. This specific device is made for developers and people that want to get in on the ground floor. This is obviously not the device that your grandmother will use. Once 21 Inc proves functionality more businesses will jump in on this model of hub and spoke with using the onchain blockchain as the settlement layer to decentralize this process once again.
Virtualized symmetric multiprocessing! ESX!
Imagine a global virtualized hypercomputer with on-the-fly negotiable capacity,
participating nodes being rewarded with Bitcoins for being part of that virtual computer.
i.e. Build a singular massively distributed global scale supercomputer to blow amazon Amazon's EC2 out of the water.
A global scale cloud computing cluster using excess capacity sourced from consumer grade, consumer owned hardware. Building the next generation computer.
Bigger than any datacenter.
USING BITCOIN TO TURN THE INTERNET INTO ONE BIG COMPUTING MACHINE.
HOLY ****** SHIT!
"YOU ARE ONLY USING 10%... would you like some Bitcoin?"
So I'm thinking...
There are billions of computers in the world today. We are putting millions more online every single day.
How much of the global pool of internet-connected computing resources
[compute, storage, bandwidth, memory]
is idle (i.e. just going to waste, generating heat) at any particular time?
Well, most of it.
21's "Grand plan" could involve putting these idle, wasteful computing resources to some productive use.
If this is technically feasible, it's the biggest business plan since... I don't even know.
Balaji has said, "Bitcoin is bigger than google." i.e. if google pointed 100% of their computing resources at Bitcoin mining, they'd have 1% of the network. And nobody could understand what he was on about.
Google datacenters are general purpouse computing hardware, SHA-256 miners only do one thing.
It's often said: You're only using 10% of your brain. That is false. But most of your neurons are running idle.
Running NOPs. Waiting for work to come by.
If 21 could unlock the metaphorical (or actual) 90% of computing resources that are being wasted,
and put a good fraction to some productive use. That would obviously be a huge, huge, huge deal.
Bitcoin provides the economic incentive to unlock these resources.
You could be rewarded with satoshis or millibits by the second or by the minute.
For letting 21 borrow your hardware and renting it out.
What if, instead of simply building more computers,
we use bitcoins as the economic lubricant to utilize
the unused capacity of hundreds of millions of computers
running on idle in homes, schools, offices and datacenters.
So you can agree to throw those spare compute resources at protein folding or business problems,
Turning your machine (PC, server, laptop, router, fridge) into a part-time node in a global virtual supercomputer.
You pimp out your hardware to google so that they don't have to build that new expensive datacenter, but use your home computer instead.
No worrying about cooling costs!
The world is filled with increasingly powerful computing devices.
Most of them doing nothing, most of the time.
See for yourself:
If you happen to be on a Windows machine:
Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete.
Go to task manager.
Show processes from all users.
Sort by CPU time.
At the top... you'll find "System idle process.", likely at 80-90%
On Linux/Mac you can use
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_(software), for example.
Hey! Is that 90% of your CPU time going to waste? (Oh no! Think of the environment!)
How much of your available bandwidth are you using right now?
Less than 10%? Less than 1%?
Your processors are running idle for the majority of the time.
Most of your available bandwidth is unused, right this very moment.
The case of Google and shrinking hardware cost
One of the more important clever things Google did when starting out was....
using consumer hardware. not crazy expensive server hardware.
Normal consumer HDDS, farms of normal PCs to crawl the web.
Brilliant, in retrospect.
This brought costs way down. This made Google feasible.
Perhaps Google could hire [a part of] 21's computer in the sky to run MapReduce or other algorithms, maybe not.
You'd presumably be limited to Embarrassingly parallel problems.
But many important problems are embarrassingly parallel.
see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projectsor any distributed computing project you care to think about.
21 could bring not thousands, but millions and eventually billions of computers, to bear on problems, by working in their spare time. Using idle CPU cycles. Because you can reimburse the worker nodes in BTC.
You'll get paid for it! Current distributed computing projects cannot reward contributors with money.
This one can.
Using BTC transactions to negotiate use of spare computing resources (Storage, CPU, Bandwidth) for unknown applications. We can build a global supercloud.
The general public still has no idea what their business plan is.
But this could be one piece of it.
A note on Bayesian inference:
From the set of all possible hypotheses, describing all possible worlds that fit the available evidence,
which hypotheses are more likely to be true, given what we know?
When judging the probability of hypotheses being true based on partial evidence.
Building an "internet-sized computer" isn't the only hypothesis that fits the evidence...
...but it knocks making toasters out of the park.
...so 21 is SKYNET?
Very obviously, 21 Inc. is not simply about putting chips in people's hardware to make money off of mining.
Perhaps then, 21 is hoarding Bitcoins to PAY PEOPLE for RENTING OUT their GENERAL (not application specific) computing hardware for BTC.
Perhaps they are putting BTC hardware wallets and SHA-256 miners in routers and SoC silicon.
For some unrevealed future use.
...Sidechains and micropayments
This one is obvious. No Skynet on the mainchain. Not with 1MB blocks.
--> Enter Lightning networks.
But 21 Inc. has already mined > 65K BTC, according to year-old data.
For themselves? Or... to pay the worker nodes of Skynet.
...encrypt everything:
Every work unit delivered by 21/skynet would need strong unbackdoored, unbreakable encryption.
Which imbues the whole "Golden Key" encryption backdoor debate with new importance.
Privacy... Is a solvable problem. You can distribute your business secrets
IFF there is unbackdoored, trustworthy encryption.
...getting grandma to use Bitcoin.
With SoC integration (Intel, Qualcomm) and hardware wallets grandma will be using Bitcoin,
if she buys the latest laptop. This is their "phase #3", so perhaps a five years to a decade out?
...Think bigger
21's gameplan is definitely a multi year, likely a multi decade play.
Endgame: In 2030, most grid-connected computers will be part of THE COMPUTER.
Tesla/Powerwall future citywide storage and excess electricity.
Excess power plays into it. 21's Skynet wants to profitably use that excess power.
One internet-sized computer. Powered by Bitcoin.
And this is why Qualcomm and Intel's CEO are involved in 21.
