Decentralization of mining is returning ... thoughts on 21 inc secret plans?

[s1gs3gv]

~10w per appliance is my bet too. Nothing to hurt the consumer financially and good enough to maintain a decent mining rate.

RoadStress, you are a gentleman and a scholar ! Will we see bitcoin mining lightbulbs in the year 2020 ?

[LordPaco]

Am I going to need to rewire my house to put cat5 next to all the outlets including the kitchen or will it be a wifi storm of dropping connections?

**Cat picture removed by MiningBuddy**

It wouldn't be decentralization if 21.co controls 75% of all the hashes and I would assume they would control 100% of it and just return 25% of the earned btc.
We are just one step away from a camera or mic being inserted into one of these devices as well, after all the toaster needs to see and hear you coming.
Do they run software that can pull their own updates? I see security nightmares.
Software, network config, or dongle that redirects all mining to specified address or blocks it entirely will be standard issue for hat wearers.

What happens when the efficiency is such that it is an obvious mining loss for the entity running the device, and the price point is not competitive because of the extra complexity of the device? You could say the price point will be subsidized but what if the profits/efficiency is low enough any subsidy is like throwing good money after bad?

The subsidy in turn would be the 'cost of the miners' and there easily could be a scenairo where that could outstrip any returns. The problem here being low powered miners that do not initially make much by themselves, but require an overhead of every device to include a network interface card, operating system, a way to configure and diagnose. A large help desk would be needed to field all the inevitable troubleshooting and that sure wouldn't be free.

Somewhat like having one USB miner on a stick connected to a RasPi in stupid mass vs a purpose built miner machine with many chips in parallel and only one interface. It is obvious to see the cost in manufacturing will be a whole magnitude lower for purpose built miners without the redundancy or trouble of the multiple interfaces required for connectivity.

If they manage to produce a chip that works great for this application, I see no reason why it wouldn't also work in a purpose built miner at an efficiency so much greater it makes the first application moot. Of course you could argue they keep it for themselves, and only for that application, but you could not depend on that being the status quo for very long in this bitcoin world.

[notlist3d]

Am I going to need to rewire my house to put cat5 next to all the outlets including the kitchen or will it be a wifi storm of dropping connections?

You laugh but this is actually something I wish they would have done at my house.  I have ran wires myself.... what fun that is.

If you are building a new house have them run cat5 and put it in rooms for you.  You will thank me.  Holding a long as heck rod "fishing" for a cable with someone up top moving it around is not a whole lot of fun.

And one almost no one does think about running a HDMI cable.  You can get them for decent from monoprice.  On some rooms it's nice to have it on opposite side of room depending on configuration.

Enough of my rant about wiring though

[s1gs3gv]

Am I going to need to rewire my house to put cat5 next to all the outlets including the kitchen or will it be a wifi storm of dropping connections?

ethernet over the existing power distribution wiring.

In these early days of bitcoin adoption we think of mining as a private economic activity and by necessity concern ourselves with difficulty, bitcoin prices, technology trends and all the things associated with the profitability of the activity. But the time will come when maintenance of the bitcoin network will be considered a public good and responsibility for it will be assumed by governments and/or public utilities which will be subsidized by taxes or assessments on your electricity bill. And the implementation will be very low cost widely distributed mining devices of ~10 watts or less.

We're already at the point where individual mining is marginal/unprofitable, and it won't be long before it won't be profitable for small private enterprises like KNC or Bitfury or Bitmain.

[notlist3d]

Am I going to need to rewire my house to put cat5 next to all the outlets including the kitchen or will it be a wifi storm of dropping connections?

ethernet over the existing power distribution wiring.

It can be done.  But in my experience running some cat5 cable is better.  I did a lot of lan over electric and it worked with a few.  To many it seemed like it was hurting my wireless.

It could have been just me or bad luck.  But I still prefer cat5 cable after my expirence.

[s1gs3gv]

Am I going to need to rewire my house to put cat5 next to all the outlets including the kitchen or will it be a wifi storm of dropping connections?

ethernet over the existing power distribution wiring.

It can be done.  But in my experience running some cat5 cable is better.  I did a lot of lan over electric and it worked with a few.  To many it seemed like it was hurting my wireless.

It could have been just me or bad luck.  But I still prefer cat5 cable after my expirence.

Of course cat5/6 is better than EoP, but its not necessary to support a 10 watt miner in the electricity meter, set top box, heater, router or pick your favorite appliance. The existing power distribution wiring will do just fine.

[notlist3d]

Am I going to need to rewire my house to put cat5 next to all the outlets including the kitchen or will it be a wifi storm of dropping connections?

ethernet over the existing power distribution wiring.

