21 splash!

[Biodom]

http://www.coindesk.com/21-intel-bitcoin-mining-strategy/

Projected for launch in Q1 2015 was a 21-produced USB charging hub, the introduction of which would be followed by the integration of chips into net-enabled devices before ending up in chipsets.

Though no dimensions were given for the product, illustrations produced by Mountain View-based Bould Design showcase a white, router-sized USB charger that would come complete with two USB charging portals.

I guess that they are running somewhat late.

Once consumers and businesses are set up to receive bitcoin via everyday devices, the documents provide evidence 21 had built technology that intends to serve as the template for how such earnings could be used in microtransactions on the Internet.

In particular, 21 had been working on a process that would allow developers to block users from accessing websites unless funds are sent to a bitcoin address. Notably, the process used the 402 Payment Required error code originally intended for web-based micropayments at the outset of the World Wide Web.

[Cconvert2G36]

Though Intel has so far kept its relationship with 21 quiet, the bitcoin startup took the opposite approach in its company overview, which included a screenshot of an email allegedly from Intel CEO Brian Krzanich. Dated 5th September, the email finds Krzanich informing Pauker and investor Marc Andreessen of his opinion on a proposal to distribute bitcoin mining chips in consumer electronic devices.

Krzanich indicated he would be instructing Intel VP and GM Doug L Davis to evaluate the potential addition of mining chips to Intel products, including desktop PCs, writing:

"I am copying Doug on this note to make an introduction … but trust me I will stay 100% engaged in this and be the godfather of it at Intel."

Interdasting...

[gentlemand]

Hey, this shit's supposed to be dead, kids. Stick with the agenda now. Their projection of $7.45 mining cost per coin makes me wonder though.

[Chef Ramsay]

No wonder they had such a big funding round, they got some hot shit coming down the pipeline that will drum up more adoption.

[techgeek]

so I read a bit on what 21 wants to do.

and I read the whole social approach with it, that hulu example is pretty horrible. Pay bitcoin to skip commercial? really? I`m going to give my hard earned, hard to get coin in general based on mining to pay a 1 min commericial, okay thats makes so much sense.

I`d throw my dogecoin before bitcoin.

[Chef Ramsay]

so I read a bit on what 21 wants to do.

and I read the whole social approach with it, that hulu example is pretty horrible. Pay bitcoin to skip commercial? really? I`m going to give my hard earned, hard to get coin in general based on mining to pay a 1 min commericial, okay thats makes so much sense.

I`d throw my dogecoin before bitcoin.

Depending how long the show you're watching is, there could be commercials 5 or 6 times throughout of varying lengths. If you got a female laying her head on your lap, you might just want to keep the show rolling and have the commercials prepaid. Just a thought.

[Winner]

Good stuff.

Using bitcoin is becoming more normal.

[techgeek]

so I read a bit on what 21 wants to do.

and I read the whole social approach with it, that hulu example is pretty horrible. Pay bitcoin to skip commercial? really? I`m going to give my hard earned, hard to get coin in general based on mining to pay a 1 min commericial, okay thats makes so much sense.

I`d throw my dogecoin before bitcoin.

Depending how long the show you're watching is, there could be commercials 5 or 6 times throughout of varying lengths. If you got a female laying her head on your lap, you might just want to keep the show rolling and have the commercials prepaid. Just a thought.

Okay, outside from the female part.

But, this is why I also switched from hulu to netflix instead of the commercial crap. 5 or 6 times is a bit much, by end of the month I`d be broke and be seeing my balance from 1 btc to .1 btc in 1 months time.

[tabnloz]

so I read a bit on what 21 wants to do.

and I read the whole social approach with it, that hulu example is pretty horrible. Pay bitcoin to skip commercial? really? I`m going to give my hard earned, hard to get coin in general based on mining to pay a 1 min commericial, okay thats makes so much sense.

I`d throw my dogecoin before bitcoin.

Depending how long the show you're watching is, there could be commercials 5 or 6 times throughout of varying lengths. If you got a female laying her head on your lap, you might just want to keep the show rolling and have the commercials prepaid. Just a thought.

Okay, outside from the female part.

But, this is why I also switched from hulu to netflix instead of the commercial crap. 5 or 6 times is a bit much, by end of the month I`d be broke and be seeing my balance from 1 btc to .1 btc in 1 months time.

the same general practice should be adopted by print media: pay a few cents per article up to .Xbtc and then you get the whole section free. Why pay an all encompassing subscription that includes the Garden / Auto / Tech / Real Estate section if you don't read it?

[Brewins]

Hey, this shit's supposed to be dead, kids. Stick with the agenda now. Their projection of $7.45 mining cost per coin makes me wonder though.

$7.45/coin?

This article is only "a little" outdated.



And I doubt they would agree to put BTC payments in the web core itself, so I guess no 402 for some long time

[billyjoeallen]

Hey, this shit's supposed to be dead, kids. Stick with the agenda now. Their projection of $7.45 mining cost per coin makes me wonder though.

$7.45/coin?

This article is only "a little" outdated.



And I doubt they would agree to put BTC payments in the web core itself, so I guess no 402 for some long time

mining difficulty goes up and block rewards go down. How do they come up with that $7.45 estimate? If they don't pay for the electricity, then the customer or appliance owner pays. If the bitcoin price goes down too much, the customer will stop mining and just buy bitcoins instead. If the price goes up, then difficulty goes up, cost of electricity makes mining unprofitable again.


Let's say they dominate mining. Then miners quit mining and start buying instead because it's cheaper. (I'm already doing that). Then the price goes up making it profitable again, difficulty increases, etc. 


