to accepting new things, not sure on their stance in regards with bitcoins.

There always is a silent race happening among these companies in terms of new features and and whatnot. ASIC? I don't think they will think about it in the near future.


Not only will you say goodbye to your battery, but also to your phone as well because of the constant stress that it is producing for just running the chip embedded on it.  ::)

Maybe there could be a new cooling system for smartphones and tablets that would use liquid cooling to prevent overheating. That way you could mine all day long and never have to worry about your device getting hot.

Above all this, I was thinking of a system where you can mine coins by each step you make. Similar to the pedometer feature on the 3DS on which you earned some "play coins" at a rate of one per 100 steps measured by the built in pedometer. Take a look at this here: http://www.ign.com/wikis/nintendo-3ds/Play_Coins (http://www.ign.com/wikis/nintendo-3ds/Play_Coins)

That would be awesome  ::)

Mining would be too battery consuming and produce too much heat. But perhaps staking, or a mix between staking and mining would be possible.

It doesn't make sense

These devices are purpose to have a low comsuption,and an ASIC doesn't give that

It would be completely pointless - why carry around a hot ASIC that drains your battery in 14 seconds? Just plug 1 or 100 in at home and let them run 24/7.

better to stick with the idea of a mining bulb than wasting energy for your phone, all those mining activity are pointless anyway, you will not even earn the tiny amount of the worse faucet out there

i think this kind of stuff should've have been dore before when bitcoin was more new and diff was lower, i believe that it would have been better for the adoption of bitcoin also..