Bitcoin Forum

i really like that device.
its a little bit to expensive right now... but we need devices like this to make mining distributed ;)

a few questions / ideas:
 - is it pool mining or solo (i'd prefer solo...but that would just be a lottery)
 - is it possible to sell that device cheaper but make it mining to your address (if you dont have direct access to that device it would still be distributed mining as you dont have a chance to harm the bitcoin network)?
 - a version with an qr scanner and a few buttons for normal shops would be nice

native hardware ... support for the Bitcoin protocol

Very nice device but way too expensive! Who will have incentives to use this at this price?

This does seem pretty sweet, but I really want to learn more about it. 

https://21.co/faq/ (https://21.co/faq/)

https://21.co/faq/ (https://21.co/faq/)

Seems like this is designed to facilitate microtransactions but during recent blocksize debate everyone is saying microtransactions will be dead  ???

Seems like this is designed to facilitate microtransactions but during recent blocksize debate everyone is saying microtransactions will be dead  ???

Still very vague. I can't seem to udnerstand how will this facilitate Bitcoin payment integration in websites, as it apparently does. Why should a merchant opt for this instead of BitPay, Electrum payment functionality, just giving out an address, etc?

0.16 Joules per Gigahash and can calculate 50-125 Gigahashes per second.[/i]"

I really don't think anyone with any knowledge would buy this purely on the mining factor, and I don't think that's what they are pushing for.

This is amazing  :o

I really don't think anyone with any knowledge would buy this purely on the mining factor, and I don't think that's what they are pushing for.

then why add mining chip that would just be a pure loss?

I understand, but they are extremely vague as to what makes this device unique vs any other marketplace where one can sell their goods and services for bitcoin with their regular computer.

The only thing that would make sense is if these devices had some unique advantage where they were given privy to directly sell excess bandwidth to Qualcomm devices.  


The only purpose of the mining chip is to facilitate non-bitcoin users the ability to use the bitcoin blockchain without buying bitcoin. Unfortunately this device isn't marketed for this demo so is very puzzling indeed.

Perhaps they intended to create routers and utilities but after testing couldn't pull off their vision so had to release something.

It is not a marketplace. It is a platform for internet content monetization and device-to-device micropayments.

Why does one need hardware to facilitate this when software on existing hardware can facilitate the same?

We don't have a price on it would you really be willing to purchase one for 100$? Bitmain is definitely taking its time with it as well.

Read here:

https://medium.com/@21dotco/a-bitcoin-miner-in-every-device-and-in-every-hand-e315b40f2821

Thanks, but I read that back in May and it is vague as well. It appears they are dumping their unfinished device onto the community hoping that someone else can find a purpose for it. I have to think of very creative solutions to possibly turn a profit with this thing.

Well if they can't they could always pump out miners with that chip that currently outperforms the S7's chips.

How else do you enable true micropayment possibilities than by allowing ubiquitous access to mining?

How else do you enable true micropayment possibilities than by allowing ubiquitous access to mining?

These folks are very, very clever.

Bring back ability to send dust without fees maybe?

So you are suggesting their definition of microtransactions is less than 10 cents which is prohibitively expensive to send right now with fees being 2 pennies?
What does this hardware have to do with sending dust, why not just use one of many services like changetip to send microtransactions or is this going to be a decentralized caching layer for micro-transactions that doesn't use an off the chain solution(like the lightning network)?

The perfect compliment for this "bitcoin computer" would be a few of those "mining lightbulbs" so you can see your money being wasted more clearly.

There are reasons why that is not possible and that would be a hack anyway.

By participating hashing power to 21inc mining pool (as negligible as it could be) they will aggregate all of their embedded chips and Bitcoin computer devices micropayments and include them into blocks they mine.

If that is the case , that is a creative solution that also allows bitcoin to scale more (If and only if the process is decentralized and acting like a caching layer). They are really horrible about explaining this simple idea in their marketing I do say.

Nope it does not work at all. Its like having a webserver at your home so you can host your own cheap websites.

Think about it.

The economical method is to offer services to dust tx at a fixed monthly fee. ..... tada.... webhosting service..... lol

I ignored him long ago when he started on the block size debate, it was so obvious with his stupid signature.

By participating hashing power to 21inc mining pool (as negligible as it could be) they will aggregate all of their embedded chips and Bitcoin computer devices micropayments and include them into blocks they mine.

The mining chip in all of this still doesn't make any sense, though :)

Neither the rasberry Pi hardware... why not simply release a marketplace which allows decentralized micropayments that eventually hit the blockchain?

It only makes sense if we assume that the mining chip allows people to get bitcoin without the hassle of buying it and their objective is to grow and strengthen the bitcoin ecosystem by decentralizing mining and increasing node count. Remember alot of these investors are bitcoin bagholders too and are probably concerned about the centralization of mining and node drop off...

It's also funny that you can't buy it with bitcoin (yet...) because they don't think bitcoin should be used for purchases like this.   ???

Someone give me 50 million dollars, I can come up with terrible ideas all day long for half the price of these guys.

By mining on their pool, with their device, your tx will always have high priority against all other tx from others users.
You have paid for this, and you will maintaining the pool and then the priority.

That's the point.

The device as it stand is a pilot, eventually the mining chips will be embedded right into your computer's motherboard.

By mining on their pool, with their device, your tx will always have high priority against all other tx from others users.
You have paid for this, and you will maintaining the pool and then the priority.

Exactly, and more importantly: you likely won't have to pay for transactions fees.

Neither the rasberry Pi hardware... why not simply release a marketplace which allows decentralized micropayments that eventually hit the blockchain?

It only makes sense if we assume that the mining chip allows people to get bitcoin without the hassle of buying it and their objective is to grow and strengthen the bitcoin ecosystem by decentralizing mining and increasing node count. Remember alot of these investors are bitcoin bagholders too and are probably concerned about the centralization of mining and node drop off...

