21 Inc Confirms Plans for Mass Bitcoin Miner Distribution

[Coinbuddy]

21 Inc released new details today confirming that its market strategy will focus on distributing bitcoin mining chips embedded in consumer and enterprise hardware devices.

The formal announcement comes soon after a CoinDesk report that first revealed the startup's ambitions to use such products to promote the use of bitcoin for micropayments and as a means of mass consumer onboarding to the bitcoin network. When compared to a company overview created last fall, the latest release illustrates how the secretive San Francisco-based startup has since evolved its strategy even if its core mission remains largely unchanged.

SOURCE: http://www.coindesk.com/21-inc-confirms-plans-bitcoin-distribution/

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[Bobsurplus]

Its really cool news. It can shake up the mining game.

I wonder what the diff would be like if every cellphone on the planet had one of those chips.

Crazy just to think about it

[Agestorzrxx]

I doubt they will success, the hashrate is not stable, and it's always increasing, i doubt those chips can even make any profit after the hashrate rising too much. After all the hashrate of those chips can't change.

[Bobsurplus]

I doubt they will success, the hashrate is not stable, and it's always increasing, i doubt those chips can even make any profit after the hashrate rising too much. After all the hashrate of those chips can't change.

its not about mining to make a profit, its about mining to secure the network..

Dont you read?

[Searing]

I doubt they will success, the hashrate is not stable, and it's always increasing, i doubt those chips can even make any profit after the hashrate rising too much. After all the hashrate of those chips can't change.

its not about mining to make a profit, its about mining to secure the network..

Dont you read?

again from some of the FUD by the press speculating on this  ( i did not pay much attention did not see this coming) circle 21 would get a piece of the pie on each chip
I think I read if they gave the device away they would get 75% and the consumer would get 25% or some such impractical as this seems now and may have been press fud


but this link


http://www.coindesk.com/21-inc-confirms-plans-bitcoin-distribution/



quote

Chief among these would be the existing operators of large-scale data centers who Srinivasan said could benefit from integration of BitShare chips into their operations. 21 Inc had previously been involved in talks with companies including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Comcast and Intel to embed the chips.

"This means any vendor can take a chip performing a normal function (say video decoding or networking), add 21’s BitShare technology and thereby enable the chip to continuously generate revenue simply by being connected to power and Internet," Srinivasan said.


unquote

the line in the 2nd part stating that chip performing a normal function...ie you tailor the bitcoin stuff on said chip to ONLY mildly effect the chip operation ie cpu mining type of thing
so miniscule a CURRENT cell phone or whatever could use such w/o more use of any note in electric or heat etc

man that would take a lot i mean a lot of incorporation ...even if you drank the kool aid and believe in the "internet of everything" how the frack would you get enough incorporation at this price level to make this even begin to be worthwhile as a jump start is beyond me

i suppose again if you drank the kool aid and see 1k to 10k btc on the horizon in say the next 5 years with those kinda prices it may make sense

but again the above just caught my eye on how it was worded..but again it is beyond me how you would lever this up in a realistic manner of use at the current btc prices and/or state of the industry...the 'privacy concerns" alone would be ...well confusing....this may never really get off the ground imho

anyway no idea ....just putting it out there

[NUFCrichard]

I doubt they will success, the hashrate is not stable, and it's always increasing, i doubt those chips can even make any profit after the hashrate rising too much. After all the hashrate of those chips can't change.

its not about mining to make a profit, its about mining to secure the network..

Dont you read?

But who spends money to defend the network, people mine for profit, not out of the goodness of their hearts.

The same goes for the investors, why would they invest in a loss making company, they must be planning to sell small ASICs at a profit to people who want to defend the blockchain.. I guess tha could work, but as I never bought an actual miner, I doubt I will get one installed in my toaster.

[Bobsurplus]

I doubt they will success, the hashrate is not stable, and it's always increasing, i doubt those chips can even make any profit after the hashrate rising too much. After all the hashrate of those chips can't change.

its not about mining to make a profit, its about mining to secure the network..

