Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Natalia_AnatolioPAMM]

As a guy that's been mining for a few years now, I can get behind the idea of mining space heaters. I even wanted to place a small mining farm in the furnace room and then control the vents with individual thermostats to distribute the heat, dumping excess heat as needed.

But mining on a phone, it's just not reasonable. You could put the same chip on a USB stick and it would perform better.

Serious mining makes for some serious heat. If I'm 21 the household heating market is where I would target.

good point

[kodtycoon]

As a guy that's been mining for a few years now, I can get behind the idea of mining space heaters. I even wanted to place a small mining farm in the furnace room and then control the vents with individual thermostats to distribute the heat, dumping excess heat as needed.

But mining on a phone, it's just not reasonable. You could put the same chip on a USB stick and it would perform better.

Serious mining makes for some serious heat. If I'm 21 the household heating market is where I would target.

good point

https://soundcloud.com/elux-1/21-inc-embedded-engineer-on-whaleclub-teamspeak

listen to that. its not about making profit. remove the idea of making profit from these chips from your head.

[cypherdoc]

I obviously don't agree to that, it has to be economically viable to exist.

No, no no. A million times no.

e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pets.com

Are you suggesting a big con?

It could be a good business plan, or a mistake, or a con. You're excluding the middle.

I hate selective quoting. The con part, that is viable only on a small scale.

Okay, I didn't follow it. What's the con?

I was too quick, your comments were ok, I deleted my post, but too late.

Somebody suggest that people would buy these phones for extra, use extra power, not knowing they earned money for the company only. That a con.

Ok, I'll try again... why put that chip in the phone if you could just include it in the charger cable? Or charging pad for wireless charging?

Battery life, size, weight, efficiency are all competing qualities for phones and putting a bitcoin miner in your phone is not going to make it more competitive.

(Secure enclave type wallet on the other hand = no brainer)

i don't know.  maybe for tracking purposes as hashing shares back to the pool requires a continuous connection?  which admittedly isn't great for privacy but might enable the pool certain functionality.  but that connection might be what's needed for this continuous negotiating interaction btwn phones not necessarily involving the phone owner that was talked about in the audio.

[cypherdoc]

As a guy that's been mining for a few years now, I can get behind the idea of mining space heaters. I even wanted to place a small mining farm in the furnace room and then control the vents with individual thermostats to distribute the heat, dumping excess heat as needed.

But mining on a phone, it's just not reasonable. You could put the same chip on a USB stick and it would perform better.

Serious mining makes for some serious heat. If I'm 21 the household heating market is where I would target.

good point

https://soundcloud.com/elux-1/21-inc-embedded-engineer-on-whaleclub-teamspeak

listen to that. its not about making profit. remove the idea of making profit from these chips from your head.

time to dump NXT and buy Bitcoin? 

[_mr_e]

As a guy that's been mining for a few years now, I can get behind the idea of mining space heaters. I even wanted to place a small mining farm in the furnace room and then control the vents with individual thermostats to distribute the heat, dumping excess heat as needed.

But mining on a phone, it's just not reasonable. You could put the same chip on a USB stick and it would perform better.

Serious mining makes for some serious heat. If I'm 21 the household heating market is where I would target.

good point

https://soundcloud.com/elux-1/21-inc-embedded-engineer-on-whaleclub-teamspeak

listen to that. its not about making profit. remove the idea of making profit from these chips from your head.

time to dump NXT and buy Bitcoin?  

Nxt doesn't require power sucking chips installed into every device imaginable to operate:) I will stand by the idea that it is wise to hold both as each system will feed off each others strengths for different purposes.

[cypherdoc]

As a guy that's been mining for a few years now, I can get behind the idea of mining space heaters. I even wanted to place a small mining farm in the furnace room and then control the vents with individual thermostats to distribute the heat, dumping excess heat as needed.

But mining on a phone, it's just not reasonable. You could put the same chip on a USB stick and it would perform better.

Serious mining makes for some serious heat. If I'm 21 the household heating market is where I would target.

good point

https://soundcloud.com/elux-1/21-inc-embedded-engineer-on-whaleclub-teamspeak

listen to that. its not about making profit. remove the idea of making profit from these chips from your head.

time to dump NXT and buy Bitcoin?  

Nxt doesn't require power sucking chips installed into every device imaginable to operate:) I will stand by the idea that it is wise to hold both as each system will feed off each others strengths for different purposes.

but it would help, wouldn't it?

[jmw74]

sure, they will go after those mkts too.  but, imo, smartphones is the Big Kahuna.  that is where the greatest money to be had lies.

remember, those OEM's that understand Bitcoin want to grab the majority of mkt share in developing nations by offering severe discounts to new previously unbanked customers.  get the phone into their hands, lock them in, and worry about significant monetization later.  the only way to do this, in the 21 model of mining chips, is to make the smartphones hash as a payback.  whether mining "on it's own" will be profitable or not, it's hard to tell.  but it could be with enough efficiency in the chip, assuming customers will attempt to pass on charging costs to "others", and coordinating the hashing power to generate blocks.  either way, i don't think that's the main thrust.  they want to get Satoshi's onto ppl's phones so as to allow the phones to "negotiate" micropayments for all sorts of unimaginable things like parking, fast lanes on hwys, who knows.  the OEM's will have one huge coordinated network to which they can sell all sorts of other products and services as well.  it's also their stated objective to decentralize mining which i think is a worthy goal even if it means they lose money on it.  i've seeing all sorts of crying about "centralization" as a result.  that's ridiculous.  who honestly thinks that bringing on millions, if not billions, of new individual miners into the economy will do that?  do you honestly think the #pools we have now will stay constant and just absorb all this new value?  no way.  as many new pools will crop up as device manufacturers who are willing to do this.  in fact, each OEM should set up their own pool if they want to maximize the gain.  it's easy.  i ran my own sort of pool back when i was pointing 15 or so of my own miners at my stratum solo mining server.  and i'm not a geek or CS.  it was relatively easy.  all sorts of new pool operators are going to come out of the woodwork to take any outsourcing that might occur.  why not?  free money in fees for easy work.  no, we are going to see a mushrooming of the absolute #pools as well as a spreading out of the distribution into a much more decentralized piechart than we've already seen.