Just create another damn altcoin ....problem solved.

Transactions that are not in the blockchain can be manipulated , reversed erased.
Coins that are not in your personal wallet are not your coins.

Trusting a 3rd party with your coins and transactions reminds me of....banks.

Nah, the raspberry pi type hardware makes a lot of sense.  The people they're targeting are likely already familiar with that sort of device (if not an rpi then a beaglebone black or a pcduino or etc.) and these devices make it pretty easy to just slap some other arbitrary hardware on there and have the device communicating with that hardware with very little effort.

At this point it isn't even clear if people are 'getting' bitcoin, or (as per my post) tokens-equivalent-to.  If they're not getting bitcoin then a payment portal to buy the tokens direct would be a lot simpler, cost effective for the end-user, etc.  If they are getting bitcoin indirectly (i.e. payout is to 21's pool) then that doesn't do much against mining centralization other than growing one of the existing players.  If they *are* getting bitcoin directly, then it's back to a whole bunch of microtransactions in blocks (as payout to the device owners) and a whole bunch of other mess.

Agreed on the node part, though.  As it is, I wish the hardware nodes available for commercial sale were more affordable.

And yes, this is commentary on this specific product :)

Just create another damn altcoin ....problem solved.

Transactions that are not in the blockchain can be manipulated , reversed erased.
Coins that are not in your personal wallet are not your coins.

Trusting a 3rd party with your coins and transactions reminds me of....banks.

The project is based around microtransactions. There's no reason you need full Bitcoin decentralization for these.

Caching layers like the lightning network(and perhaps 21s micropayment server???) are not off the chain and can be made as secure as on the chain transactions. I recommend you read up on what makes them different.

That's the point.

The device as it stand is a pilot, eventually the mining chips will be embedded right into your computer's motherboard.

The "lighting network" has to major flaws of let's say weaknesses  , time and spam.
With the current 1-8 mb block debate I wouldn't take a bet on it as a solution.

As for a mining chip on my motherboard -- no thanks.

it is ridiculous to spend 1.77 BTC for a device that will generate less than 0.03 BTC per month (less electricity cost). It is far more effective to buy the BTC directly.

As for running a full node, there are much cheaper alternatives: http://raspnode.com/


As for a mining chip on my motherboard -- no thanks.

Some might ask why a device engineer would desire such a thing. Isn’t the purpose of bitcoin mining simply to get rich — or not, as the case may be? Well, at 21 we are less concerned with bitcoin as a financial instrument and more interested in bitcoin as a protocol — and particularly in the industrial uses of bitcoin enabled by embedded mining.

And wait several hours to get your transaction included into a rare 21inc block?

It isn't about breaking even by using the hashing power as a revenue model.


https://medium.com/@21dotco/a-bitcoin-miner-in-every-device-and-in-every-hand-e315b40f2821

That's all fine and well... but you are discussing the future and we are discussing this product and whether people should buy it or not.
There are better ways to be altruistic to support the bitcoin ecosystem if that is what you are implying.

Yes, full nodes are good too, but I still think this is a good way to support the network, albeit an expensive one.

Yes, full nodes are good too, but I still think this is a good way to support the network, albeit an expensive one.

That's not the point, if you have read the article and can't see how a whole range of engineers and developers would be interested in the capacities of such a setup then there's really not much I can do to help you figure it out.

If your question is whether random joe and his buddies should be buying this device then obviously the answer is no.

IT IS NOT A CONSUMER DEVICE

Only if these miners mined on a p2p pool or solo-mined and encouraged decentralization of mining. It seems to be that it will merely grow one of the large mining pools however and one of the pools that people cannot direct their hashing power away from unlike some of the others.

If you simply wanted to hash to support the network you would be better off buying an s7 and mining yourself on p2p pool and possibly breaking even and turning a profit (provided cheap electricity) rather than only making back 20% of your investment (assuming free electric with 21)

I never said it was effectively helping the network. But it is helping. Not very well, but helping.

I wonder where the targeted markets and customers are for this product. So far, I have seen here people said it was an interesting product, but no one said that he would buy one. It seems everyone is hoping someone else but himself will buy it.

They're currently mining 3-4 blocks a day. Enough to regularly settle millions of microtransactions on chain. Think of it like a payment channel maybe?

Moreover, if they succeed in their plan to embed mining chips into every internet connected devices I can imagine that could eventually considerably increase their share of the mining market.

BTW, the 21 inc computer is for pre-order at the moment...
Personally, I have a bit of strange feeling about the term "pre-order" in bitcoin mining world...

By mining on their pool, with their device, your tx will always have high priority against all other tx from others users.
You have paid for this, and you will maintaining the pool and then the priority.

A new approach to micropayments.

Silicon-as-a-service.

Decentralized device authentication.

Machine Twitter.

Devices that can pay for associated services.
Devices that can pay your channel partners.

Bitcoin-subsidized devices for the developing world.

$400 seems a little expensive for a modded RPi2?

also, can you buy this thing with bitcoin? no? well...

The 21 Bitcoin Computer

Today we’re announcing a new kind of device for sale: the 21 Bitcoin Computer...

They're currently mining 3-4 blocks a day. Enough to regularly settle millions of microtransactions on chain. Think of it like a payment channel maybe?

Yes, you can indeed make a profit with the 21 Bitcoin Computer. However, you would do so not by directly selling bitcoin, but by selling digital goods for bitcoin. That is, you are not going to get rich by immediately selling the bitcoin mined by the device for offline currency, but you can potentially do very well by selling digital goods and services to others for their bitcoin.

LiteCoinGuy, you work for 21?

What's the expected ROI (in time) on this $400 machine. And don't tell me "well that depends on...", of course it depends on a lot of things, but any company that wants to sell something will do the assumptions for us and let us know how quickly this machine brings home the profit!

Wow, what a freaking scam! I was kind of borderline with this whole thing, but flat out deceiving people like that is just wrong.

