Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[TPTB_need_war]

His question was not asking about energy efficiency, but rather what is the holistic point of it all. And he is correct that the energy efficiency is scam. The real goal is enslavement of the developing world by loaning a smartphone in exchange for unnoticed electricity usage.

His question was exactly efficiency. I answered both with respect to energy efficiency (much better than the best ASICs as currently deployed, given effectively free electricity) and overall efficiency (likely also, since the chips will likely be very cheap). If I recall correctly I also said I didn't think it was a particularly good idea, regardless of efficiency.

He didn't ask about Larry Summers, etc. That's fair game for you be interested in talking about, but not what he asked.

Is it possible for a toaster/phone + mining chip to be as/more efficient than the best ASIC's on the market, and if it is not, how can this be a cost-efficient way to mine?

Cropping what he wrote doesn't help you. It is clear to me he was asking what the overall economic point is, and he introduced energy efficiency as one of the aspects that doesn't give him a holistic understanding. If you then argue that efficiency is improved in irrelevant and insignificant markets, you create holistic myopia instead of understanding.

Larry Summers participation is irrelevant to whether there is a usage case for the excess heat which makes a significant economic argument. I can't think of one.

That's why we have the halving, the efficiency comes as a byproduct of the protocol. There are no industry's that can not feel a disruption when production costs stay the same and output is halved.

The only ones that will be competitive are the distributed ones with distributed costs.

In that case the price of Bitcoin would plummet, because the efficiency is not registered with the miner and thus they are not a HODLer and rather a seller.

Rather I think you will find there just isn't much interest because there is no significant efficiency gains for the miners and they have opportunity costs on their time, hassle, etc.

This is trying top-down shoehorn something that doesn't fit into a market.

It's the price of bitcoin that driver the energy input needed to secure the value stored on the blockchain it's competition that drives efficiency, utilizing the heat just gives individual miners a relative advantage to be more profitable.

If efficiency a market driven phenomenon causes centralization, that is a reflection of progress, it is not a failure of the protocol.  it will still be disrupted every 4 years.

I believe you've missed my point. Users of water heaters don't have an incentive to install these devices.

[1714201794]

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[1714201794]

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[Adrian-x]

His question was not asking about energy efficiency, but rather what is the holistic point of it all. And he is correct that the energy efficiency is scam. The real goal is enslavement of the developing world by loaning a smartphone in exchange for unnoticed electricity usage.

His question was exactly efficiency. I answered both with respect to energy efficiency (much better than the best ASICs as currently deployed, given effectively free electricity) and overall efficiency (likely also, since the chips will likely be very cheap). If I recall correctly I also said I didn't think it was a particularly good idea, regardless of efficiency.

He didn't ask about Larry Summers, etc. That's fair game for you be interested in talking about, but not what he asked.

Is it possible for a toaster/phone + mining chip to be as/more efficient than the best ASIC's on the market, and if it is not, how can this be a cost-efficient way to mine?

Cropping what he wrote doesn't help you. It is clear to me he was asking what the overall economic point is, and he introduced energy efficiency as one of the aspects that doesn't give him a holistic understanding. If you then argue that efficiency is improved in irrelevant and insignificant markets, you create holistic myopia instead of understanding.

Larry Summers participation is irrelevant to whether there is a usage case for the excess heat which makes a significant economic argument. I can't think of one.

That's why we have the halving, the efficiency comes as a byproduct of the protocol. There are no industry's that can not feel a disruption when production costs stay the same and output is halved.

The only ones that will be competitive are the distributed ones with distributed costs.

In that case the price of Bitcoin would plummet, because the efficiency is not registered with the miner and thus they are not a HODLer and rather a seller.

Rather I think you will find there just isn't much interest because there is no significant efficiency gains for the miners and they have opportunity costs on their time, hassle, etc.

This is trying top-down shoehorn something that doesn't fit into a market.