there will be also many ppl here in developed nations who will want these mining phones.  esp with all the free electricity we have access to.

if you haven't listened to the audio dropt posted above, you should.  it highlights and expands on many of the things i have been saying about this.

What are you smoking? You forget what proof of work IS. It's proof of burn of electricity. You cannot earn more in the long term, than the value of the electricity you burned. How much electricity can a smartphone burn?

Charging a smartphone costs a whopping 41 cents PER YEAR.  Nobody gives a shit about those pennies, and even less about 25% of those pennies. Not even the poorest people in Africa, with free power and 10 smartphones, can earn anything close to a worthwhile return.

And that's assuming they have free power! Maybe shop owners NOW don't mind if people charge their phones, but what happens when their shop is filled with freeloaders who will just steal power and not buy anything? Of course they're going to cut off the free power.

I really can't believe people are falling for this bullshit.

you sound angry.  what are you, a Monero holder or something?  thinking you're smarter than the wealth of talented minds in the 21 camp is what i'd consider "smoking".  did you read anything i said above?  it could, in fact, be a loss leader.  but getting a majority share of a known burgeoning market that will leapfrog the pc and laptop mkt is hugely valuable.  otoh, if they indeed have worked out the power reqs, which is what i think they mean when they referred to power scaling per device, then it will be an even bigger win.  you can't discount this from a group that includes major industry leaders like Qualcomm & Cisco.  furthermore, advancing the goal of mining decentralization stands to kill a major bear tard argument against Bitcoin in the long run.  it's a worthy goal.  and as far as the mkt responding to "stealing" electricity.  unfortunately for you anti-Bitcoin beartards, the mkt will be slow to respond, as in years.  it always is.  what we're talking about is empowering millions of disadvantaged, yet ambitious, smart individuals who want to make money like you and me.  the whole concept leverages on Bitcoin's Sound Money principles which makes it worthwhile to do whatever it takes to make it work.  you can't stop that and i think 21 understands this principle.  stop your whining.

I'm not sure why being skeptical of 21's business plan equates to anti-bitcoin, in your mind.

Anyway, they stated their plan, I pointed out glaring flaws in it, and the response is "these guys are industry leaders, they know what they're doing". Well, maybe, but I can't critique what is only in their heads. Their plan that they have actually made public is ludicrous beyond belief. Consumers can't make money, manufacturers and 21 can only make money by creating a massive scam.

It makes no sense at all and frankly I'm shocked that someone like you (who is normally very astute) doesn't see the problem here.

I'm all for mining decentralization BUT THIS ISN'T IT!  In order to be decentralized, the owner of the device has to be able to control the mining policy. In this case, they can't. That power will be concentrated in the hands of the manufacturer and 21. Come on cypherdoc, you know this stuff. Makes me wonder if you're on someone's payroll.

[_mr_e]

As a guy that's been mining for a few years now, I can get behind the idea of mining space heaters. I even wanted to place a small mining farm in the furnace room and then control the vents with individual thermostats to distribute the heat, dumping excess heat as needed.

But mining on a phone, it's just not reasonable. You could put the same chip on a USB stick and it would perform better.

Serious mining makes for some serious heat. If I'm 21 the household heating market is where I would target.

good point

https://soundcloud.com/elux-1/21-inc-embedded-engineer-on-whaleclub-teamspeak

listen to that. its not about making profit. remove the idea of making profit from these chips from your head.

time to dump NXT and buy Bitcoin?  

Nxt doesn't require power sucking chips installed into every device imaginable to operate:) I will stand by the idea that it is wise to hold both as each system will feed off each others strengths for different purposes.

but it would help, wouldn't it?

Not really, why do you say that? Low powered devices can already forge nxt as long as they have some stake.

[justusranvier]

sure, they will go after those mkts too.  but, imo, smartphones is the Big Kahuna.  that is where the greatest money to be had lies.

remember, those OEM's that understand Bitcoin want to grab the majority of mkt share in developing nations by offering severe discounts to new previously unbanked customers.  get the phone into their hands, lock them in, and worry about significant monetization later.  the only way to do this, in the 21 model of mining chips, is to make the smartphones hash as a payback.  whether mining "on it's own" will be profitable or not, it's hard to tell.  but it could be with enough efficiency in the chip, assuming customers will attempt to pass on charging costs to "others", and coordinating the hashing power to generate blocks.  either way, i don't think that's the main thrust.  they want to get Satoshi's onto ppl's phones so as to allow the phones to "negotiate" micropayments for all sorts of unimaginable things like parking, fast lanes on hwys, who knows.  the OEM's will have one huge coordinated network to which they can sell all sorts of other products and services as well.  it's also their stated objective to decentralize mining which i think is a worthy goal even if it means they lose money on it.  i've seeing all sorts of crying about "centralization" as a result.  that's ridiculous.  who honestly thinks that bringing on millions, if not billions, of new individual miners into the economy will do that?  do you honestly think the #pools we have now will stay constant and just absorb all this new value?  no way.  as many new pools will crop up as device manufacturers who are willing to do this.  in fact, each OEM should set up their own pool if they want to maximize the gain.  it's easy.  i ran my own sort of pool back when i was pointing 15 or so of my own miners at my stratum solo mining server.  and i'm not a geek or CS.  it was relatively easy.  all sorts of new pool operators are going to come out of the woodwork to take any outsourcing that might occur.  why not?  free money in fees for easy work.  no, we are going to see a mushrooming of the absolute #pools as well as a spreading out of the distribution into a much more decentralized piechart than we've already seen.