"you can potentially do very well by selling digital goods..." So that has NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS 21 COMPUTER THEN!

It's like saying "Yes, you can indeed make a profit with McDonalds Big Macs. However you would do so not by directly eating the Big Macs, but by working somewhere and getting paid to do so."

Virtualized symmetric multiprocessing! ESX!
Imagine a global virtualized hypercomputer with on-the-fly negotiable capacity,
participating nodes being rewarded with Bitcoins for being part of that virtual computer.
i.e. Build a singular massively distributed global scale supercomputer to blow amazon Amazon's EC2 out of the water.
A global scale cloud computing cluster using excess capacity sourced from consumer grade, consumer owned hardware. Building the next generation computer.
Bigger than any datacenter.
USING BITCOIN TO TURN THE INTERNET INTO ONE BIG COMPUTING MACHINE.
HOLY ****** SHIT!
"YOU ARE ONLY USING 10%... would you like some Bitcoin?"

So I'm thinking...
There are billions of computers in the world today. We are putting millions more online every single day.
How much of the global pool of internet-connected computing resources
[compute, storage, bandwidth, memory]
is idle (i.e. just going to waste, generating heat) at any particular time?
Well, most of it.
21's "Grand plan" could involve putting these idle, wasteful computing resources to some productive use.
If this is technically feasible, it's the biggest business plan since... I don't even know.
Balaji has said, "Bitcoin is bigger than google." i.e. if google pointed 100% of their computing resources at Bitcoin mining, they'd have 1% of the network. And nobody could understand what he was on about.
Google datacenters are general purpouse computing hardware, SHA-256 miners only do one thing.
It's often said: You're only using 10% of your brain. That is false. But most of your neurons are running idle.
Running NOPs. Waiting for work to come by.
If 21 could unlock the metaphorical (or actual) 90% of computing resources that are being wasted,
and put a good fraction to some productive use. That would obviously be a huge, huge, huge deal.
Bitcoin provides the economic incentive to unlock these resources.
You could be rewarded with satoshis or millibits by the second or by the minute.
For letting 21 borrow your hardware and renting it out.
What if, instead of simply building more computers,
we use bitcoins as the economic lubricant to utilize
the unused capacity of hundreds of millions of computers
running on idle in homes, schools, offices and datacenters.
So you can agree to throw those spare compute resources at protein folding or business problems,
Turning your machine (PC, server, laptop, router, fridge) into a part-time node in a global virtual supercomputer.
You pimp out your hardware to google so that they don't have to build that new expensive datacenter, but use your home computer instead.
No worrying about cooling costs!
The world is filled with increasingly powerful computing devices.
Most of them doing nothing, most of the time.
See for yourself:
If you happen to be on a Windows machine:
Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete.
Go to task manager.
Show processes from all users.
Sort by CPU time.
At the top... you'll find "System idle process.", likely at 80-90%
On Linux/Mac you can use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_(software), for example.
Hey! Is that 90% of your CPU time going to waste? (Oh no! Think of the environment!)
How much of your available bandwidth are you using right now?
Less than 10%? Less than 1%?
Your processors are running idle for the majority of the time.
Most of your available bandwidth is unused, right this very moment.
The case of Google and shrinking hardware cost

One of the more important clever things Google did when starting out was....
using consumer hardware. not crazy expensive server hardware.
Normal consumer HDDS, farms of normal PCs to crawl the web.
Brilliant, in retrospect.
This brought costs way down. This made Google feasible.
Perhaps Google could hire [a part of] 21's computer in the sky to run MapReduce or other algorithms, maybe not.
You'd presumably be limited to Embarrassingly parallel problems.
But many important problems are embarrassingly parallel.
see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects
or any distributed computing project you care to think about.
21 could bring not thousands, but millions and eventually billions of computers, to bear on problems, by working in their spare time. Using idle CPU cycles. Because you can reimburse the worker nodes in BTC.
You'll get paid for it! Current distributed computing projects cannot reward contributors with money.
This one can.
Using BTC transactions to negotiate use of spare computing resources (Storage, CPU, Bandwidth) for unknown applications. We can build a global supercloud.
The general public still has no idea what their business plan is.
But this could be one piece of it.
A note on Bayesian inference:

From the set of all possible hypotheses, describing all possible worlds that fit the available evidence,
which hypotheses are more likely to be true, given what we know?
When judging the probability of hypotheses being true based on partial evidence.
Building an "internet-sized computer" isn't the only hypothesis that fits the evidence...
...but it knocks making toasters out of the park.
...so 21 is SKYNET?

Very obviously, 21 Inc. is not simply about putting chips in people's hardware to make money off of mining.
Perhaps then, 21 is hoarding Bitcoins to PAY PEOPLE for RENTING OUT their GENERAL (not application specific) computing hardware for BTC.
Perhaps they are putting BTC hardware wallets and SHA-256 miners in routers and SoC silicon.
For some unrevealed future use.
...Sidechains and micropayments

This one is obvious. No Skynet on the mainchain. Not with 1MB blocks.
--> Enter Lightning networks.
But 21 Inc. has already mined > 65K BTC, according to year-old data.
For themselves? Or... to pay the worker nodes of Skynet.
...encrypt everything:

Every work unit delivered by 21/skynet would need strong unbackdoored, unbreakable encryption.
Which imbues the whole "Golden Key" encryption backdoor debate with new importance.
Privacy... Is a solvable problem. You can distribute your business secrets
IFF there is unbackdoored, trustworthy encryption.
...getting grandma to use Bitcoin.

With SoC integration (Intel, Qualcomm) and hardware wallets grandma will be using Bitcoin,
if she buys the latest laptop. This is their "phase #3", so perhaps a five years to a decade out?
...Think bigger

21's gameplan is definitely a multi year, likely a multi decade play.
Endgame: In 2030, most grid-connected computers will be part of THE COMPUTER.
Tesla/Powerwall future citywide storage and excess electricity.