Dont you read?

But who spends money to defend the network, people mine for profit, not out of the goodness of their hearts.

The same goes for the investors, why would they invest in a loss making company, they must be planning to sell small ASICs at a profit to people who want to defend the blockchain.. I guess tha could work, but as I never bought an actual miner, I doubt I will get one installed in my toaster.

It wont cost the end user money.. Its gonna cost the cell phone manufactures, electronics manufactures ect.

[NUFCrichard]

I doubt they will success, the hashrate is not stable, and it's always increasing, i doubt those chips can even make any profit after the hashrate rising too much. After all the hashrate of those chips can't change.

its not about mining to make a profit, its about mining to secure the network..

Dont you read?

But who spends money to defend the network, people mine for profit, not out of the goodness of their hearts.

The same goes for the investors, why would they invest in a loss making company, they must be planning to sell small ASICs at a profit to people who want to defend the blockchain.. I guess tha could work, but as I never bought an actual miner, I doubt I will get one installed in my toaster.

It wont cost the end user money.. Its gonna cost the cell phone manufactures, electronics manufactures ect.

And they will ultimately pass the cost on to?

No one is in a business to lose money, is what I am saying.  Mining isn't profitable unless you have free electricity, so the end user will end up paying extra fro electrical devices so that the defend the blockchain, something I don't see many people wanting to do.

[Bobsurplus]

I doubt they will success, the hashrate is not stable, and it's always increasing, i doubt those chips can even make any profit after the hashrate rising too much. After all the hashrate of those chips can't change.

its not about mining to make a profit, its about mining to secure the network..

Dont you read?

But who spends money to defend the network, people mine for profit, not out of the goodness of their hearts.

The same goes for the investors, why would they invest in a loss making company, they must be planning to sell small ASICs at a profit to people who want to defend the blockchain.. I guess tha could work, but as I never bought an actual miner, I doubt I will get one installed in my toaster.

It wont cost the end user money.. Its gonna cost the cell phone manufactures, electronics manufactures ect.

And they will ultimately pass the cost on to?

No one is in a business to lose money, is what I am saying.  Mining isn't profitable unless you have free electricity, so the end user will end up paying extra fro electrical devices so that the defend the blockchain, something I don't see many people wanting to do.

Nahh I think the picture is much larger then that.

[louise123]

Its really cool news. It can shake up the mining game.

I wonder what the diff would be like if every cellphone on the planet had one of those chips.

Crazy just to think about it

Yeah, it is.
It's going to make the ASIC miner manufacturers laugh their selves to death....
That should shake things up 

[crazyivan]

Excelent news.

So my toaster ll be mining BTC in the future. This is going to be big time push for the crypto acceptance.

[louise123]

Excelent news.

So my toaster ll be mining BTC in the future. This is going to be big time push for the crypto acceptance.

I don't think they will be adding chips into any device without internet access.
So you are probably looking at TV's, Game Consoles, PC hardware, etc.

[Amph]

Excelent news.

So my toaster ll be mining BTC in the future. This is going to be big time push for the crypto acceptance.

I don't think they will be adding chips into any device without internet access.
So you are probably looking at TV's, Game Consoles, PC hardware, etc.

but those device could already mine, maybe not tv(i don't know actually), but smartphone pc and console surely yes, so unless you can mine on top of their currenty ability to mine, i don't see the point

[louise123]

Excelent news.

So my toaster ll be mining BTC in the future. This is going to be big time push for the crypto acceptance.

I don't think they will be adding chips into any device without internet access.
So you are probably looking at TV's, Game Consoles, PC hardware, etc.

but those device could already mine, maybe not tv(i don't know actually), but smartphone pc and console surely yes, so unless you can mine on top of their currenty ability to mine, i don't see the point

Well, the word on the street says that 21 Inc. will be adding ASIC chips to consumer devices, and selling them slightly cheaper.
So even though the existing devices can mine, they don't have embedded ASIC chips.

[Kprawn]

It would be cool, if these devices could have a module, for upgrades. When the difficulty increase, you just upgrade to a better Asic chip.