It's the price of bitcoin that driver the energy input needed to secure the value stored on the blockchain it's competition that drives efficiency, utilizing the heat just gives individual miners a relative advantage to be more profitable.

If efficiency a market driven phenomenon causes centralization, that is a reflection of progress, it is not a failure of the protocol.  it will still be disrupted every 4 years.

I believe you've missed my point. Users of water heaters don't have an incentive to install these devices.

Just a fiew posts back I gave cypher a reason - free instillation and subsidized electricity (cash in your bank account), to me that's win win.

[TPTB_need_war]

There is nowhere else for the heat to go.

Aren't you forgetting that the efficiency of a thermodynamic process is proportional the ratio of the differences in temperature and the ambient.

For someone who trumpets regularly about his superior intelligence and his breaking insights into fields from physics to economics, you sure get a lot of the basics wrong.  If a mining device uses X joules of electrical energy to perform Y hashes, those X joules get converted into an equal amount of heat.  This is basic conservation of energy.

Didn't I make it clear from my upthread posts that I was talking about fact that heat has to be transferred to the environment over spacetime, and the assumption of the integral of transfer being contained with the duty cycle of the effective use of the heat may not be perfectly aligned. If I am not mistaken the differential temperature is one of the metrics on the calculation of the spacetime performance characteristics of a thermal exchange.

Smooth retorted that for example the miner could be turned off before the use of the hair dyer ceased, but that is not a fungible use case of the normal usage of a hair dyer where I don't need to inform my hair dyer how many minutes I will be using it. He also retorted that the thermal exchange with high air flow was sufficient to obviate my concern in that example case. I am not sure if my concern is obviated in all cases. Nevertheless I moved on from that point to argue the more salient point that the efficiency gains are irrelevant or insignificant to the markets they apply to.

[TPTB_need_war]

His question was not asking about energy efficiency, but rather what is the holistic point of it all. And he is correct that the energy efficiency is scam. The real goal is enslavement of the developing world by loaning a smartphone in exchange for unnoticed electricity usage.

His question was exactly efficiency. I answered both with respect to energy efficiency (much better than the best ASICs as currently deployed, given effectively free electricity) and overall efficiency (likely also, since the chips will likely be very cheap). If I recall correctly I also said I didn't think it was a particularly good idea, regardless of efficiency.

He didn't ask about Larry Summers, etc. That's fair game for you be interested in talking about, but not what he asked.

Is it possible for a toaster/phone + mining chip to be as/more efficient than the best ASIC's on the market, and if it is not, how can this be a cost-efficient way to mine?

Cropping what he wrote doesn't help you. It is clear to me he was asking what the overall economic point is, and he introduced energy efficiency as one of the aspects that doesn't give him a holistic understanding. If you then argue that efficiency is improved in irrelevant and insignificant markets, you create holistic myopia instead of understanding.

Larry Summers participation is irrelevant to whether there is a usage case for the excess heat which makes a significant economic argument. I can't think of one.

That's why we have the halving, the efficiency comes as a byproduct of the protocol. There are no industry's that can not feel a disruption when production costs stay the same and output is halved.

The only ones that will be competitive are the distributed ones with distributed costs.

In that case the price of Bitcoin would plummet, because the efficiency is not registered with the miner and thus they are not a HODLer and rather a seller.

Rather I think you will find there just isn't much interest because there is no significant efficiency gains for the miners and they have opportunity costs on their time, hassle, etc.

This is trying top-down shoehorn something that doesn't fit into a market.

It's the price of bitcoin that driver the energy input needed to secure the value stored on the blockchain it's competition that drives efficiency, utilizing the heat just gives individual miners a relative advantage to be more profitable.

If efficiency a market driven phenomenon causes centralization, that is a reflection of progress, it is not a failure of the protocol.  it will still be disrupted every 4 years.

I believe you've missed my point. Users of water heaters don't have an incentive to install these devices.