Excess power plays into it. 21's Skynet wants to profitably use that excess power.
One internet-sized computer. Powered by Bitcoin.
And this is why Qualcomm and Intel's CEO are involved in 21.

This device could be the start of the internet of things. This specific device is made for developers and people that want to get in on the ground floor. This is obviously not the device that your grandmother will use. Once 21 Inc proves functionality more businesses will jump in on this model of hub and spoke with using the onchain blockchain as the settlement layer to decentralize this process once again.

Here is some additional food for thought:

well its a investment like 400 $ to get 0.80 per day into 500 days you roi... well lets be general good on this a 500 days to return of investment its prettiy damn difficlut to invest like 400$ and besides a bit of eletrecity im not sure im gonna raise those 400 i think a bit but into 3 months i chage ideas?.

little machines autonomously making money online, is this the beginnings of skynet?

http://static.rogerebert.com/redactor_assets/pictures/far-flung-correspondents/james-camerons-great-double-feature/terminator2_cyborg_shiny.jpg
                Buy 21 bitcoins or die!

that would be a good TV commercial  ;)

Raspberri pi:  $35
63 GH/s antminer U3: $20
128GB SD card: $25
wifi dongle $10
total hardware: $90

21 microcomputer $400.00???

Raspberri pi:  $35
63 GH/s antminer U3: $20
128GB SD card: $25
wifi dongle $10
total hardware: $90

21 microcomputer $400.00???

1. Raspberry Pi 2: $35
 2. 128 GB memory card: $75.95
 3. Raspberry Pi B+ Power Supply: $6.99
 4. Raspberry Pi WIFI Adapter: $8.56
 5. Raspberry Pi Cooling Fan: $7.99
 6. USB to TTL Serial Cable: $9.95
 7. Heat sink: $10
 8. 125 gh/s USB miner: $93
...
The total cost of these components is $247.44

You're underestimating costs. This breakdown seems more accurate:

http://samuelrpatterson.com/breakdown-of-hardware-costs-for-new-21-inc-bitcoin-computer/
link posted by HostFat earlier in this thread.

main problem: people dont understand the vision of that company.

main problem: people dont understand the vision of that company.

thats right; IMHO their website lacks information...

[ ] This is the fault of the (non) customers for being too stupid (or just not psychic enough)

[ ] This is the fault of the company for not communicating its vision effectively.

What's the point of including a miner that will never pay for itself?

If you need internet access, why not just use more efficient cloud-based APIs?

Can the blockchain ever scale to handle machine-to-machine micro-payments?

Can a RPi2-class CPU handle a bitcoin full node when bitcoin will have been scaled to handle machine-to-machine micro-payments? (ie. several orders of magnitude more tx per second)

$400 seems a little expensive for a modded RPi2?

also, can you buy this thing with bitcoin? no? well...

They state that it will give a trickle of bitcoin to use for dev and testing and expenditures (the pool brings constant payments in instead of an unreliable hit every x days / 6 hours and I believe they state they don't take a portion of the coins).

I guess anyone that is technically capable of running this thing already have enough hardware to setup the similar function with dedicated platform and much higher performance

The unique part is that trading platform (built-in and close sourced), which does not make lots of sense since other dedicated trading solutions already exists today

I would more like to see a POS terminal which accept mobile bitcoin payment, but that is also not necessary since anyone can setup a tablet with much lower cost

There are so many rich people in this world, 21 Inc. just proved that  ;D

It's just a nice Toy, nothing more...

Who would sell his S5 with PSU and buy back this?

For the people who can allow throwing money away, this is great.
If you do your  math, you will never buy this

Wait, you can't buy it with bitcoin? For all they seem to be trying to promote bitcoin, that's pretty dumb...

Conceptually, we believe that embedded mining will ultimately establish bitcoin as a fundamental system resource on par with CPU, bandwidth, hard drive space, and RAM. That is, one can imagine the ultimate thin client in which a system designer consciously chooses a relatively slow CPU but a relatively strong 21 mining chip, using the bitcoin generated therein to purchase computation in the cloud.

Pretty exciting times. If this all plays out like 21 inc envisions it 11/16/2015 will go down in history as the start of the IoT.

If you want a positive outlook on how these devices could be used check out the retweets of their CEO here: https://twitter.com/balajis

If you want the negative just think in pure fiat and commercialized mining terms: These will never ever ROI on their mining capabilities (not that they were meant to...see the big picture here guys).

I'd say this paragraph from the medium post (https://medium.com/@21dotco/a-bitcoin-miner-in-every-device-and-in-every-hand-e315b40f2821) sums up the aim most concisely:


Although I suspect by the time this vision gets close to becoming viable, the present hardware they've got on offer might be somewhat outdated.  It's almost as though they're selling a direction or a mindset, rather than a finished product.  They've got a long road ahead of them to reach that kind of outcome.  Still, I can see the potential if they can make it work.

The price is way over the top to get an internet of things going.. But surely machines like this will boost the node count significantly.

How would updating this thing go?

You can purchase it with Bitcoin through Purse.io if you really want to.

https://twitter.com/PurseIO/status/646075586838814720

This is a pilot program, a devkit for developers, it is not aimed at mass production or consumers.

Personally I don't see potential for this specific usage scenario, because it is based on irrational assumptions: Why would a customer that wants processing power pay extra for a strong mining chip to purchase cloud processing power in a second step, if he could just pass on the mining chip and instead invest the funds directly in a more powerful CPU? That makes no sense for the customer - it only makes sense for 21, because they can profit from a) higher profit margins by selling their own simple-to-design mining chips and saving money on low-margin third party CPU, b) profit from (exorbitant) pool fees of their mining customers, and possibly c) profit from offering/mediating cloud computing services matched with their products.

ya.ya.yo!

When will we get the next product and what will it be?

The next product won't be one you purchase, it will be embedded chips right into your computer, your cellphone, your IoT devices.