there will be also many ppl here in developed nations who will want these mining phones.  esp with all the free electricity we have access to.

if you haven't listened to the audio dropt posted above, you should.  it highlights and expands on many of the things i have been saying about this.

What are you smoking? You forget what proof of work IS. It's proof of burn of electricity. You cannot earn more in the long term, than the value of the electricity you burned. How much electricity can a smartphone burn?

Charging a smartphone costs a whopping 41 cents PER YEAR.  Nobody gives a shit about those pennies, and even less about 25% of those pennies. Not even the poorest people in Africa, with free power and 10 smartphones, can earn anything close to a worthwhile return.

And that's assuming they have free power! Maybe shop owners NOW don't mind if people charge their phones, but what happens when their shop is filled with freeloaders who will just steal power and not buy anything? Of course they're going to cut off the free power.

I really can't believe people are falling for this bullshit.

you sound angry.  what are you, a Monero holder or something?  thinking you're smarter than the wealth of talented minds in the 21 camp is what i'd consider "smoking".  did you read anything i said above?  it could, in fact, be a loss leader.  but getting a majority share of a known burgeoning market that will leapfrog the pc and laptop mkt is hugely valuable.  otoh, if they indeed have worked out the power reqs, which is what i think they mean when they referred to power scaling per device, then it will be an even bigger win.  you can't discount this from a group that includes major industry leaders like Qualcomm & Cisco.  furthermore, advancing the goal of mining decentralization stands to kill a major bear tard argument against Bitcoin in the long run.  it's a worthy goal.  and as far as the mkt responding to "stealing" electricity.  unfortunately for you anti-Bitcoin beartards, the mkt will be slow to respond, as in years.  it always is.  what we're talking about is empowering millions of disadvantaged, yet ambitious, smart individuals who want to make money like you and me.  the whole concept leverages on Bitcoin's Sound Money principles which makes it worthwhile to do whatever it takes to make it work.  you can't stop that and i think 21 understands this principle.  stop your whining.

I think scepticism is always healthy when it comes to new products whose underlying business model doesn't immediately make sense.

That was true for Blockstream and it's true for 21.

I really do want to be optimistic about every new investment that's even tangentially related to Bitcoin, but somebody has to keep an eye on non-obvious side effects.

Consider what happened with Radio Shack and the customer data they are selling as part of their bankruptcy. As far as anyone can tell, they did a reasonable job of not mishandling it while they were still solvent. Will that transfer to the new owners?

The same principle applies to 21. Maybe they are great people who are going to do good things with their technology. If their business model doesn't make sense, however, it's reasonable to ponder what future owners of their business might do with it.

We wouldn't have to worry so much if our network was a bit more economically robust (price discovery, etc), so really fixing that is the real long-term solution.

[cypherdoc]

sure, they will go after those mkts too.  but, imo, smartphones is the Big Kahuna.  that is where the greatest money to be had lies.

remember, those OEM's that understand Bitcoin want to grab the majority of mkt share in developing nations by offering severe discounts to new previously unbanked customers.  get the phone into their hands, lock them in, and worry about significant monetization later.  the only way to do this, in the 21 model of mining chips, is to make the smartphones hash as a payback.  whether mining "on it's own" will be profitable or not, it's hard to tell.  but it could be with enough efficiency in the chip, assuming customers will attempt to pass on charging costs to "others", and coordinating the hashing power to generate blocks.  either way, i don't think that's the main thrust.  they want to get Satoshi's onto ppl's phones so as to allow the phones to "negotiate" micropayments for all sorts of unimaginable things like parking, fast lanes on hwys, who knows.  the OEM's will have one huge coordinated network to which they can sell all sorts of other products and services as well.  it's also their stated objective to decentralize mining which i think is a worthy goal even if it means they lose money on it.  i've seeing all sorts of crying about "centralization" as a result.  that's ridiculous.  who honestly thinks that bringing on millions, if not billions, of new individual miners into the economy will do that?  do you honestly think the #pools we have now will stay constant and just absorb all this new value?  no way.  as many new pools will crop up as device manufacturers who are willing to do this.  in fact, each OEM should set up their own pool if they want to maximize the gain.  it's easy.  i ran my own sort of pool back when i was pointing 15 or so of my own miners at my stratum solo mining server.  and i'm not a geek or CS.  it was relatively easy.  all sorts of new pool operators are going to come out of the woodwork to take any outsourcing that might occur.  why not?  free money in fees for easy work.  no, we are going to see a mushrooming of the absolute #pools as well as a spreading out of the distribution into a much more decentralized piechart than we've already seen.

there will be also many ppl here in developed nations who will want these mining phones.  esp with all the free electricity we have access to.

if you haven't listened to the audio dropt posted above, you should.  it highlights and expands on many of the things i have been saying about this.