Just a fiew posts back I gave cypher a reason - free instillation and subsidized electricity (cash in your bank account), to me that's win win.

Sorry I don't have time for that. I will spend $100 on dinner tonight for my guests. Opportunity costs.

Btw, my water heater is already installed. No time to hassle with replacing it just for $50 in monthly Bitcoins that I have to hassle with and figure out how to report on my income taxes, etc..

It isn't my core vocation. I focus on my core vocation of ________ which nets me $4,000+ per month.

[Adrian-x]

His question was not asking about energy efficiency, but rather what is the holistic point of it all. And he is correct that the energy efficiency is scam. The real goal is enslavement of the developing world by loaning a smartphone in exchange for unnoticed electricity usage.

His question was exactly efficiency. I answered both with respect to energy efficiency (much better than the best ASICs as currently deployed, given effectively free electricity) and overall efficiency (likely also, since the chips will likely be very cheap). If I recall correctly I also said I didn't think it was a particularly good idea, regardless of efficiency.

He didn't ask about Larry Summers, etc. That's fair game for you be interested in talking about, but not what he asked.

Is it possible for a toaster/phone + mining chip to be as/more efficient than the best ASIC's on the market, and if it is not, how can this be a cost-efficient way to mine?

Cropping what he wrote doesn't help you. It is clear to me he was asking what the overall economic point is, and he introduced energy efficiency as one of the aspects that doesn't give him a holistic understanding. If you then argue that efficiency is improved in irrelevant and insignificant markets, you create holistic myopia instead of understanding.

Larry Summers participation is irrelevant to whether there is a usage case for the excess heat which makes a significant economic argument. I can't think of one.

That's why we have the halving, the efficiency comes as a byproduct of the protocol. There are no industry's that can not feel a disruption when production costs stay the same and output is halved.

The only ones that will be competitive are the distributed ones with distributed costs.

In that case the price of Bitcoin would plummet, because the efficiency is not registered with the miner and thus they are not a HODLer and rather a seller.

Rather I think you will find there just isn't much interest because there is no significant efficiency gains for the miners and they have opportunity costs on their time, hassle, etc.

This is trying top-down shoehorn something that doesn't fit into a market.

It's the price of bitcoin that driver the energy input needed to secure the value stored on the blockchain it's competition that drives efficiency, utilizing the heat just gives individual miners a relative advantage to be more profitable.

If efficiency a market driven phenomenon causes centralization, that is a reflection of progress, it is not a failure of the protocol.  it will still be disrupted every 4 years.

I believe you've missed my point. Users of water heaters don't have an incentive to install these devices.

Just a fiew posts back I gave cypher a reason - free instillation and subsidized electricity (cash in your bank account), to me that's win win.

Sorry I don't have time for that. I will spend $100 on dinner tonight for my guests. Opportunity costs.

Btw, my water heater is already installed. No time to hassle with replacing it just for $50 in monthly Bitcoins that I have to hassle with and figure out how to report on my income taxes, etc..

It isn't my core vocation. I focus on my core vocation of ________ which nets me $4,000+ per month.

Enjoy your dinner, you're describing first world problems, $50 goes a long way in the 3rd world.

 :-) Does ________ quality as "digital influencer" it's one of the fiew growth opportunities in the job market at the moment.

[TPTB_need_war]

that's ok.  there are hundreds if not thousands of businesses that could eventually participate.

fine, but if the proverbial "developing country" person is shopping for a water heater, she is just shopping for a water heater. not for the best combo heater/miner that heats water just right and contributes to the decentralization of the bitcoin network.

but yes, just speculating anyway. special thanks to smooth, your recent posts have been very stimulating.

true, this won't be for everyone.

but i think these companies could be building their own virtuous cycles on top of Bitcoin which could cause the next bull run in price.  if so, how would that affect the developing country person's decision making?  pay full price for an ordinary water heater, or almost free for one with a Bitcoin miner built in?

