Topic: 21dotco: A bitcoin miner in every device and in every hand - page 3. (Read 3812 times)

People have their own insights and the investors must've seen a big opportunity on this 'horrible idea'. Honestly, I don't hate this project but I'm not going to invest in it as well. The concept is great but as I said, not everyone is into this idea.

It's just that the positive aspects of this don't seem to work in a real scenario, at least from my perspective. When you say, I want to buy a $3 game, there's effectively no reason to spend $23 on a $3 game, but spending $23 is not for the game, it's for exchanging currency. And people usually exchange currency in bigger amounts, not in $3 chunks.

If you have an “extra credit” that you can spend on more Internet connection... how did you get your extra credit in the first place? From that phone that is sucking your electricity bill? When you see the whole picture, that “extra credit” is really negative. The only way to get the extra credit for real is not investing in such device in the first place.

So pointing out the false/wrong things that you say is received as a direct attack? Ok. Keep the false statements coming.

Humans always pay more for a product. It's like saying that everyone should only buy stuff from the super/hypermarkets because otherwise they will pay an added cost for that item. We always do that and when we are talking about very small amounts the added cost is really insignificant! Judging by your opinion you would like that nobody buys 21 inc products while I would like to have those products in as many hands as possible!

Don't compare your life style with others. While you can get bitcoins using all those methods maybe there are people who don't want to use your methods. Why not leave them to pay more for their satoshis? Why do you want to restrict how people get their coins?

"nor am I altruistic enough to spend my own money helping bitcoin's security" That's one main reason why you would want 21 inc devices to succeed. So you won't be required to invest your own money into bitcoin's security. I see it this way: Let's say we need 1B$ for bitcoin's security. We can either have a group of ~100k people that pay for the security or we can have 100M people that pay for the security. Which one would you choose?


Again speaking from your imagination? Do you have their business plan? Share it with us please. Why do you think that the only reason is to make money of the consumers? Don't get me wrong. Maybe they will do money from the consumers in a way, but there are also other methods to do money as a company. You can make money from B2B too. If facebook can make money without asking money from the consumers then other companies can do it too!

21 inc is there to make money. That's why investors invested so much money in this company.

So think about it. Who are they making money off of? Their consumers, of course. There's no way they'll offer a bigger discount than the amount they'll earn back. Which means consumers lose.

Unless they're providing some other form of value, like TVs or routers do, as per RoadStress' examples. Every electric device we have currently gives us some value, which is why we're willing to sacrifice financially to use them. What value does 21 inc provide to the consumer? It's not financial. So what is it? I can't see it.

If I recall from the original leak the "equipment" will be offered at a substantial discount... so the initial price should draw more interest than the minor mining/electrical cost & benefits.
I see more reason to be optimistic vs. disappointed.

Good job on your plethora of ad hominem attacks.


You spend more on electricity than the value of the bitcoins you get back. Therefore the cost of getting bitcoins from 21inc devices is greater than the value of the bitcoin. By definition. If you don't get that, there's not much more to say.

I can get bitcoins cheaper and faster from exchanges, from doing contract work, from localbitcoins, from mining with my own ASIC, and potentially a hundred other ways as bitcoin infrastructure improves.

What are the benefits that I personally get from a 21 inc device? I'm not altruistic enough to spend my money lining the pockets of 21 inc execs and investors, nor am I altruistic enough to spend my own money helping bitcoin's security.

I want a concrete benefit that I can get from 21 inc device that I can't get elsewhere. Otherwise, why would I use it?

Can not see where this is going, I guess many consumers will just dig out coin and formatted the mobile phone, making bitcoin less and less 

Well for start we don't even know if the user will directly keep the satoshis or if they will have some sort of credit on their account. The more I think about it the more I'm inclined to believe that the users will not keep a wallet. Having some sort of credit is much easier for both the user and 21 inc.

