It's Happening .... The secrets of 21 inc revealed, and its what we hoped for.

[futureofbitcoin]

An article that's not based on the Alphaville piece, painting a rather different picture: Inside 21's Plans to Bring Bitcoin to the Masses

Wow, Okay. I changed my mind. If this really is what they're planning, this is NOT good for the general public. It would totally suck.

[SebastianJu]

How? I dont get it yet. Is there a business model that could be worth it for bitcoin? If you mean those stations being miners then i think that specialized miners still will have an advantage in price. So i dont see why this might be related.

We know that Qualcomm invested in 21 Inc. We also know that they are interested in and are developing millions of micro-stations to boost their network coverage and bandwidth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p2suMVsKow&feature=youtu.be

The question is who is going to buy their micro stations or pay the electricity and why would they? It would be ridiculous for them to require one for their devices.

Thus one can speculate that they may be interested in having 21 deploy millions of ASIC appliances for free where 2 extra chips are embedded one for mining BTC thus affording 21 to give away the appliances and the other own being a microstation for qualcomm where qualcomm subsidizes the price in exchange for cheaper bandwidth.

Interesting since WLAN and co are normally enabled all the time. But still economically probably not viable.

I really would like to know their idea. Either they have a really good idea we did not think about, they lied about the investment funds they received or they dealt with persons that dont know bitcoin.

[Daedelus]

So the chips will use energy additional to a normal device or are they designed to work within the "energy footprint" of existing devices i.e. no net energy increase?

The latter doesn't seem likely.

[SebastianJu]

So the chips will use energy additional to a normal device or are they designed to work within the "energy footprint" of existing devices i.e. no net energy increase?

The latter doesn't seem likely.

It probably wouldnt make it worth creating the asics and the pcb needed for it.

Or will a really massive production be able to bring production costs down so far?

[Alley]

Sounds like I'll be giving toasters to my whole family for Xmas and all the coins will be mine!  Muabahahahahah

[Daedelus]

Sounds like I'll be giving toasters to my whole family for Xmas and all the coins will be mine!  Muabahahahahah

And this toaster scenario would be the equivalent to having the grille of your oven on 24/7, and you just put bread under when you want toast?

There is always the idea of value added form other things but the Blockparty social media, they state you can view your friends purchase histories. Seems odd, why would anyone take part under these conditions. How would a bank fare if it released an account where all your friends could review your purchase history? 

This idea seems very naive to me. But for the millions they've raised, they must have something up their sleeves.

[SebastianJu]

You saw this? http://www.coindesk.com/21-intel-bitcoin-mining-strategy/

I didnt find it in this thread...

[TheRealSteve]

I didnt find it in this thread...

It's 8 posts up

Do keep in mind that that article is based on an older document - but it's a wee bit more realistic than Alphaville's conjecture.

[GenTarkin]

In regards to intel possibly making mining ASIC's.....
Did anyone else notice that the new "Skylake" x86 uarch has an instruction set extension specifically for SHA1 & SHA2(256)
I think thats quite interesting....

[TheRealSteve]

In regards to intel possibly making mining ASIC's.....
Did anyone else notice that the new "Skylake" x86 uarch has an instruction set extension specifically for SHA1 & SHA2(256)
I think thats quite interesting....

quite interesting, but ultimately not so much for cryptocurrency mining;
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/36253/what-mining-performance-can-we-roughly-expect-from-the-intel-sha-extensions-of-t

Slightly more useful for hashing large sets of data and/or bitesized data where you do actually need the hashed output (remember, ASICs don't return the hash)

[GenTarkin]

In regards to intel possibly making mining ASIC's.....
Did anyone else notice that the new "Skylake" x86 uarch has an instruction set extension specifically for SHA1 & SHA2(256)
I think thats quite interesting....

quite interesting, but ultimately not so much for cryptocurrency mining;
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/36253/what-mining-performance-can-we-roughly-expect-from-the-intel-sha-extensions-of-t

Slightly more useful for hashing large sets of data and/or bitesized data where you do actually need the hashed output (remember, ASICs don't return the hash)

Well, its not so much a point of mining w/ the CPU ... but the fact they made part of a circuit dedicated to SHA hashing ... easily translates into making an ASIC w/ just a huge array of these little circuits, much like how modern ASICs stemmed from previously designed hardware hashing circuit designs and someone was just like ... "well put a shit load of these little things in parallel, drive up the clock speed and ya have a decent mining ASIC"  ... AFAIK

[Bit_Happy]

116 million in venture capital, wow this project has cash to spend and people talking up a big buzz.
Let's hope they can do something worthwhile with this unique opportunity.

[TheRealSteve]

the fact they made part of a circuit dedicated to SHA hashing ... easily translates into making an ASIC w/ just a huge array of these little circuits, much like how modern ASICs stemmed from previously designed hardware hashing circuit designs and someone was just like ... "well put a shit load of these little things in parallel, drive up the clock speed and ya have a decent mining ASIC"  ... AFAIK

It would be easier for them to have developed a Bitcoin mining ASIC directly - integrating the required gates for two stages into a CPU design is a somewhat more difficult task, and yanking them out of that design and then into an efficient dedicated chip that performs the hashing rounds required for mining doesn't make much sense - if that were a goal.  But sure, Intel + dedicated hashing instruction = squee.

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

Can someone bring me up to speed on this 21 inc? I have apparently missed everything about it.

[TheRealSteve]

Can someone bring me up to speed on this 21 inc? I have apparently missed everything about it.

21 Inc, formerly 21e6, was a secretive hardware/mining op that more recently has gone slightly more public mostly announcing getting a bunch of funds for 'something'.  Nobody except 21, investors, and a few other people (including on this forum) knows what that 'something' would be, but that won't stop people from speculating about miner-toasters
That's the tl;dr - set aside an hour or so of reading for details.

[futureofbitcoin]

And it seems like they're only giving their blood sucking chips for free to manufacturers of products, so consumers don't actually get any discount off the item; they simply don't have to pay extra to serve 21 inc and give them free money.

[LiteCoinGuy]

Can someone bring me up to speed on this 21 inc? I have apparently missed everything about it.

http://www.ibtimes.com/21-inc-secret-bitcoin-startup-raises-116m-latest-funding-round-1842374

http://www.coindesk.com/21-record-116-million-funding-all-star-investors/

[Amph]

In regards to intel possibly making mining ASIC's.....
Did anyone else notice that the new "Skylake" x86 uarch has an instruction set extension specifically for SHA1 & SHA2(256)
I think thats quite interesting....

those asic will be able to compete with current generation? i could see them great in efficiency, because they will be based on the future architetture with better nm

[TheRealSteve]

For the curious, the 21 Inc website has been updated:

We've developed a chip for embedded bitcoin mining.
Sign up below to request a dev kit.\

Used to be "21 million bitcoins, infinite possibilities / The future of money belongs to those who show up."

[Denker]

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