What are you smoking? You forget what proof of work IS. It's proof of burn of electricity. You cannot earn more in the long term, than the value of the electricity you burned. How much electricity can a smartphone burn?

Charging a smartphone costs a whopping 41 cents PER YEAR.  Nobody gives a shit about those pennies, and even less about 25% of those pennies. Not even the poorest people in Africa, with free power and 10 smartphones, can earn anything close to a worthwhile return.

And that's assuming they have free power! Maybe shop owners NOW don't mind if people charge their phones, but what happens when their shop is filled with freeloaders who will just steal power and not buy anything? Of course they're going to cut off the free power.

I really can't believe people are falling for this bullshit.

you sound angry.  what are you, a Monero holder or something?  thinking you're smarter than the wealth of talented minds in the 21 camp is what i'd consider "smoking".  did you read anything i said above?  it could, in fact, be a loss leader.  but getting a majority share of a known burgeoning market that will leapfrog the pc and laptop mkt is hugely valuable.  otoh, if they indeed have worked out the power reqs, which is what i think they mean when they referred to power scaling per device, then it will be an even bigger win.  you can't discount this from a group that includes major industry leaders like Qualcomm & Cisco.  furthermore, advancing the goal of mining decentralization stands to kill a major bear tard argument against Bitcoin in the long run.  it's a worthy goal.  and as far as the mkt responding to "stealing" electricity.  unfortunately for you anti-Bitcoin beartards, the mkt will be slow to respond, as in years.  it always is.  what we're talking about is empowering millions of disadvantaged, yet ambitious, smart individuals who want to make money like you and me.  the whole concept leverages on Bitcoin's Sound Money principles which makes it worthwhile to do whatever it takes to make it work.  you can't stop that and i think 21 understands this principle.  stop your whining.

I'm not sure why being skeptical of 21's business plan equates to anti-bitcoin, in your mind.

Anyway, they stated their plan, I pointed out glaring flaws in it, and the response is "these guys are industry leaders, they know what they're doing". Well, maybe, but I can't critique what is only in their heads. Their plan that they have actually made public is ludicrous beyond belief. Consumers can't make money, manufacturers and 21 can only make money by creating a massive scam.

It makes no sense at all and frankly I'm shocked that someone like you (who is normally very astute) doesn't see the problem here.

I'm all for mining decentralization BUT THIS ISN'T IT!  In order to be decentralized, the owner of the device has to be able to control the mining policy. In this case, they can't. That power will be concentrated in the hands of the manufacturer and 21. Come on cypherdoc, you know this stuff. Makes me wonder if you're on someone's payroll.

not on anyone's payroll, except my own.

i don't understand how you can use such emphatic terms like "ludicrous beyond belief", this is "bullshit", BUT THIS ISN'T IT!, etc.  i thought i've been quite clear about how i understand and view this situation which i don't think any of your terms describes.  there's plenty of customer and OEM motivation built in here.

yeah, it might not be your ideal way of decentralizing mining, but i think it can be if you envision new pools popping up by the OEM's wanting to manage their own BTC accts directly.  i easily see how that can happen.  instead of every individual enabling decentralization we'll have thousands of small pools.  there's nothing wrong with that and was in Satoshi's original vision.  it's also consistent with the thought that every major company ought to be running their full node to clear tx's and monitor their sales.  well, this kills 2 birds with one stone, doesn't it?

[cypherdoc]

sure, they will go after those mkts too.  but, imo, smartphones is the Big Kahuna.  that is where the greatest money to be had lies.

remember, those OEM's that understand Bitcoin want to grab the majority of mkt share in developing nations by offering severe discounts to new previously unbanked customers.  get the phone into their hands, lock them in, and worry about significant monetization later.  the only way to do this, in the 21 model of mining chips, is to make the smartphones hash as a payback.  whether mining "on it's own" will be profitable or not, it's hard to tell.  but it could be with enough efficiency in the chip, assuming customers will attempt to pass on charging costs to "others", and coordinating the hashing power to generate blocks.  either way, i don't think that's the main thrust.  they want to get Satoshi's onto ppl's phones so as to allow the phones to "negotiate" micropayments for all sorts of unimaginable things like parking, fast lanes on hwys, who knows.  the OEM's will have one huge coordinated network to which they can sell all sorts of other products and services as well.  it's also their stated objective to decentralize mining which i think is a worthy goal even if it means they lose money on it.  i've seeing all sorts of crying about "centralization" as a result.  that's ridiculous.  who honestly thinks that bringing on millions, if not billions, of new individual miners into the economy will do that?  do you honestly think the #pools we have now will stay constant and just absorb all this new value?  no way.  as many new pools will crop up as device manufacturers who are willing to do this.  in fact, each OEM should set up their own pool if they want to maximize the gain.  it's easy.  i ran my own sort of pool back when i was pointing 15 or so of my own miners at my stratum solo mining server.  and i'm not a geek or CS.  it was relatively easy.  all sorts of new pool operators are going to come out of the woodwork to take any outsourcing that might occur.  why not?  free money in fees for easy work.  no, we are going to see a mushrooming of the absolute #pools as well as a spreading out of the distribution into a much more decentralized piechart than we've already seen.

there will be also many ppl here in developed nations who will want these mining phones.  esp with all the free electricity we have access to.

if you haven't listened to the audio dropt posted above, you should.  it highlights and expands on many of the things i have been saying about this.

What are you smoking? You forget what proof of work IS. It's proof of burn of electricity. You cannot earn more in the long term, than the value of the electricity you burned. How much electricity can a smartphone burn?