But let's say I want to buy a game that costs 3$. Why should I go and spend 23$ or the equivalent of 0.1 BTC to buy something worth 3$? Maybe I don't have 23$, but I have 3$. What if I want an additional 100MB of internet on my phone this month only? Why should I go and to some other transactions when I can just use my credit to buy the 100MB? Less friction, less problems. Easy life.

I am not trying to find a motivation. I am only trying to make you see that there are many alternatives to your negative way of thinking. There are some good things that will come with these devices. Why do we/you only have to see the negative ones?


So there aren't any layers of costs for browsing. It was just your imagination. I am glad we figured this one out!

I have explained above why is this better than buying bitcoins from an exchange. What you see as trouble of buying a 21inc enabled device I see as a benefit to the trouble of getting bitcoins from an exchange. I see more friction when using an exchange than using your 21inc enabled device. I see as spending extra money when using an exchange for various micropayments (under than 5$).

How are you spending a lot of extra money when using the 21inc enabled device? I don't get it and I don't expect you to reply just as you did with the layers of costs for browsing. The 21 inc enabled devices aren't here to provide anyone with a free meal. They are here to provide different things. I may not have explained better, but your view on this is very limited. Don't view it as a regular mining device, because it's not.

You never said anything about the financial gain from the TVs or routers, but odolvlobo said: "Negligible or not, the cost of running the mining chip would exceed its benefit." and you jumped into that discussion when you replied to my reply I just replied that not all appliances that we have in our homes bring us a direct benefit that is more than the power consumed by them.

My conclusion is that I see this a a very good thing for bitcoin and for users. You don't see it the same because of some non-existing issues from my point of view and while I am stubborn in real life I am very open when it comes to tech and Bitcoin. I want to see this happening! You (and others) on the other hand are reluctant.

Coins mined today may be similar to electric cost... if they are not exchanged right away the benefits should increase over time.

Not going to quote all that, so RoadStress,

Please explain how this will be better than buying bitcoins from an exchange. Where's the benefit? I can buy bitcoins cheaper from an exchange if that's what I wanted. Why do I have to go through the trouble of buying a 21inc enabled device, then spend a lot of extra money, wait a year and not have enough satoshis for a single lunch meal?

Finally, I'm just going to say that you're saying other people are being stubborn when you're the one being stubborn. That's why you misunderstand people's points; I never said anything about financial gain from TVs or routers. You just assumed that because you're arguing against what you THINK people are saying, not what they're actually saying.

Why would anyone bother to acquire just some satoshis, instead of a reasonable fraction of bitcoins (like 0.1 BTC, for example, for which you don't need any documents to get)? Getting just the satoshis is as useful as using faucets so much announced in these forums, which many knowledgeable people can assure you they are not worth the hassle (you don't even get a single penny after being hours in those sites).

It seems that you're trying to find a motivation of a hypothetical client of this product, a motivation that I see unrealistic.

Buying some satoshis from an exchanger has very big added costs compared to what you buy. The wire transfer cost may be bigger than what you buy. Think about that too. We are talking about satoshis that are worth less than 5$/month. Why would anyone bother to sign up and to send documents to an exchange when they can get them from their mobile phone? It's too complicated and pointless to use an exchange for such low amounts.


1. Fine I agree that the regular Joe might not care about the bitcoin security, but the network is far from decently secure right now. Someone with not that much money can disrupt bitcoin. 100M$ is not much at all for any government or for Goldman Sachs. Having a network hashrate in the tens of exahashes makes it almost impossible for anyone to disrupt bitcoin.

2. All I found in that article is this: "mobile phone chargers and USB hubs would seek to encourage micropayments in applications, while routers and game consoles would allow users to spend bitcoin for added bandwidth or on in-app purchases." which is decent. How did you got from added bandwidth to layers of costs for browsing?

3. I thought you are talking about a money benefit. What's with the sudden change? The TV or the router isn't bringing you any money benefit. Also having a 21 inc device will not bring you 0 benefit as you say. Check point 2 for the benefits.

