[2015-5-18] WSJ (Blog): 21 Unveils Product Plan: Mining Chips for Smartphones

[Denker]

The world’s best-funded bitcoin startup has revealed plans to market a line of chips to embed in consumer devices, allowing smartphones and other Internet-connected gadgets to continuously earn digital currency through the process known as “mining.”

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

[pedrog]

While 21 will in many cases derive bitcoin for its own account, its primary revenue stream will come sales of chips, a spokeswoman said. Separate to those chip sales, 21 expects to split the proceeds of mining with the device owner, depending on “different form factors” related to a variety incentive designs for device sales and contracts.

Just as “the iPhone’s subsidy model allowed a reduced upfront price point, allowing millions of people… to get started with a smartphone without a down-payment … we believe the 21 BitShare chip will enable a new generation of bitcoin-subsidized devices to help get the next 1 billion online,” she said.

Cool stuff, looking forward to see more.

[goxed]

what's wrong with USB miners? Bundle one free USB miner stick with a cellphone instead. As long as the stick mines, the subscriber gets free calling minutes.

[GenTarkin]

Has to be the stupidest thing one could do w/ over $100 mil in startup investment funding ... I mean seriously?!    ... I dont see this working at all how they hope.

[TheButterZone]

Let's say all existing smartphones magically had these chips added to them. Would it be the highest th/s mining pool? 

[goxed]

Let's say all existing smartphones magically had these chips added to them. Would it be the highest th/s mining pool?  

10GH/s * 100Million (assuming only the smartphones on charger as well as network connected) = 1Million TH/s
Current network hashing speed = 0.35Million TH/s

[dwdoc]

What about the tax implications?  The IRS considers each mining reward as a taxable event.
Along side your dependents you will have to list the revenue of every chip you own!

[TheButterZone]

Let's say all existing smartphones magically had these chips added to them. Would it be the highest th/s mining pool?  

10GH/s * 100Million (smartphones) = 1Million TH/s
Current network hashing speed = 352,247.23 TH/s

Ok, then what is the current cost to the providers to serve those 100M smartphones (before subscriber fees)? Would making them a 1M TH/s pool enable all their service to be provided for free, with the providers having the mining proceeds take the place of subscriber fees?

[Benjig]

I just can see this as an opportunity for hackers to create a virus which could use our devices without any notice for profit.

[LiteCoinGuy]

This must be a joke. Even powerful chips won't be able to achieve much due to a limited power capabilities of a phone.
They will either mine dust or quickly deplete the battery and making the phone useless.

the headline is just stupid. dont care about that or you lose the whole point. do some research. that firm will change alot for bitcoin.
just take a look at the partner-firms that they have on board like Cisco, Qualcomm, Intel....it is   !

[goxed]

If they combine all smartphones in a pool then they should have good hashpower. I think the craziest thing is that they got soo much money from investors. I don't think so much investors can be wrong. They need a good plan to achieve so much money.

Unfortunately it will again lead to risk of centralization, unless we have another ASIC arms race, this time with cheap and tiny IoT hashers. (It might get interesting though, any remotely networkable computing chip / device  with 21 hashing module will then be worth the number of BTCs it will potentially mine in its lifetime) (AMD Zen with its built in 1TH/s hashing-module might sell for $$$$ while the shiny Intel Skylake with 50MH/s software hashing would sell for $$).

[pedrog]

What about the tax implications?  The IRS considers each mining reward as a taxable event.
Along side your dependents you will have to list the revenue of every chip you own!

There are none, the reward would be beyond negligible.

[LiteCoinGuy]

[LiteCoinGuy]