It can be done.  But in my experience running some cat5 cable is better.  I did a lot of lan over electric and it worked with a few.  To many it seemed like it was hurting my wireless.

It could have been just me or bad luck.  But I still prefer cat5 cable after my expirence.

Of course cat5/6 is better than EoP, but its not necessary to support a 10 watt miner in the electricity meter, set top box, heater, router or pick your favorite appliance. The existing power distribution wiring will do just fine.

In general Bitcoin mining is the complete antithesis of what electric companies are doing these days. I still think "We also have to hit a point where BTC is at a higher adoption rate.   Chances are most items it is put in would be higher then one without a miner.   So we really need a point where majority of people know about crypto currency and want it before it would ever be put in a widespread made appliance."

Most likely we will see people using them as space heaters as done before.  And some special things with water cooling.   But were a while out from buying a standard device that has a miner inside of it.

[Bicknellski]

Coffee warmer.
Hot water warmers built into water coolers.
USB miner with Bitcoin Core node.

Something that is cheap / zero cost as an addition to existing products. Also looking at integrating the Bitcoin Core into these devices might be a great opportunity to secure the network.

It has to be lower power, cheap and accessible / needed by millions. The small or home miner needs to be MICRO and then P2Pool collectivized to push very very hard on the Farms to make them unprofitable. Cut their throats make it impossible to grow bigger.

1 or 2 chip miners with Bitcoin Core Node sub $20 units then you have something that could be viable. The only way to beat the farms is make mining so cheap that it is everywhere.

[notlist3d]

Coffee warmer.
Hot water warmers built into water coolers.
USB miner with Bitcoin Core node.

Something that is cheap / zero cost as an addition to existing products. Also looking at integrating the Bitcoin Core into these devices might be a great opportunity to secure the network.

It has to be lower power, cheap and accessible / needed by millions.

But do you honestly think any of the big manufactures will do this? Justify even if it was a dollar per x item. I think until more acceptance its a pipedream.  

I would love it though really would.  Just don't expect it soon.

[Bicknellski]

Coffee warmer.
Hot water warmers built into water coolers.
USB miner with Bitcoin Core node.

Something that is cheap / zero cost as an addition to existing products. Also looking at integrating the Bitcoin Core into these devices might be a great opportunity to secure the network.

It has to be lower power, cheap and accessible / needed by millions.

But do you honestly think any of the big manufactures will do this? Justify even if it was a dollar per x item. I think until more acceptance its a pipedream.  

I would love it though really would.  Just don't expect it soon.

Who says a BIG fabricator is going to do this?

Again you have to think about the how you can build cheap accessible mining that is fully integrated into consumer products potentially or serves a real human need. It could be retrofits to existing consumer products. Hacktivist type stuff right?

Heating.

Cooking.

This has to be open source. It has to be local not international in scope.

[notlist3d]

Coffee warmer.
Hot water warmers built into water coolers.
USB miner with Bitcoin Core node.

Something that is cheap / zero cost as an addition to existing products. Also looking at integrating the Bitcoin Core into these devices might be a great opportunity to secure the network.

It has to be lower power, cheap and accessible / needed by millions.

But do you honestly think any of the big manufactures will do this? Justify even if it was a dollar per x item. I think until more acceptance its a pipedream.  

I would love it though really would.  Just don't expect it soon.

Who says a BIG fabricator is going to do this?

Again you have to think about the how you can build cheap accessible mining that is full integrated into consumer products potentially or serves a real human need. It could be retrofits to existing consumer products. Hacktivist type stuff right?

Heating.

Cooking.

Ahhh ok yea I completly agree on Hacktivist type homeowners doing it their self.   More advanced ways to use heat.  

Water cooling has hardly been touched as far as what people can do with it.   Lots of mods right there.

I guess if we look at it this way instead of big companies making it, nothing stops a lot of them from happening now.  Thanks for post it did get me to think different  way for this to go.

[s1gs3gv]

Who says a BIG fabricator is going to do this?

The capital needed to engineer and manufacture a very low cost ~10 watt device in quantities of hundreds of millions is not insignificant.

One key to the answer to the OP's question is the fact that 21.co seems to have raised 116 million USD. More likely to follow.
This is the kind of money you need to build out a +very+ large scale distributed network of ~ 10 watt devices.

Look at the investor lineup: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/03/10/secretive-bitcoin-startup-21-reveals-record-funds-hints-at-mass-consumer-play/

[s1gs3gv]

In general Bitcoin mining is the complete antithesis of what electric companies are doing these days. I still think "We also have to hit a point where BTC is at a higher adoption rate.   Chances are most items it is put in would be higher then one without a miner.   So we really need a point where majority of people know about crypto currency and want it before it would ever be put in a widespread made appliance."