Enjoy your dinner, you're describing first world problems, $50 goes a long way in the 3rd world.

I have never seen in a developing country a centralized water heater for a home, except for the wealthy. It is also the one at the shower head that only runs for a few minutes per day. Often developing world homes don't even have separate hot and cold water lines run through the home.

The market for energy efficiency is not the developing world because they already conserve energy where it would be significant. Most of the electricity is expended on the refrigerator and perhaps the TV and electric fan at least in the tropics.

Home heating in cooler environments perhaps, but I doubt they heat their homes in Ecuador or Nepal rather burn firewood and wear heavy clothing. I have been in the mountains in Guatemala and the major city. That was 1993 though. I was in Cali, Colombia in 2001.

And will you even have internet connectivity in all rural and slum areas of the developing world.

[necrita]

Anyone want to refute this guy:

http://www.clearmatics.com/2015/05/no-bitcoin-is-not-the-future-of-securities-settlement/

Only sort of valid point he brings up is the Sybil attack.

[necrita]

Wanted to hear of your opinion of why billionaire VC's only claim to hold a few coins in public and invest millions into BTC companies.
Is this their way of taking a bet and hedging against Bitcoins failure? Wont their ROI be better just owning BTC.
Is there more money to be made building services around Bitcoin than the store of value property of BTC.

In this video: http://livestream.com/theNYPL/bitcoin Fred Wilson and his wife claim to own 500 - 1000 Bitcoin.

[TPTB_need_war]

the 21 mining chip rollout is mostly about smartphones.

this is a well documented fast, growing mkt that is leapfrogging laptops/desktops in developing nations like Africa.  there are literally billions of new customers on the line and they also happen to be unbanked.  this is a way to subsidize getting phones into their hands.  the other problem has been getting ppl in developed nations to use their credit cards with their phones.  the UI's have been clunky (ever tried buying anything from a website from your phone?) and no one quite trusts doing it.  Apple Pay has been failing miserably basically b/c the bank verification process has been defrauded with stolen cc info and there is no good way to marry the two technologies with all the ongoing hacks.  there is no safe way for the traditional fiat system to secure smartphone payments.  until now with 21.  

...

you know this is why Qualcomm is involved.  the smartphone makers will love it b/c this is a way to get new users of their phones in exchange for their paying electricity to charge their phones and mine.  battery life is likely not to be a factor as most ppl keep their phones plugged in most of the time....

the great thing that will result is the decentralization of mining across millions and more likely billions of devices round the world all at the individual level that can't possibly be shut down unless you believe in unified gvt violation of human rights.  i don't.  if you do, you'll have to explain why we still have wars, conflicts, cross border intelligence agency hackings, Stuxnet, Sony hacks, China & Russia stockpiling gold while the US is disgorging gold, Angela Merkel phone taps, as well as a myriad of other international conflicts.

Bitcoin's future is bright.

edit:  the device makers will have the incentive to form their own mining pools to collect BTC which i am sure they'll do.  this will further decentralize mining.

I agree that is the only market target that makes sense.

I guess it is true that we are forced to plug in our phones often because we use the damn thing incessantly. Yet i think they will need to increase the battery size else they risk some consumer rejection (also a warm to the touch phone may be undesirable at least in hot climates), although it is disheartening the level of tsuris that users here put up with on their cheap smartphones (e.g. single core molasses).

I don't see how adding millions of nodes which are not fully nodes adds to decentralization when this micropayment volume can only accelerate blockchain size increase thus accelerating the degree of IBLT centralization of mining. Unless the BTC is not going to the users, but...

The device makers core vocation is not running pools so of course they will outsource that. The Sybil pool attack is alive and well.