That's not the point, they should be accepting bitcoin directly through their site, not relying on a third party.

Why can't I buy the 21 Bitcoin Computer with BTC?
Patience - we will be adding support for this! However, the deeper answer is that we think payment in BTC is not as big an improvement at the present time over standard ways to purchase macroscopic physical goods. Offline currencies are fairly well adapted for that use case. We believe that where Bitcoin really shines is for micropayments, as a medium of exchange for digital goods and services.

Sounds cool, any ETA?

Ever heard of "on-demand"?

For on-demand to work efficiently from the cloud requires a good internet connection. People in remote areas still don't have that, and people on the move often have to rely on 3G/4G. 3G/4G connections depend on how close the nearest transmitter is, and are partially blocked by buildings, trees, and rain. That specific usage scenario of using mining chips and cloud computing services wouldn't work for anyone using 3G/4G with bad reception. People outside urban areas wouldn't buy into it because it would be unlikely to work for them.

Ever heard of "on-demand"?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/3lxrkg/all_the_comedy_gold_youll_need_to_know_about_from/

After months of suspense, the company finally revealed what market they were after:
Integrated Devices for the Internet of Things (IDIoTs).

Ok, here's what they can do: they're running a proprietary micropayments server so mocrotransactions won't all be directly on the blockchain. That will limit blockchain bloat but centralize payments, defeating the purpose of crypto. The interesting possibility is that they will pay you in bitcoin for running a full node, even if you aren't mining much or at all. How the economics of this business model works out is still a mystery.

Basically this computer is a hardware interface to their microtransaction server. It's a debit card that you plug into the wall. It would be stupid but this is a debit card your toaster can use. hmm. I guess that would still make it stupid.

On-demand doesn't invalidate the argument, because the customer still needs to pay for it.

If the CPU is so weak that the customer constantly needs external processing power for everyday activities, purchasing them through Bitcoin generated (minus fees) on another chip he has to pay for first is highly inefficient, so buying a more powerful CPU makes much more sense. If the bundled CPU is still so powerful that the customer rarely if ever needs external processing power - what is the point in paying for an additional mining chip?

I see some potential for 21's products by providing a machine-to-machine payment infrastructure that facilitates for example purchasing digital content. However I fail to see demand for the scenario mentioned.

ya.ya.yo!

Yeah this is what it sounds like to me, but maybe there's something here I'm not getting. If 21 centralizes microtransactions doesn't that defeat the point of bitcoin in the first place? wouldn't they increase their exposure to legal/security issues as well? I'm probably not understanding their complete plan here.

There is a reason why we cannot fit millions of micro/nano transactions on the blockchain.

What is this reason?

What is this reason?

What is this reason?

With regard to mining, you are better off buying two Antminer U3s for $40 instead a 21 device for $400.

Good thing the point of these device is absolutely not to earn revenue through mining subsidy

The description of 21 Bitcoin Computer lacks solid vision of its purpose, maybe you could explain what IT-industry niche this device will shine in?

The description of 21 Bitcoin Computer lacks solid vision of its purpose, maybe you could explain what IT-industry niche this device will shine in?

I thought this article did a good job of explaining what these could be...
https://medium.com/@21dotco/a-bitcoin-miner-in-every-device-and-in-every-hand-e315b40f2821

That article is misleading. I would argue on "A new approach to micropayments", "Decentralized device authentication" looks suspicious in the light of 21 Inc. ToS saying that they can collect any data and hand them over to legal authorities, other bullet points don't sound good too...

Needs more info i'll agree but it is preorders and I think this initial round is very developer centric and test bed while they fine tune a more cut down device.. I guess consider it like an occulus rift dev kit?

How is it misleading?

It was and is easy to understand the vision of OR.

The Bitcoin Computer is a dev kit. A prototype for engineers and developers to tinker with and develop future use cases. The possibilities are endless, 21inc is not concerned with creating the tools to enable these use cases.

I thought this article did a good job of explaining what these could be...
https://medium.com/@21dotco/a-bitcoin-miner-in-every-device-and-in-every-hand-e315b40f2821

Overall impression after reading that article is much better than impression I've got after reading the description of the final product. Dunno why, but I feel sorry for 21 Inc. engineers who aimed such great goals but seem to fail to achieve most of them. For me it looks like there was set a hard deadline and the engineers were forced to release a half-baked product, I believe 3-6 months more and they would come with a much better solution...

Well, I think I'll step back into the shadows and let others to express their disappointment.

There are simply too many lucrative opportunities for 21inc to be bothered with  ;).

I read comments, almost everybody bury this device. If nobody in Bitcointalk wants to buy I wonder who will they sell these for? Almost everybody who use Bitcoin in the world have an account here. People read this thread and decide not to buy.

Maybe you just need to accept that this product is not addressed to you or any regular consumer for that matter...?

On the other hand I see a trove of engineers/developers pretty excited about it on Twitter.

I thought this article did a good job of explaining what these could be...
https://medium.com/@21dotco/a-bitcoin-miner-in-every-device-and-in-every-hand-e315b40f2821

The price is absolutely incompetitive. Chinese will make it (if this product is good  ???) much cheaper - so where is a profit?
To my mind it's a great laundering of money, my condolences for investors.

The price is absolutely incompetitive. Chinese will make it (if this product is good  ???) much cheaper - so where is a profit?
To my mind it's a great laundering of money, my condolences for investors.

This "Bitcoin computer" is obviously not their business model.

21inc. project involves a whole new paradigm of machine-to-machine value transfer and integration into IoT.

Now you might think IoT is a gimmick (I did for awhile) but what 21inc. is trying to do brings a whole new aspect to it.

What OR was/is doing was nothing particularly groundbreaking. The execution is but the vision is something people had envisioned for a long, long time.

Your shilling couldn't be any more obvious. "Whole new paradigm" HA!

Ordinarily, that would be through creation of an account on the company's server, which is hackable.  For 21, authorization to access service X might be a function of a 1 satoshi transaction to the 21 servers from the BTC computer.