I really cannot see any WIN-WIN situation for the consumer, apart from him getting a subsidized Asic chip, built into the products he buys. They did say "Bitcoin mining" ...not some other obscure Alt coin?

If they linked this to some Alt coin, with a much lower difficulty, they might have something.... but eventually it will rise too... 

[Searing]

Hell maybe we are looking at this wrong...with such a push and such an increase in difficulty ......on a massive scale....assuming that this would also foster
push big time growth in bitcoin...would it not just drive the price up of BTC as a result quicker?

ie we who hold and hoard would benifit ...ie get the fruits of our drinking the kool aid sooner

but yeah I can't see it working...if it worked that well on a cell phone..it would make the most kick ass miner in existence for sale

again don't get it ...obviously market does not get it either has not budged price

ha a gaw/paycoin scam only using your newly bought toaster or should I say stake hashing device!

yeah horsie pucks indeed

[coinpr0n]

The actual technology looks interesting though. A dedicated miner that can be integrated into existing chips is a bit of a game changer. Not sure if the company will succeed, but the idea is a cool one.

[WhatTheGox]

I doubt they will success, the hashrate is not stable, and it's always increasing, i doubt those chips can even make any profit after the hashrate rising too much. After all the hashrate of those chips can't change.

If your phone is on anyway its no problem as long as it doesnt cost extra or overheat the phone etc.  Its  very cool idea of many alternative mining ideas to come.

[Amph]

Excelent news.

So my toaster ll be mining BTC in the future. This is going to be big time push for the crypto acceptance.

I don't think they will be adding chips into any device without internet access.
So you are probably looking at TV's, Game Consoles, PC hardware, etc.

but those device could already mine, maybe not tv(i don't know actually), but smartphone pc and console surely yes, so unless you can mine on top of their currenty ability to mine, i don't see the point

Well, the word on the street says that 21 Inc. will be adding ASIC chips to consumer devices, and selling them slightly cheaper.
So even though the existing devices can mine, they don't have embedded ASIC chips.

the only good thing about this is that tey will use 16nm(it should consume less), so you can mine only with their added chip, and not with the default miner for your device

[Agestorzrxx]

I doubt they will success, the hashrate is not stable, and it's always increasing, i doubt those chips can even make any profit after the hashrate rising too much. After all the hashrate of those chips can't change.

its not about mining to make a profit, its about mining to secure the network..

Dont you read?

it can't really secure the network, it's the money not the chips secure the network.
If the chip is very cheap, only it is very cheap, then people willing to spent a few money to install it.
People can buy lots of and these hashrate is just a little.

[crazyivan]

Excelent news.

So my toaster ll be mining BTC in the future. This is going to be big time push for the crypto acceptance.

I don't think they will be adding chips into any device without internet access.
So you are probably looking at TV's, Game Consoles, PC hardware, etc.

I d like to have wireless connection to my toaster. So I can tell it when to switch to a different coin.

If they add it to mobile phones, they ll add it to anything with a gpu or cpu, which s basically any electronic device.

[davejh]

The whole mobile phone idea is just a really bad joke. Let's say something like an iPhone 6 uses about 10 Wh of power to charge it (0.01 kWh): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/iphone/11128043/How-much-power-is-used-to-charge-an-iPhone-6.html.

If we assume that 21 can make a 50 GH/s ASIC that runs at 0.1 J/GH (way way better than anything available right now) then that 10 Wh of power will last less than 2 hours while the ASIC is active (much less in fact because the Wi-Fi or LTE modems and either the main CPU or an NPU have to be active too to connect to anything).

Given that the single biggest complaint almost every phone user has about their phone is battery life does anyone really thing that people are going to be happy with phones that need charging every 90 minutes? Let's say they throttle back to a duty-cycle that's only 25% (6 hours when the phone is charging overnight) then the phone has a whopping 12.5 GH/s of hashing; that's 1 28 millionth of the current hash rate so to supply 50% of the network hashrate will require 28M mobile phones (at the current hash rate).