Appears to me the only way this scales quickly is to give the BTC to the providers and the free phones or connectivity to the users. Thus this is not a network effects paradigm for Bitcoin. If they instead give BTC to the users, the users need to first buy the phone and connectivity, which would not scale in the developing world. I can't get anyone here to put up their own capital for anything. It is always I must pay them first to do anything. They have no capital. Probably they will do a split that gives a token amount of BTC for micropayments to the users. That could create some network effects. Such a micropayments ecosystem will require some time (24 months?) to gain critical masses inertia. The users are not entering the deal for the BTC, but for the free connectivity or phone price discount. Many may ignore the token level of BTC as tsuris. It is much better to market a micropayments ecosystem to those who need it badly (which is my plan).

The economics doesn't work well. It doesn't drive a lot of demand where it didn't exist before. It is an incremental attempt. But it is a wake up call that the bastards are trying to think of a way to enslave the developing world.

Edit: I see smooth made a similar point:

I mean the manufacturers may outsource to new or existing large pools (which will then pay the Bitcoins or fiat to the manufacturer), instead of each creating their own. Its fairly normal for companies to leave that sort of thing to a specialist and not try to do it themselves. I'd guess some will, some won't.

[Adrian-x]

that's ok.  there are hundreds if not thousands of businesses that could eventually participate.

fine, but if the proverbial "developing country" person is shopping for a water heater, she is just shopping for a water heater. not for the best combo heater/miner that heats water just right and contributes to the decentralization of the bitcoin network.

but yes, just speculating anyway. special thanks to smooth, your recent posts have been very stimulating.

true, this won't be for everyone.

but i think these companies could be building their own virtuous cycles on top of Bitcoin which could cause the next bull run in price.  if so, how would that affect the developing country person's decision making?  pay full price for an ordinary water heater, or almost free for one with a Bitcoin miner built in?

Enjoy your dinner, you're describing first world problems, $50 goes a long way in the 3rd world.

I have never seen in a developing country a centralized water heater for a home, except for the wealthy. It is also the one at the shower head that only runs for a few minutes per day. Often developing world homes don't even have separate hot and cold water lines run through the home.

The market for energy efficiency is not the developing world because they already conserve energy where it would be significant. Most of the electricity is expended on the refrigerator and perhaps the TV and electric fan at least in the tropics.

Home heating in cooler environments perhaps, but I doubt they heat their homes in Ecuador or Nepal rather burn firewood and wear heavy clothing. I have been in the mountains in Guatemala and the major city. That was 1993 though. I was in Cali, Colombia in 2001.

And will you even have internet connectivity in all rural and slum areas of the developing world.

A lot has happened since then more than 50% of the world's population now live in urban environments. I'm from Africa and electricity is more prevent than water, moreover cell reception is more prevent than electricity, cell reception is ubiquitous and governments are spending a lot of printed money to bring electricity to urban areas, I can't see your vision because it conflicts with some things I see that are tangent to your circular view of the world.

[TPTB_need_war]

A lot has happened since then more than 50% of the world's population now live in urban environments. I'm from Africa and electricity is more prevent than water, moreover cell reception is more prevent than electricity, cell reception is ubiquitous and governments are spending a lot of printed money to bring electricity to urban areas, I can't see your vision because it conflicts with some things I see that are tangent to your circular view of the world.

You focused only on the less salient point that I made. My point is energy efficiency for excess heat is not a target market in the developing world. Severely resource constrained people don't heat their homes, they wear extra clothing instead. They use cold water for the most part, or boil their water in a pale, or us a hot water heater at the shower head which only runs a few minutes per day. Go take a look around your area and confirm it for those who are not wealthy enough that the savings is irrelevant to their core opportunity costs. For those who can afford to heat their homes, the opportunity cost is only going to make sense for a fraction of them. It is an incremental target market, not a huge sweeping one.

Please make sure you understand my point about tsuris and opportunity cost before retorting me.

[TPTB_need_war]

all of which may or may not contribute to the centralization of the network, which was the original point.

Hardware will decentralizes, profits may or may not. Control will depend on the education level of the market.