The latter is fundamentally less hackable than the former how exactly?

Sounds like smoke and mirrors to me, or an attempt put some sort of new spin on a fairly routine business (running a server to process transactions) in order to justify a higher valuation the way companies like Square claim to be doing "payments innovation" but they are really just signing up merchants and getting credit card processing commissions (i.e. smoke and mirrors also).

Sounds like a centralized payment system that is superior to the old centralized payment system primarily from the perspective of someone who manages to place himself at the new center.

One use authentication through blockchain transactions, the other through login/pw  ???

Slow news week. This gadget is getting more attention than it deserves.

"I can't use this thing! It's worthless!"

The latter is fundamentally less hackable than the former how exactly?

Sounds like smoke and mirrors to me, or an attempt put some sort of new spin on a fairly routine business (running a server to process transactions) in order to justify a higher valuation the way companies like Square claim to be doing "payments innovation" but they are really just signing up merchants and getting credit card processing commissions (i.e. smoke and mirrors also).

Sounds like a centralized payment system that is superior to the old centralized payment system primarily from the perspective of someone who manages to place himself at the new center.

The possibilities are endless, 21inc is concerned with creating the tools to enable these use cases.

Does this seem rather expensive for what it does?  It looks like a rasberry Pi, do you have demos or something, Why would I want this?

If you're asking the question then you probably don't want or need this.

If the possibilities are endless, give me a list of the top 100 uses please.

I swear it's like Balaji killed all you guys dog or something  ???

I hope for the sake of your relatives you don't have such a despicable attitude in real life  :-\ So much negativity, so much butthurt  :'(

Are you affiliated with 21 Inc. somehow?

They don't even know. Their own CEO said something to the effect that they want people to figure out on their own what to do with it.

I also find the pricing incredibly stupid. If they want to encourage people to invent and create an entire industry of they-don't-even-know-what using their chips, they should be selling it at cost or less. Why erect barriers to creative inventors with a high price point?

The only thing that really makes sense to me is what someone suggested earlier: There was a hard deadline to ship something (as a financing term or other contractual obligation) and this product is intended to satisfy that obligation, and not do much else.

Here’s my take…

The idea is to embed the mining chip in smartphones, tablets, routers, everything. (Which is why Qualcomm & Cisco are involved.)

The real target cost for the 21 chip is pennies, not dollars, not hundreds of dollars, certainly not $400.

And then drop the chip, embed the design in SoC’s and we’re talking fractions of a penny.

The “computer” is not a Bitcoin miner, it’s a devkit.

It’s a devkit for future devices which would have native Bitcoin support (wallets & coin-generation) for identification (private keys), and micro-transactions.

Today, content on the internet is powered by advertising. Because we lack microtransactions. Google & Facebook & Twitter are advertising companies. 21 aims to change that. The internet runs on advertising. 21 aims to change that.

Now, link unforgeable bitcoin private keys with biometric identification.

You just killed:

Passwords…
sign-ups…
e-mail confirmation…
login screens
I bet this would remove a ton of hassle and frustration from your whole online experience. Multiply this utility gain by a billion internet users.

So, give every internet user a source of fresh, unbought, newly generated Bitcoins → enable e-commerce without logins and sign-ups.

Well, no more need to keep customer data on file. Hey! You just killed identity theft in e-commerce. (Corporate and individual victims of identity-theft are grateful.)

You can shop online without revealing your name, address, phone number, birth date, mothers maiden name etc. etc. etc …to any and every new retailer.

It would be like buying a newspaper, in cash, no questions asked.

Just give them the money, get the good, and you’re done.

No questions. No secret questions. No maiden names.

This is generally impossible on the internet today,

(What is wrong with the world? We need to fix this!)

Why does every online retailer need all your personal data to sell you a digital good?

Because of credit cards & identity theft. And also because of advertising.

In this new simpler internet, they don’t need your personal data,

…so they shouldn’t have your personal data.

This points the way to a simpler and just plain better internet experience.

It points the way to an internet without friction between: “I want this digital good” and “I’m enjoying this digital good.” Games, books, streams, video, journalism. Any sort of digital content.

“Oh, but this is possible today.” Maybe it is, but only at a couple of select giant retailers like Amazon, using patented “technology”, and they’ve already made you go through that painful sign-up process and they have all your data on file.

With Bitcoin, we can make all online commerce like one-click shopping at Amazon.

Better for content-producers.

Better for internet users.

Visit a merchant. “Click to read this article.” Done.

This will reduces the friction between merchants and consumers to unnoticable levels. Boom! Superconductivity for e-commerce.

The 21 Inc. computer is not a mining device, it’s the Altair 8800 of a new Bitcoin powered internet.

The Altair 8800 was pretty much the shittiest computer.

But it launched that whole personal computer revolution.

That whole Bitcoin powered internet we talked about. It doesn’t exist yet.

It’s a possible future. And we have to build it.

If it works, it will remove a lot of dysfunctions and ineffieciencies and friction.

Why can’t you preload the 21 device? Because you don’t kill identity-theft if you bought the micro-bitcoins from someone else, instead of generating them yourself.

In the post-password future, you stop being your password and email address.

Instead, you become your private keys.

The Altair 8800 was pretty much the shittiest computer.

Isn't the point of bitcoin (micro or whole) anonymity? Now we need a hardware dongle to make it more anonymous?

The Altair analogy doesn't work at all.

That was created by a scrappy little company (<20 employees) on basically no budget and even then

"The Altair 8800 computer was a break-even sale for MITS"

It sold like hotcakes (maybe because at break-even it was a damn good value to hobbyists compared to DYI at the time, unlike 21 trying to sell $100 worth of DYI hardware for $400) forcing the company to massively expand just to deliver the orders. We'll see if that happens here. You know my guess (it won't). I doubt you are going to guess otherwise, but go ahead and make a prediction if you like.