Charging a smartphone costs a whopping 41 cents PER YEAR.  Nobody gives a shit about those pennies, and even less about 25% of those pennies. Not even the poorest people in Africa, with free power and 10 smartphones, can earn anything close to a worthwhile return.

And that's assuming they have free power! Maybe shop owners NOW don't mind if people charge their phones, but what happens when their shop is filled with freeloaders who will just steal power and not buy anything? Of course they're going to cut off the free power.

I really can't believe people are falling for this bullshit.

you sound angry.  what are you, a Monero holder or something?  thinking you're smarter than the wealth of talented minds in the 21 camp is what i'd consider "smoking".  did you read anything i said above?  it could, in fact, be a loss leader.  but getting a majority share of a known burgeoning market that will leapfrog the pc and laptop mkt is hugely valuable.  otoh, if they indeed have worked out the power reqs, which is what i think they mean when they referred to power scaling per device, then it will be an even bigger win.  you can't discount this from a group that includes major industry leaders like Qualcomm & Cisco.  furthermore, advancing the goal of mining decentralization stands to kill a major bear tard argument against Bitcoin in the long run.  it's a worthy goal.  and as far as the mkt responding to "stealing" electricity.  unfortunately for you anti-Bitcoin beartards, the mkt will be slow to respond, as in years.  it always is.  what we're talking about is empowering millions of disadvantaged, yet ambitious, smart individuals who want to make money like you and me.  the whole concept leverages on Bitcoin's Sound Money principles which makes it worthwhile to do whatever it takes to make it work.  you can't stop that and i think 21 understands this principle.  stop your whining.

I think scepticism is always healthy when it comes to new products whose underlying business model doesn't immediately make sense.

That was true for Blockstream and it's true for 21.

I really do want to be optimistic about every new investment that's even tangentially related to Bitcoin, but somebody has to keep an eye on non-obvious side effects.

Consider what happened with Radio Shack and the customer data they are selling as part of their bankruptcy. As far as anyone can tell, they did a reasonable job of not mishandling it while they were still solvent. Will that transfer to the new owners?

The same principle applies to 21. Maybe they are great people who are going to do good things with their technology. If their business model doesn't make sense, however, it's reasonable to ponder what future owners of their business might do with it.

We wouldn't have to worry so much if our network was a bit more economically robust (price discovery, etc), so really fixing that is the real long-term solution.

of course, i completely agree.  we always need to be vigilant.  but the stakes are enormous to the upside for Bitcoin if what they're planning works.  what we're talking about is mobilizing the entire African and SE Asian markets and more into Bitcoin.  the risk is worth it, imo.  plus, as we always say, don't buy their product if you don't want to.  no one's forcing you to be monitored.

[impulse]

I obviously don't agree to that, it has to be economically viable to exist.

No, no no. A million times no.

e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pets.com

Are you suggesting a big con?

It could be a good business plan, or a mistake, or a con. You're excluding the middle.

I hate selective quoting. The con part, that is viable only on a small scale.

Okay, I didn't follow it. What's the con?

I was too quick, your comments were ok, I deleted my post, but too late.

Somebody suggest that people would buy these phones for extra, use extra power, not knowing they earned money for the company only. That a con.

Ok, I'll try again... why put that chip in the phone if you could just include it in the charger cable? Or charging pad for wireless charging?

Battery life, size, weight, efficiency are all competing qualities for phones and putting a bitcoin miner in your phone is not going to make it more competitive.

(Secure enclave type wallet on the other hand = no brainer)

i don't know.  maybe for tracking purposes as hashing shares back to the pool requires a continuous connection?  which admittedly isn't great for privacy but might enable the pool certain functionality.  but that connection might be what's needed for this continuous negotiating interaction btwn phones not necessarily involving the phone owner that was talked about in the audio.

I think the answer to this is pretty simple actually. It's because the networking chipset is in the phone. No one uses a smartphone without a network connection so it piggybacks that infrastructure. Otherwise you would have include networking in the otherwise standalone charger and connect it to a network which no one is going to do.

[jmw74]

sure, they will go after those mkts too.  but, imo, smartphones is the Big Kahuna.  that is where the greatest money to be had lies.

remember, those OEM's that understand Bitcoin want to grab the majority of mkt share in developing nations by offering severe discounts to new previously unbanked customers.  get the phone into their hands, lock them in, and worry about significant monetization later.  the only way to do this, in the 21 model of mining chips, is to make the smartphones hash as a payback.  whether mining "on it's own" will be profitable or not, it's hard to tell.  but it could be with enough efficiency in the chip, assuming customers will attempt to pass on charging costs to "others", and coordinating the hashing power to generate blocks.  either way, i don't think that's the main thrust.  they want to get Satoshi's onto ppl's phones so as to allow the phones to "negotiate" micropayments for all sorts of unimaginable things like parking, fast lanes on hwys, who knows.  the OEM's will have one huge coordinated network to which they can sell all sorts of other products and services as well.  it's also their stated objective to decentralize mining which i think is a worthy goal even if it means they lose money on it.  i've seeing all sorts of crying about "centralization" as a result.  that's ridiculous.  who honestly thinks that bringing on millions, if not billions, of new individual miners into the economy will do that?  do you honestly think the #pools we have now will stay constant and just absorb all this new value?  no way.  as many new pools will crop up as device manufacturers who are willing to do this.  in fact, each OEM should set up their own pool if they want to maximize the gain.  it's easy.  i ran my own sort of pool back when i was pointing 15 or so of my own miners at my stratum solo mining server.  and i'm not a geek or CS.  it was relatively easy.  all sorts of new pool operators are going to come out of the woodwork to take any outsourcing that might occur.  why not?  free money in fees for easy work.  no, we are going to see a mushrooming of the absolute #pools as well as a spreading out of the distribution into a much more decentralized piechart than we've already seen.

there will be also many ppl here in developed nations who will want these mining phones.  esp with all the free electricity we have access to.

if you haven't listened to the audio dropt posted above, you should.  it highlights and expands on many of the things i have been saying about this.