Which is non-existent on both economics and Bitcoin amongst the target market segment.

And you don't have a shred of hope of educating them in a premature acceleration. I've tried and realized it was futile.

[TPTB_need_war]

I agree the idea of a hardware wallet combined with mining in a small device makes a lot of sense.

If you desire BTC and micropayments. The target market desires only the smartphone. Shoehorning through deception rarely creates mass movements. Somebody at 21 Inc flunked Marketing 101.

The elite are trying so hard to get the developing world onto the electronic currency in an accelerated timeline but they can't erase the natural inertia of the developing world.

It takes me numerous instances of repetitive teaching just to get people here to understand what message forwarding does. They don't even know how to enter a URL in the browser, they search the url in google! They don't easily adapt to a new site with a similar paradigm of sign up, sign in, send message. If the UI is slightly different than Facebook, they get confused. In my site they are not asked to input an email address on signup/in and instead their mobile. This confuses the hell out of them.

The adopters of crypto are in the developed world. We are the movers and shakers. Sorry Dirty Larry.

[TPTB_need_war]

the device makers will have the incentive to form their own mining pools to collect BTC which i am sure they'll do.  this will further decentralize mining.

or it may concentrate it. we shall find out.

i don't see how taking today's mining pools and adding dozens of phone maker, router maker, and other device making mining pools with their millions of users can result in centralization.

It isn't clear those parties will create their own mining pools. They may outsource. But we don't know at this point, everyone is guessing, including whether this who concept gets any traction at all.

We don't need to guess about the inexorable trend to the maximum-division-of-labor.

[TPTB_need_war]

also, i don't think these companies would have invested in 21 w/o some larger plans:

“We think 21’s technology has the potential to span across a wide variety of industries and look forward to working with Balaji and the team.”
— Nagraj Kashyap, Senior Vice President, Qualcomm Ventures
“Bitcoin could be the internet’s next great protocol. With the blockchain’s distributed ledger and micro-transaction capabilities, it has the potential to become an enabling technology that expands well beyond digital payments. We’re delighted to be an investor in 21 and to work closely with Balaji and Ben.”
— Padmasree Warrior, Chief Technology & Strategy Officer, Cisco

Their current business models need expanding markets. The smartphone markets are becoming saturated in the West. Their need obscures their objectivity, because their main goal is to sell the growth projections to shareholders.

People like me in their company that raise our hand, are fired. Groupthink.

Western companies trying to understand developing markets from their armchairs and lack of hands on experience. I've lived in the developing world 1990, 1991, 1996 - 1999, 2003 - present. They did better being suppliers to Samsung and manufacturers in Asia than top-down dictating the paradigm.

[smooth]

Wanted to hear of your opinion of why billionaire VC's only claim to hold a few coins in public and invest millions into BTC companies.
Is this their way of taking a bet and hedging against Bitcoins failure? Wont their ROI be better just owning BTC.
Is there more money to be made building services around Bitcoin than the store of value property of BTC.

Venture capitalists make most of their money on fees (including performance fees), which they get for providing the service of investing other people's money into startup companies. That's what they're paid to do, so that's what they do.

It's debatable whether just owning BTC would be a better ROI, but that's irrelevant if you are in the business of backing companies.

[TPTB_need_war]

Wanted to hear of your opinion of why billionaire VC's only claim to hold a few coins in public and invest millions into BTC companies.
Is this their way of taking a bet and hedging against Bitcoins failure? Wont their ROI be better just owning BTC.
Is there more money to be made building services around Bitcoin than the store of value property of BTC.

Venture capitalists make most of their money on fees (including performance fees), which they get for providing the service of investing other people's money into startup companies. That's what they're paid to do, so that's what they do.

Thank you. I sensed there was a good reason for me to avoid that morass, but I had never tried. I remember reading about for example how Bill Gross's ideaLab required the startup to take on this shared overhead that the ideaLab provides to its incubated companies.