If you read the actual history there is literally no similarity at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800

The real target cost for the 21 chip is pennies, not dollars, not hundreds of dollars, certainly not $400.

Drop the chip, embed the design in SoC’s and we’re talking fractions of a penny.

Good, when they get there I might be interested.

For now, how about drop the chip (and $400 clunker) and let people download an SDK instead.

The alternative to an Altair 8080 was to design and build you own computer at great difficulty without a kit, or not have a computer at all.

The alternative to this $400 clunker is to build essentially the same thing (or better) using readily available parts in an hour or two of setup time, for less money.

You have an interesting account tagline RE: sullen ground. Reminds me of a Bit Gold proponent.   ;)

For the miners or people with mining experience out there...

How much Bitcoin (a rough estimate) would a person be able to mine daily by using this?

you earn ~0.00055-0.0011 BTC/day or 12-24c/day ($7/mo max) with only 4c/day expense if you are at $0.1/kwh-pretty standard in US.
However, this is NOT a computer to mine, this is a computer to program stuff and GET PAID in bitcoin-maybe $hundreds or more/day.
How exactly-your imagination is the limit.

you earn ~0.00055-0.0011 BTC/day or 12-24c/day ($7/mo max) with only 4c/day expense if you are at $0.1/kwh-pretty standard in US.
However, this is NOT a computer to mine, this is a computer to program stuff and GET PAID in bitcoin-maybe $hundreds or more/day.
How exactly-your imagination is the limit.

These amaounts are really low with 400 dollars investment and also these btc computer can ship 16th November. Why will people buy this btc computer? I do not understand anything about it. I miss something.

you earn ~0.00055-0.0011 BTC/day or 12-24c/day ($7/mo max) with only 4c/day expense if you are at $0.1/kwh-pretty standard in US.
However, this is NOT a computer to mine, this is a computer to program stuff and GET PAID in bitcoin-maybe $hundreds or more/day.
How exactly-your imagination is the limit.

https://de.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3m0zp5/the_8_most_informative_comments_about_21incs/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3lv6zj/ama_request_ceo_of_21inc_balaji_srinivasan/cv9zq9q

That's a good point: Machines convert electricity into bitcoins and pay for services

Yes.
Soon your fridge will mine Bitcoins and order free food for you.

You purchase bitcoin through purchase electricity, thus bypass the exchange. But the cost of that machine is much higher than the electricity cost, so it must be sold together with home electronics

But micro transaction kills bitcoin network, so those micro transactions will be merged together at IOT manufacturer's central server and settled from there

So the manufacturer will exactly know what you are purchasing, reading etc.

This is not good for privacy.
I think this will not be very successful, probably just an attempt of offloading unneeded ASIC chips to dumb enough people..

A society of home electronics, trading against each other using bitcoin as official currency. But what you can buy from another machine?

Yes.
Soon your fridge will mine Bitcoins and order free food for you.

By the time your refrigerator generated enough bitcoin to buy 1 gallon of milk it will be so far in the future we probably won't need refrigerators any more.

By the time your refrigerator generated enough bitcoin to buy 1 gallon of milk it will be so far in the future we probably won't need refrigerators any more.

Looks like there is some demand for this product...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3m25ef/the_21_bitcoin_computer_is_1_seller_in_amazons/?sort=new

I like the idea of the Bitcoin Computer (looks awesome) but the only thing is that it is too expensive. With less than $400, I can set up a RPI and a decent miner. It's still good though, as it's a way to encourage other people to get interested on Bitcoin  :)

It's way to expensive to catch up. I don't know what their idea is and what market are they trying to target but I don't think this thing will ever appeal the average Joe. Seems like yet another thing that will only be used by the hardcore enthusiast Bitcoin fans.

This is what supporters on the thread don't understand. The price point and poor value are discouraging participation, exactly the opposite of what is needed for this to become important, and exactly the opposite of the Altair 8800 which was earlier cited as helping to spark a revolution in personal computing. The latter was not only priced very aggressively (at cost) but also was much easier than designing your own computer. It is just not the case that designing and building your own "Bitcoin Computer" is difficult or expensive (or even comparable cost)

They're targeting engineers and developers, the price point is irrelevant as they obviously don't expect typical Bitcoiners to buy this.

The price point is not irrelevant when you are trying to get people to experiment with something with no particular use case in mind. Honestly the best price point to encourage that kind of exploratory development is zero (i.e. SDK download). All you are doing by charging for unnecessary hardware (especially overpriced hardware) is introducing friction that discourages involvement.

No one has a strong need for this device because there are literally no existing use cases that it compellingly addresses. Without such a strong need the best approach is to remove friction to maximize the breadth of involvement and see what happens.

Developers and tinkerers currently have a massive barrier to entry with Bitcoin. Here is a simple scenario: Bob Tinker is building a prototype for a service and decides that the Bitcoin Blockchain would be a valuable tool for it, and for the right reasons he doesn't want to trust a third party API. First step is to get a full node running. For anyone that has done this you know it takes FOREVER to sync (think days). STRIKE ONE! Next he wants to try out his magic service but wait he needs some Bitcoin, he won't need much, just a few cents to pay transaction fees. In the US he would probably find his way to Coinbase. After giving them access to his bank account, probably a copy of his ID, social security number, and waiting for days (and praying it doesn't get "cancelled"). STRIKE TWO!. At some point Bob Tinker is going to throw his hands up and move on. Not only did the ecosystem miss out on Bob's mind hours, he is probably going to have a negative association next time Bitcoin comes up or a colleague asks about it. I hear variations of this scenario all the time. A device such as 21's development kit solves all of this out of the box, day one.

For anyone that has done this you know it takes FOREVER to sync (think days).

Next he wants to try out his magic service but wait he needs some Bitcoin, he won't need much, just a few cents to pay transaction fees. In the US he would probably find his way to Coinbase. After giving them access to his bank account, probably a copy of his ID, social security number, and waiting for days (and praying it doesn't get "cancelled").