Of course this is a zero-sum problem so those 28M phone users will between them mine half of the 25 BTC per block (going down to 12.5 BTC next year). That's 44.6 satoshis each per block (call it 45 with the tx fee). If the indications about reward sharing are correct then 21.co get 75%, or 33.75 of those 45 satoshis so our phone owner has 11.25 satoshis per block or 1620 satoshis per day. After a year they've got 591k satoshis, so that's 5.91 mBTC ($1.37 at current prices).

At an average of 12.5 GH/s and 0.1 J/GH then they used 24 * 12.5 * 0.1 = 30 Wh of power per day, or 10.95 kWh per year (assuming a perfect charger; not that they exist - the numbers will be higher). If the video's quoted price of $0.12 per kWh is correct (retail electricity pricing) then mining that $1.37 costs at best $1.31 but also costs the battery on the phone draining, the phone getting hotter, etc. The heat thing is not to be dismissed because phone enclosures aren't designed to dump sustained heat this way.

Basically they'll have to persuade 28M phone owners that they should spend their electricity mining for 21.co, getting a worse phone experience and having to pay more for the phone in the process (to cover the extra ASIC and the necessary heat dissipation). Now if they persuade 56M phone owners then 21.co's mining operation is huge; it now nets them 2/3 of all of the bitcoins but our phone users now only get 3.94 mBTC ($0.91) but their costs stay the same.

When the block reward halves then the numbers get much worse from the consumer's perspective. Now they have the same costs but only half of their previous reward.

Oh and here's the irony: the claim is that this is to enable "decentralisation" right? Well guess what, our 28M phone miners are delivering all of the blocks to 21.co's mining pool; that's 50% of the network. Can we please see the necessary freak out along the lines of when GHash.io didn't actually quite get to 50% of the network last year? Our 56M phone miners would give 21.co 66% of the network.

Remind me again how all of this is a good idea?

[louise123]

Excelent news.

So my toaster ll be mining BTC in the future. This is going to be big time push for the crypto acceptance.

I don't think they will be adding chips into any device without internet access.
So you are probably looking at TV's, Game Consoles, PC hardware, etc.

I d like to have wireless connection to my toaster. So I can tell it when to switch to a different coin.

If they add it to mobile phones, they ll add it to anything with a gpu or cpu, which s basically any electronic device.

I doubt they will be adding it on mobile phones.
It would dry the battery in no time.
It wouldn't be worth it.

[davejh]

I doubt they will be adding it on mobile phones.
It would dry the battery in no time.
It wouldn't be worth it.

It doesn't make sense on any device though. Always costs more to run than it's worth, plus requires consumers to do setup work to utilise what it does. I don't mind doing setup for my phone because I gain a lot from doing it, but what I don't get is why having BTC mining in my TV or a games console is interesting? What problem related to those devices does it solve? The funds aren't going to be large enough to do interesting micropayments. Even at 50 GH/s there's not enough BTC mined in a year to pay for a game or more than one or two TV episodes. Gets dramatically worse next year when the block reward drops to 12.5 BTC.

Unless there's going to be major adoption by users then the OEMs won't install the capability in their hardware because it costs them money (silicon, board space, software development and maintenance, customer service calls, retailer margin). There's a lot of commercial risk and highly questionable upside?

[Fedoraeuphoria]

These chips also give the NSA a nice backdoor of their choosing for our appliances.

[wagabee london]

it,s great news this will bring more people to bitcoin in a few years everybody will be using bitcoin it,s digital gold for the people

[R2D221]

I'm sorry, but I still don't see the point.

[Amph]

Why would we host miners for 21?

We must miss something or it's a very crappy idea.

I won't pay electricity for someone else to profit.

they'll give you the 25%, i suspect it is above what you will be pay in electricity for it, also taking into account that those asic will operate with 16nm , they should not consume very much

[LiteCoinGuy]

that firm will change alot for bitcoin if they are successful.
just take a look at the partner-firms that they have on board like Cisco, Qualcomm, Intel....it is      !

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