What are you smoking? You forget what proof of work IS. It's proof of burn of electricity. You cannot earn more in the long term, than the value of the electricity you burned. How much electricity can a smartphone burn?

Charging a smartphone costs a whopping 41 cents PER YEAR.  Nobody gives a shit about those pennies, and even less about 25% of those pennies. Not even the poorest people in Africa, with free power and 10 smartphones, can earn anything close to a worthwhile return.

And that's assuming they have free power! Maybe shop owners NOW don't mind if people charge their phones, but what happens when their shop is filled with freeloaders who will just steal power and not buy anything? Of course they're going to cut off the free power.

I really can't believe people are falling for this bullshit.

you sound angry.  what are you, a Monero holder or something?  thinking you're smarter than the wealth of talented minds in the 21 camp is what i'd consider "smoking".  did you read anything i said above?  it could, in fact, be a loss leader.  but getting a majority share of a known burgeoning market that will leapfrog the pc and laptop mkt is hugely valuable.  otoh, if they indeed have worked out the power reqs, which is what i think they mean when they referred to power scaling per device, then it will be an even bigger win.  you can't discount this from a group that includes major industry leaders like Qualcomm & Cisco.  furthermore, advancing the goal of mining decentralization stands to kill a major bear tard argument against Bitcoin in the long run.  it's a worthy goal.  and as far as the mkt responding to "stealing" electricity.  unfortunately for you anti-Bitcoin beartards, the mkt will be slow to respond, as in years.  it always is.  what we're talking about is empowering millions of disadvantaged, yet ambitious, smart individuals who want to make money like you and me.  the whole concept leverages on Bitcoin's Sound Money principles which makes it worthwhile to do whatever it takes to make it work.  you can't stop that and i think 21 understands this principle.  stop your whining.

I'm not sure why being skeptical of 21's business plan equates to anti-bitcoin, in your mind.

Anyway, they stated their plan, I pointed out glaring flaws in it, and the response is "these guys are industry leaders, they know what they're doing". Well, maybe, but I can't critique what is only in their heads. Their plan that they have actually made public is ludicrous beyond belief. Consumers can't make money, manufacturers and 21 can only make money by creating a massive scam.

It makes no sense at all and frankly I'm shocked that someone like you (who is normally very astute) doesn't see the problem here.

I'm all for mining decentralization BUT THIS ISN'T IT!  In order to be decentralized, the owner of the device has to be able to control the mining policy. In this case, they can't. That power will be concentrated in the hands of the manufacturer and 21. Come on cypherdoc, you know this stuff. Makes me wonder if you're on someone's payroll.

not on anyone's payroll, except my own.

i don't understand how you can use such emphatic terms like "ludicrous beyond belief", this is "bullshit", BUT THIS ISN'T IT!, etc.  i thought i've been quite clear about how i understand and view this situation which i don't think any of your terms describes.  there's plenty of customer and OEM motivation built in here.

yeah, it might not be your ideal way of decentralizing mining, but i think it can be if you envision new pools popping up by the OEM's wanting to manage their own BTC accts directly.  i easily see how that can happen.  instead of every individual enabling decentralization we'll have thousands of small pools.  there's nothing wrong with that and was in Satoshi's original vision.  it's also consistent with the thought that every major company ought to be running their full node to clear tx's and monitor their sales.  well, this kills 2 birds with one stone, doesn't it?

What can I say, 21's plan really rubs me the wrong way. I'll try to put aside the emotional tone.

Sure, these devices COULD allow the users to control the mining policy or change pools. But that is in direct conflict with other parts of the plan, which was to bring these devices to consumers who don't even know or care what bitcoin is. Either they understand mining policy or they don't. If they don't, then control falls to the manufacturer, which will be the case with 99% of the devices. That's what leads me to believe it will not even be possible to change pools - the number of consumers who will use that feature will be negligible.

You still haven't addressed the fact that mining will only produce roughly the value of electricity burned. Which in the case of mobile devices, is basically zilch. So we are really only talking about home appliances. And then consumers are going to notice the power consumption that they do not get repaid for.

So what exactly is the value that 21 is bringing to the people? I don't see any.  Nobody is even able to come up with pure conjecture that makes any sense, and apparently nobody thinks that is a problem.

[shmadz]

Otherwise you would have include networking in the otherwise standalone charger and connect it to a network which no one is going to do.

This is precisely what "system on a chip" is all about.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2015/05/12/samsung-artik-system-on-a-chip-internet-of-things/
"A system on a chip (or SoC) integrates all the key components of a mobile computer onto a single chip, including memory, sensors, accelerometer and gyroscope, and crucially, radio frequency functions."

[cypherdoc]

Otherwise you would have include networking in the otherwise standalone charger and connect it to a network which no one is going to do.