Why should I pay you 1M$ for 1M satoshis? You are doing the reverse thing of what 21 inc is doing. They are not charging you a premium. They are giving you a discounted appliance with a small extra power requirement.

Nobody is taking your money to give you back less. You will get a discounted phone or appliance and you will have to pay a small extra amount on your power bill. And by small that means less than 5$/month in my opinion. Those money go to your electricity provider, not to 21 inc. Let's say you will pay 5$/month on power. I assume that the mined satoshis will be between 0.5 and 3$/month which you can use for various things like micropayments without any other hassle like an exchanger.


Yes people are missing the point because they are stubborn. But mining only when plugged would be a fail imo. Or at least for cell phones. Better to put the chips in routers because those things stay 24/7 plugged in the power outlet and to the internet.

Here are the benefits, according to the blog post:


The money generated by the phone is not likely to be more than $5 per year. Let's assume that a device has the equivalent of BitMain's latest chip, the BM1384, which has a hash rate of about 5 GH/s at about 1 W. Note that 1 W is rather high for a phone. At the current difficulty, 5 GH/s will generate about 0.02 BTC per year, currently worth about $5.



That is really just reassurance to the manufacturer that their incremental cost will be lower than they expect.


That has nothing to do with mining. Any wallet can do that.


That has nothing to do with mining. Any wallet can do that.


Mining $5 a year is not going to lower the cost of the phone by any significant amount.

People are missing the point.

Your smartphone won't mine on battery power. Your smartphone will mine when it's fully charged but still plugged into the power outlet. Let's say you leave your phone on your charger for 10 hours a day. Take 2.5 hours to charge, you have 7.5 hours of mining.

About the power costs: Will you really care if your smartphone uses $0.02 more worth of power per day?

21 will make money from their ecosystem, not from mining bitcoins.

1. And how many people care about that? Pretty much none. Even for the people who do care, the network is decently secure right now. Very few people will spend their own money to secure the network. If they did, they still should buy their own ASIC; at least they'd get 100% of the bitcoins instead of only 25%.

2. It was what I gathered from the article on coindesk. Who knows, I may have misunderstood. http://www.coindesk.com/21-intel-bitcoin-mining-strategy/

3. Again, TVs, routers, give you a benefit. You can watch shows or access the internet. This gives you 0 benefit. "You will earn some satoshis" is not a benefit.

How about this: You pay me $1,000,000 USD, and I give you 1,000,000 Satoshis. You get a benefit, since you get satoshis.

It doesn't work that way, because you can buy it for a cheaper price on an exchange or elsewhere easily. Wasting electricity purely to help 21 inc mine doesn't give you any benefit.

You're thinking of this as a sort of rebate, like you had to spend the electricity anyway, so why not get some satoshis back. But that's not the case. the Miner requires additional electricity that you would not have used. So in effect, all its doing is taking your money and giving you back less.

Earned satoshis that make them lose money. I think it would be better for them (and everyone) to just use an exchange. They will get a way better rate for their bitcoins.

Well now it can lose a perfect 100% in a day

My iphone will lose about 30-40% battery in 1 day without me even using it let alone with a chip in it.

I said it will make the bitcoin network more secure, not their appliances.

I don't know from where you got the information that 21 inc wants to add various layers of costs for browsing the internet. Maybe you would enlighten me.

How much revenue is the TV bringing to you? What about your router? This will bring a benefit. You will earn some satoshis. Less than the power cost, but it will be that small that you will not be able to get it from somewhere else.


They will care if they will want to use their earned satoshis.


And how much do you think that will be? I imagine it being less than 5$/month. Who cares about an extra 5$/month if they can afford a smartphone and a data plan for it?

Actually it might be ~1$/month and also people charge their smartphone at work and in various places. It will not be only in their homes.

This is a very innovative concept I must say...