Last thing I need is some bean counter or premature optimization of marketing wasting my time while innovating.

[smooth]

There is nowhere else for the heat to go.

Aren't you forgetting that the efficiency of a thermodynamic process is proportional the ratio of the differences in temperature and the ambient.

For someone who trumpets regularly about his superior intelligence and his breaking insights into fields from physics to economics, you sure get a lot of the basics wrong.  If a mining device uses X joules of electrical energy to perform Y hashes, those X joules get converted into an equal amount of heat.  This is basic conservation of energy.

Didn't I make it clear from my upthread posts that I was talking about fact that heat has to be transferred to the environment over spacetime, and the assumption of the integral of transfer being contained with the duty cycle of the effective use of the heat may not be perfectly aligned. If I am not mistaken the differential temperature is one of the metrics on the calculation of the spacetime performance characteristics of a thermal exchange.

Smooth retorted that for example the miner could be turned off before the use of the hair dyer ceased, but that is not a fungible use case of the normal usage of a hair dyer where I don't need to inform my hair dyer how many minutes I will be using it.

No what I suggested was that if that the typical use time of a hair dryer were say 10 minutes, it could be designed to turn off the mining chip after 9 minutes (or a smarter one -- not hard to imagine if it has a mining chip in it --  may learn it's owner's specific usage pattern). That likely reduces the (already small) residual heat to a bare minimum (only in those cases where the user turns it off early, for example if the phone rings).

Toasters and hair driers might be dumb uses for it anyway, though it depends how low the cost of the chip can be driven down. Room heaters, water heaters, etc. are much better.

[TPTB_need_war]

Room heaters, water heaters, etc. are much better.

In what way if any is my upthread argument against these being a wide-scale target market not correct?

Or are you still just arguing about (I assert irrelevant) energy efficiency without respect to (I assert relevant) overall efficiency?

Edit: I wasn't trying to make it appear you erred on the points about energy efficiency. I am concerned with what is relevant and didn't think I was attempting to make it appear you made an error. I am urging you to raise the debate to relevant factors because I am most interested in a conclusion so I can move on.

[smooth]

His question was not asking about energy efficiency, but rather what is the holistic point of it all. And he is correct that the energy efficiency is scam. The real goal is enslavement of the developing world by loaning a smartphone in exchange for unnoticed electricity usage.

His question was exactly efficiency. I answered both with respect to energy efficiency (much better than the best ASICs as currently deployed, given effectively free electricity) and overall efficiency (likely also, since the chips will likely be very cheap). If I recall correctly I also said I didn't think it was a particularly good idea, regardless of efficiency.

He didn't ask about Larry Summers, etc. That's fair game for you be interested in talking about, but not what he asked.

Is it possible for a toaster/phone + mining chip to be as/more efficient than the best ASIC's on the market, and if it is not, how can this be a cost-efficient way to mine?

Cropping what he wrote doesn't help you. It is clear to me he was asking what the overall economic point is, and he introduced energy efficiency as one of the aspects that doesn't give him a holistic understanding. If you then argue that efficiency is improved in irrelevant and insignificant markets, you create holistic myopia instead of understanding.

The markets are not insignificant. The water heater market is approximately 100 million units per year. The largest markets are currently Brazil and China, I guess due to rapid urbanization and development. Of current deliveries, electric-powered units are a large share, possibly >50% (Brazil appears to lack gas distribution or has some other reason to favor electric, because almost all of the market there is electric.)

I don't really understand what notion of "total efficiency" you are using other than what it is people in the market choose to buy. People seem to want to buy electric heating devices. There is little question that eventually these electric heating applications will migrate to some sort of mining-integrated solution, assuming mining continues to be a thing. I don't know if that really has anything to do with how 21 plans to make money. It doesn't seem like a terribly good business in terms of sustainable margins, even if it will eventually happen regardless.