This is precisely what "system on a chip" is all about.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2015/05/12/samsung-artik-system-on-a-chip-internet-of-things/
"A system on a chip (or SoC) integrates all the key components of a mobile computer onto a single chip, including memory, sensors, accelerometer and gyroscope, and crucially, radio frequency functions."

yep, the mobility function that radio frequency of phones brings to the table is critical.  as i said before, the industry has never before had a mobile asic mining device.  this enables mining from anywhere.  yes, public places.  

the transactional interactions enabled will be enormous from new hardware wallets that can even connect thru mesh networks OR p2p thru NFC.

[kodtycoon]

As a guy that's been mining for a few years now, I can get behind the idea of mining space heaters. I even wanted to place a small mining farm in the furnace room and then control the vents with individual thermostats to distribute the heat, dumping excess heat as needed.

But mining on a phone, it's just not reasonable. You could put the same chip on a USB stick and it would perform better.

Serious mining makes for some serious heat. If I'm 21 the household heating market is where I would target.

good point

https://soundcloud.com/elux-1/21-inc-embedded-engineer-on-whaleclub-teamspeak

listen to that. its not about making profit. remove the idea of making profit from these chips from your head.

time to dump NXT and buy Bitcoin? 

i havnt held nxt for a LONG time.

(read the white paper in my sig to see why, seriously, its written by PhD's, industry leaders and a math god)

[cypherdoc]

sure, they will go after those mkts too.  but, imo, smartphones is the Big Kahuna.  that is where the greatest money to be had lies.

remember, those OEM's that understand Bitcoin want to grab the majority of mkt share in developing nations by offering severe discounts to new previously unbanked customers.  get the phone into their hands, lock them in, and worry about significant monetization later.  the only way to do this, in the 21 model of mining chips, is to make the smartphones hash as a payback.  whether mining "on it's own" will be profitable or not, it's hard to tell.  but it could be with enough efficiency in the chip, assuming customers will attempt to pass on charging costs to "others", and coordinating the hashing power to generate blocks.  either way, i don't think that's the main thrust.  they want to get Satoshi's onto ppl's phones so as to allow the phones to "negotiate" micropayments for all sorts of unimaginable things like parking, fast lanes on hwys, who knows.  the OEM's will have one huge coordinated network to which they can sell all sorts of other products and services as well.  it's also their stated objective to decentralize mining which i think is a worthy goal even if it means they lose money on it.  i've seeing all sorts of crying about "centralization" as a result.  that's ridiculous.  who honestly thinks that bringing on millions, if not billions, of new individual miners into the economy will do that?  do you honestly think the #pools we have now will stay constant and just absorb all this new value?  no way.  as many new pools will crop up as device manufacturers who are willing to do this.  in fact, each OEM should set up their own pool if they want to maximize the gain.  it's easy.  i ran my own sort of pool back when i was pointing 15 or so of my own miners at my stratum solo mining server.  and i'm not a geek or CS.  it was relatively easy.  all sorts of new pool operators are going to come out of the woodwork to take any outsourcing that might occur.  why not?  free money in fees for easy work.  no, we are going to see a mushrooming of the absolute #pools as well as a spreading out of the distribution into a much more decentralized piechart than we've already seen.

there will be also many ppl here in developed nations who will want these mining phones.  esp with all the free electricity we have access to.

if you haven't listened to the audio dropt posted above, you should.  it highlights and expands on many of the things i have been saying about this.

What are you smoking? You forget what proof of work IS. It's proof of burn of electricity. You cannot earn more in the long term, than the value of the electricity you burned. How much electricity can a smartphone burn?

Charging a smartphone costs a whopping 41 cents PER YEAR.  Nobody gives a shit about those pennies, and even less about 25% of those pennies. Not even the poorest people in Africa, with free power and 10 smartphones, can earn anything close to a worthwhile return.

And that's assuming they have free power! Maybe shop owners NOW don't mind if people charge their phones, but what happens when their shop is filled with freeloaders who will just steal power and not buy anything? Of course they're going to cut off the free power.

I really can't believe people are falling for this bullshit.

you sound angry.  what are you, a Monero holder or something?  thinking you're smarter than the wealth of talented minds in the 21 camp is what i'd consider "smoking".  did you read anything i said above?  it could, in fact, be a loss leader.  but getting a majority share of a known burgeoning market that will leapfrog the pc and laptop mkt is hugely valuable.  otoh, if they indeed have worked out the power reqs, which is what i think they mean when they referred to power scaling per device, then it will be an even bigger win.  you can't discount this from a group that includes major industry leaders like Qualcomm & Cisco.  furthermore, advancing the goal of mining decentralization stands to kill a major bear tard argument against Bitcoin in the long run.  it's a worthy goal.  and as far as the mkt responding to "stealing" electricity.  unfortunately for you anti-Bitcoin beartards, the mkt will be slow to respond, as in years.  it always is.  what we're talking about is empowering millions of disadvantaged, yet ambitious, smart individuals who want to make money like you and me.  the whole concept leverages on Bitcoin's Sound Money principles which makes it worthwhile to do whatever it takes to make it work.  you can't stop that and i think 21 understands this principle.  stop your whining.

I'm not sure why being skeptical of 21's business plan equates to anti-bitcoin, in your mind.

Anyway, they stated their plan, I pointed out glaring flaws in it, and the response is "these guys are industry leaders, they know what they're doing". Well, maybe, but I can't critique what is only in their heads. Their plan that they have actually made public is ludicrous beyond belief. Consumers can't make money, manufacturers and 21 can only make money by creating a massive scam.

It makes no sense at all and frankly I'm shocked that someone like you (who is normally very astute) doesn't see the problem here.