That information is completely out of date and misleading.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-blockchain-initial-sync-time-dramatically-reduced-headers-first-sync/

"With this new feature, new users can be fully synced with Bitcoin Core closer to 4 hours, as opposed to 2 days on an average internet connection"


Secondly, if you want tiny amounts of bitcoin for experimenting with micropayemnts without dealing with an exchange you can buy a cheap USB miner for $50, not $400, but it really isn't clear you actually need Bitcoins to experiment because you can use testnet coins, or if the idea is to sell things online as a source of ("hundreds of dollars" or more of) income, you get other people to send the Bitcoins to you.

http://www.amazon.com/Bitmain-AntMiner-Bitcoin-Miner-Version/dp/B00TWK9208

That information is completely out of date and misleading.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-blockchain-initial-sync-time-dramatically-reduced-headers-first-sync/

"With this new feature, new users can be fully synced with Bitcoin Core closer to 4 hours, as opposed to 2 days on an average internet connection"

The mining feature is not very useful, so I'm curious why they included it. My guess is that the mining feature is simply a trojan horse designed to get more people to look at their platform.

So, that means that their product will be an embedded computer running a proprietary transaction system that may or may not use off-chain bitcoins. I expect the mining feature to be dropped.

Don't you think you're underestimating a bit the value of a device that just does all of this "out of the box"?

It seems to me you're really just trying to pick apart anything just for the sake of argument at this point.  

The story on this product -- as told --  just just doesn't fit together from my perspective at all. It is all based on hype grounded on no real customer value at all from what I can see.

Looks like there is some demand for this product...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3m25ef/the_21_bitcoin_computer_is_1_seller_in_amazons/?sort=new

I guess if you had the money and you were planning to spend it on a computer, and the sales person showed you a computer that would make you money, you would go for the

option that "makes" you money. There are a lot of scrupulous sales people out there and very ignorant customers. In the beginning the returns might be $0.50 per day, but it

will quickly go down to $0.00 once this takes off or just through natural growth in hashing power. It would have been cool if they included a upgrade path for better ASIC's.   

option that "makes" you money. There are a lot of scrupulous sales people out there and very ignorant customers. In the beginning the returns might be $0.50 per day, but it

there will be always a little demand for everything, but it will end up at best like trezor, which isn't requested to much

I would more like to see a POS terminal which accept mobile bitcoin payment, but that is also not necessary since anyone can setup a tablet with much lower cost

Make it US$ 50 to add a good SD card:

http://makezine.com/2015/09/24/the-9-computer-is-shipping-today/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10274005

You don't need an ASIC chip that will produce pennies and will never pay for itself.

Make it US$ 50 to add a good SD card:

http://makezine.com/2015/09/24/the-9-computer-is-shipping-today/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10274005

You don't need an ASIC chip that will produce pennies and will never pay for itself.

This computer is very interesting. It is small and very cheap. Makes it the perfect companion for development (and maybe Bitcoin mining) I will look more into this  ;D

Its not meant to pay for itself... I don't think it was ever marketed that way. They say the chip gives a trickle payment to develop with etc.

Honestly if you are a dev with the tech head nature you can setup your own and would do that. This solution is designed to be an ecosystem use device in the end. You're paying to get in on the ground floor of that... not to buy them in bulk and mine with.

I'm not sure people are understanding that part... everyone seems to latch onto the miner portion and criticise that... its almost like outside of mining and buying selling the coins nobody thinks bitcoin is useful for anything else... like buying products and services?

I agree.

After thinking about it a bit, I believe I do understand the business model.

What's the business model? It has something to do with making bitcoin easy to use. The developers who buy it will figure it out.

Unless 21 inc provides free access to their micro transaction network the only digital trading a Bitcoin computer will be doing is with another Bitcoin computer. This is clearly the intention since there is no reason a person selling digital goods or services needs to generate bitcoins. They are already receiving bitcoins. The only reason to mine bitcoins is if they are also a buyer of goods or services from someone else on the 21 inc micro transaction network. 

Imagine if instead of registration, PayPal required you to buy a $400 device before you could access their network, that you could only trade with other people who owned that device and that the network was for micro transactions. That would be an NVP not an MVP.

Why would they release it for free? That 400$ device could act as a very expensive ticket to that network.

The 21 Bitcoin Computer

Today we’re announcing a new kind of device for sale: the 21 Bitcoin Computer, the first computer with native hardware and software support for the Bitcoin protocol. With this pocket-sized device, if you are an entrepreneur or developer, you can now instantly buy or sell digital goods and services at the command line using Bitcoin.

https://medium.com/@21dotco/the-21-bitcoin-computer-1d28d652b57b

https://21.co/

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/vince/boost/detailpages/21inc4b._SR700,525_.jpg


https://de.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3m0zp5/the_8_most_informative_comments_about_21incs/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3lv6zj/ama_request_ceo_of_21inc_balaji_srinivasan/cv9zq9q




...and it is a full node too.  :)

raspberry + 120gh chip = 21 bitcoin computer  :-\
For what should i use this device ?


I’m not hating, good idea but for 400$ lets be honest....its not the best offer.

look here:

https://de.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3m0zp5/the_8_most_informative_comments_about_21incs/

Great comedy value. There's this too https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3m0kr9/21_inc_is_about_to_fuel_the_next_evolution_of/

I swear to God, I hadn't laughed this much in a long time.

You order 2 units x 400$ ? 800$ for this useless raspberry “miner” wtf dude....and you are looking for ROI ? Made my day  ;D ;D

He's obviously trolling

He's obviously trolling

I appreciate you, but I think you are wrong about this particular subject. Please don't take my digs at the 21.co personally.

don't you accept bitcoin payment?

I think that for $400 they could have at least added a an OS with a slick design. The command functions seem cool but only for tech savvy people.

That's because the device was project to be used by tech savvy people.