Most likely we will see people using them as space heaters as done before.  And some special things with water cooling.   But were a while out from buying a standard device that has a miner inside of it.

Au contraire, mon ami. They already manage to install and operate an electrical appliance in most homes in the modern world - the electricity meter. And who can buy electricity cheaper than the power company ? So … you have scale, operational competence and efficiency ...


With respect to adoption rate, I agree. But ask yourself, what would encourage widespread adoption better than providing everyone on the planet with a few satoshi every day ?

[NeuroticFish]

Au contraire, mon ami. They already manage to install and operate an electrical appliance in most homes in the modern world - the electricity meter. And who can buy electricity cheaper than the power company ? So … you have scale, operational competence and efficiency ...

With respect to adoption rate, I agree. But ask yourself, what would encourage widespread adoption better than providing everyone on the planet with a few satoshi every day ?

You know that most of those "few satoshi" will end up at 21 Inc because they were never claimed or because they are under the minimum "dust" amount.
And the totals may be quite big.

[Jamphone]

I've said before that I don't think they're putting a bitcoin miner in your toaster or your light bulb. If they are, they're going to be bankrupt very quickly. That idea doesn't make sense and consumers would know they were losing on the deal since they get stuck with the electric bill that is higher than the returns on mining.

Here's what I think they're doing: 21 Inc is intending to partner with consumer products companies to create an "internet of things" system where your fridge, dishwasher, car and everything else is signed on the bitcoin blockchain. A minimum fee would be exchanged to register the item on the network, and which coins are kept by the user registering the item.

21 Inc needs to mine as well (for themselves) because for this to work you need a significant amount of the network (1 or 2%) to find a block every day to initially register devices without a transaction fee. (Or in such a manner that there is a transaction fee, but to keep the network happy 21 Inc pays and then collects that said transaction fee internally.) Once registered, the wallet address can simply sign, rather than actually use the blockchain again, to prove ownership.

This will allow all the devices to be securely registered to a home network and offer all the cool things that internet of things will allow. (Like being in your car and pulling up your fridge's recommended list of groceries, and your car being able to know that "this is your fridge")

The block chain allows for a decentralized system, so that anyone can make a product that works within this internet of things.

Just my guess. My second guess is this is a massively over funded miner manufacturer. But they raised way more money then they need for that.

[bitsolutions]

They are mining internally right now.

[Bit_Happy]

My two cents: These guesses are wrong. They're not spending $100 million dollars to turn your toaster into a money losing miner. It doesn't make sense.

Now, are they creating an "internet of things" capable toaster? That would make more sense. But that isn't a miner. That's a toaster that communicates with the bitcoin block chain.

What good could possibly come from a toaster "that communicates with the bitcoin block chain?" Why is something like that useful?
   

[Mikestang]

My two cents: These guesses are wrong. They're not spending $100 million dollars to turn your toaster into a money losing miner. It doesn't make sense.

Now, are they creating an "internet of things" capable toaster? That would make more sense. But that isn't a miner. That's a toaster that communicates with the bitcoin block chain.

What good could possibly come from a toaster "that communicates with the bitcoin block chain?" Why is something like that useful?
   

None of this makes any sense.  How many toasters does it take to compete with a 30PH/s mining farm?  These ideas would have been cool a couple years ago, but they seem 100% pointless to me today.

[notlist3d]

My two cents: These guesses are wrong. They're not spending $100 million dollars to turn your toaster into a money losing miner. It doesn't make sense.

Now, are they creating an "internet of things" capable toaster? That would make more sense. But that isn't a miner. That's a toaster that communicates with the bitcoin block chain.

What good could possibly come from a toaster "that communicates with the bitcoin block chain?" Why is something like that useful?
   

None of this makes any sense.  How many toasters does it take to compete with a 30PH/s mining farm?  These ideas would have been cool a couple years ago, but they seem 100% pointless to me today.

Some items make perfect sense.  Such as hot water heater, space heaters, basically appliances that use large amounts of heat and electricity. 

It will be people doing "custom" versions of things such as this.  I do agree a chip in every device makes less sense then going for the higher powered items.

[mrhelpful]

instead of assuming if mining is returning, Id say its staying the same.

most of us are not willing to fork a pretty penny, since we cant valuate the future value nor anyone can else.

but id be worried on the core itself, what happens after all the transactions bitcoin have been found. do we wait for 1 transactions to take 2 days or more? whats considered a fair fee for any transaction.

and theres no good way to automatically calculate whats a fair fee..