I'm all for mining decentralization BUT THIS ISN'T IT!  In order to be decentralized, the owner of the device has to be able to control the mining policy. In this case, they can't. That power will be concentrated in the hands of the manufacturer and 21. Come on cypherdoc, you know this stuff. Makes me wonder if you're on someone's payroll.

not on anyone's payroll, except my own.

i don't understand how you can use such emphatic terms like "ludicrous beyond belief", this is "bullshit", BUT THIS ISN'T IT!, etc.  i thought i've been quite clear about how i understand and view this situation which i don't think any of your terms describes.  there's plenty of customer and OEM motivation built in here.

yeah, it might not be your ideal way of decentralizing mining, but i think it can be if you envision new pools popping up by the OEM's wanting to manage their own BTC accts directly.  i easily see how that can happen.  instead of every individual enabling decentralization we'll have thousands of small pools.  there's nothing wrong with that and was in Satoshi's original vision.  it's also consistent with the thought that every major company ought to be running their full node to clear tx's and monitor their sales.  well, this kills 2 birds with one stone, doesn't it?

What can I say, 21's plan really rubs me the wrong way. I'll try to put aside the emotional tone.

i can respect that.  i'm an old schooler too.  but i'm also flexible enough to understand that we, as a community, need these kinds of efforts.  these ppl, 21, have the money and connections to really drive Bitcoin mainstream.  as long as we're vigilant, i think we should support their efforts.  of course, we would like to know more, but they can't tell us everything from a competitive standpoint.

Sure, these devices COULD allow the users to control the mining policy or change pools. But that is in direct conflict with other parts of the plan, which was to bring these devices to consumers who don't even know or care what bitcoin is. Either they understand mining policy or they don't. If they don't, then control falls to the manufacturer, which will be the case with 99% of the devices. That's what leads me to believe it will not even be possible to change pools - the number of consumers who will use that feature will be negligible.

i'm assuming the OEM's will not allow user control.  but that's ok.  they deserve to get a return on phones which they will essentially be giving away for free.  as long as the process advances the goals of Bitcoin which is worldwide adoption and the preservation of Sound Money, i'm in support.

You still haven't addressed the fact that mining will only produce roughly the value of electricity burned. Which in the case of mobile devices, is basically zilch. So we are really only talking about home appliances. And then consumers are going to notice the power consumption that they do not get repaid for.

So what exactly is the value that 21 is bringing to the people? I don't see any.  Nobody is even able to come up with pure conjecture that makes any sense, and apparently nobody thinks that is a problem.

did you listen to the above audio?  it doesn't necessarily have to make money for the OEM.  they stand to profit from other ways.

[cypherdoc]

to those many of you who have never been able to grok POW, here's a pretty good description of why it works:

"The revolutionary part of the blockchain process is how miners manage to keep these blocks accurate and tamper-proof. The easiest way for a layperson to understand this security is not in mathematical terms, but in economic terms. When miners attach a block to the Bitcoin network, they don't just place that block neatly to the adjacent block. They glue the block to the prior block by "burning" energy. Yep, you heard that right. Miners are able to defend the Bitcoin network by burning electricity and creating a cryptographic "glue" out of the process. The total amount of electrical energy burned by all the blockchain's miners in a ten-minute period is the "glue" that affixes the newest block to the prior block. The economic cost of burning energy is "proof" that miners have attested to the contents of the block.

This means that in order to undo the newest block that was just created, an attacker would have to use slightly more energy to break that block off the chain than went into the glue that attached that block to the chain. This concept is the primary and revolutionary innovation that powers a blockchain."

http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/behind-the-ingenious-security-feature-that-powers-the-blockchain-1074442-1.html

[justusranvier]

did you listen to the above audio?  it doesn't necessarily have to make money for the OEM.  they stand to profit from other ways.

This might be the part to be most cautious about.

The argument that a Nash equilibrum encourages miners against acting in ways that damage the long term viability of Bitcoin is less obviously true when mining isn't being performed for direct profit.

[cypherdoc]

did you listen to the above audio?  it doesn't necessarily have to make money for the OEM.  they stand to profit from other ways.

This might be the part to be most cautious about.

The argument that a Nash equilibrum encourages miners against acting in ways that damage the long term viability of Bitcoin is less obviously true when mining isn't being performed for direct profit.

under 21's model, it still can be done for profit.

when it comes to free mkts, esp in developing countries, i will tend to give the common man the benefit of the doubt.  i know there has been alot of talk in here about how stupid these ppl will be when it comes down to the cost/benefit analysis of the mining phone and 21 simply taking advantage of these ppl.  we'll see.  it's just my experience that just b/c a poor man from the streets of a developing country may not be able to do elliptical curve math, they do surprisingly have a keen understanding of what makes or loses them money.  i've been the victim of poor negotiating on my part when dealing with these types of ppl routinely.  if they deem the electrical drain from the mining chip to be costing them money, they will figure out a way to change that and quick.   either by charging in public places or some other work around.  like i said, airports are constructing these free charging kiosks in every major airport.  this has the potential to take us back to those days of 2010-11 with those mining videos on YouTube.  ppl just need to get these devices in their hands for an affordable price.  and if the ppl themselves can't make it work financially, that's where 21 and their R&D team will need to step it up in terms of an even more efficient mining chip.  sounds like they certainly have the capability to do so.  remember what's driving these Silicon Valley ppl.  it's about resting the financial system away from Wall St in determining their own destiny.  there's no dearth of motivation as a result of Sound Money.