So 21 is going to sell miners with a built in 75% inefficiency. Even if they give them away, who would use them? people stealing electricity only.

[gentlemand]

Hey, this shit's supposed to be dead, kids. Stick with the agenda now. Their projection of $7.45 mining cost per coin makes me wonder though.

$7.45/coin?

This article is only "a little" outdated.



And I doubt they would agree to put BTC payments in the web core itself, so I guess no 402 for some long time

I dont think it's a case of being outdated. The article seems to think their setup can get it down to that. No idea how that's possible or how it would affect other miners. Anyway this is all guesswork still until they confirm something themselves.

[oblivi]

In the future all online advertisement related business will be dominated by BTC. Adsense will get replaced because it's just outdated and annoying as fuck. You'll get paid directly to your BTC address without depending on the Adsense+paypal mafia.

[PolarPoint]

They are integrating miners into network enabled devices. That is a good approach. I doubt the integrated ASICs will earn anything substantial. Keep it running for a year to get 0.01btc?

[mrhelpful]

In the future all online advertisement related business will be dominated by BTC. Adsense will get replaced because it's just outdated and annoying as fuck. You'll get paid directly to your BTC address without depending on the Adsense+paypal mafia.

Well like it or not, most people actually never heard of things like adding plugins to their web browser.

Most are on ad block, but a lot of the people out there are not which is why ad sense still works. Most of these guys dont care, to go out of their way to search for improving their web experience believe it or not.

Theres a generation gap.

[Shiver]

If I were a VC, I'd crap myself with the risks and the potentially Stellar opportunity if it worked.

We all talk about BTC as an alternative to FIAT and the banking system, but what if you could go out and buy a device (printer, USB hub, router or whatever), and rather than paying all cash for it, your electricity bill became your payment channel like a Hire Purchase agreement (that the provider can locate should they repo)?  You could buy a $100 device for $50 down, and pay the remainder via BTC over a year or so (even if the price didn't go anywhere), and once paid you start collecting small amounts of BTC and maybe swap it for a device upgrade at a future date, or save the BTC (even a couple of dollars a month), to use as a convenient way to pay for microtransactions.

The incentive would be low up front costs for hardware with a 'buy now pay later' system (all too popular these days), and the latent benefit would be plugging into the BTC world.  By paying through your electricity bill you simplify a lot of things, and get FIAT into BTC (imagine the price change when hundreds of millions of people have this by default rather than having to go out and learn and be convinced of BTC).

I don't think they would need to be powerful miners/transaction processors, and don't think they should be either, since distribution is more important for the blockchain than total hash power.

The 25%/75% split is a bit of an insult (especially if you think of that as an interest rate on the loan they're providing on a low up front purchase), but if it were scaled so that they get all of it initially, and it moves in your favour over time for being an honest player to the point where you can start accumulating a bit of BTC, this could really be a game changer in proportions that even the most optimistic dare not dream.  It could replace a huge chunk of the banking system and make a whole new paradigm that is different than most of us were envisioning in how this thing might evolve, so it's not a "this way or that", but "none of the above, it went somewhere completely different".

With all that, even if optimistic, it looks like it will take several years to develop and deploy the technology and get the social adoption.  To me that means at least 5 years more, but the result could be those crazy prices we see from time to time for the price of BTC.

I'm looking forward to buying a $100 printer for $50 down from whichever manufacturer incorporates this technology first, then seeing BTC climb so ridiculously that it's paid off after a month or so even though I was planning for it to take a year...

[Cconvert2G36]

I wonder how much of the business model depends on customers who rent their abode? There is a significant portion of the population that has utilities "included" in their rent. In this case, one could choose to buy a heavily subsidized space heater miner, while transferring the cost of operation to the landlord. They may even be using electric heat already, I was in my former apartment.

There is talk of them shooting for a 22nm finfet asic, 0.2w/GH. 1000 watts would be a decent hashrate.

Make a slick (invisible) interface for people to use their 25% earnings to have commercial free media over the net?

It all sounds pretty pie in the sky, but I think heat harvesting is the next frontier in the mining arms race.

[Amph]

They are integrating miners into network enabled devices. That is a good approach. I doubt the integrated ASICs will earn anything substantial. Keep it running for a year to get 0.01btc?

0.01 now that could become 1000 usd one day, something like this is aiming at decentralized more the miningand bring everyone to it not just mega farm

paying users 0.72 mBTC or about 17 cents per day, basically a good faucet...

[Biodom]

actually, they will get mining chips into smartphones! Larry Summers is involved. Network is about to become gigantic.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/05/18/bitcoin-startup-21-unveils-product-plan-embeddable-mining-chips/

21’s concept of “embedded mining” marks a very different approach. It foresees mainstream consumer devices quietly mining in the background to receive very small, ongoing distributions from a managed pool of bitcoin earnings.

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

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.

[HI-TEC99]

actually, they will get mining chips into smartphones! Larry Summers is involved. Network is about to become gigantic.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/05/18/bitcoin-startup-21-unveils-product-plan-embeddable-mining-chips/

21’s concept of “embedded mining” marks a very different approach. It foresees mainstream consumer devices quietly mining in the background to receive very small, ongoing distributions from a managed pool of bitcoin earnings.

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

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.

I tried using "thin clients" to surf the internet and the experience was horrible. It put me off the "thin client" concept for life. The thin clients I used were probably some of the first available and newer devices might actually work, but I'm skeptical about it. Lets hope their "thin client" devices work better.