Topic: A bitcoin miner in every hand (Read 8171 times)

Clearly the point of owning a 21-enabled device is not to make money mining, as several others have already pointed out. The idea is that at a sufficiently low power draw people might not object to the miner being there, provided the device offers enough value for money in other departments. The trick is to find an application that is synergistic with Bitcoin mining.

How about this, a device that combines the following features:

- Full Bitcoin node like Bitnodes Hardware.
- Tor router like Portal to provide high anonymity with fewer possibilities for exploits than running Tor on your own computer. Mainly interesting for those who have political motivations or are doing naughty things, but also a noble-sounding pretext ("helping dissidents in Iran").
- I2P router that does something similar for bandwidth-intensive applications that do not need to leave the darknet, such as file sharing or naughty Streamium streams that could benefit from increased privacy for both sender and receiver. Potentially attractive to a much larger group of people.
- Meshnet router.
- Access point for selling bandwidth to strangers with phones with expensive data bundles using Bitcoin micropayments channels, as proposed by Mike Hearn.

There is synergy between several of these functions.

For example, if you want to sell bandwidth and want to avoid liability for what people are doing over your connection, Tor helps. Paid applications that rely on stealth Bitcoin micropayments would benefit from decentralisation and might be more willing to contribute financially, especially if it costs very little. People running such a node could still be seeking a profit, such as getting paid anonymously for hosting files. The mining costs could then be seen as an expense and overall the operation could still be profitable.

I'd be okay with flat pricing no matter how many were purchased. That way you're neither specifically favoring nor specifically disfavoring anyone.

I also don't like the idea of pool-locked or 75/25 hardware, since as has been mentioned, it's dispersing a single-control farm rather than decentralizing the control of mining in general.

It should theoretically already work like that.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale

Edit: After thinking about it further, I really doubt any manufacturer has reached the point where increasing production would decrease the price per unit. Compared to the entire electronics industry, the materials required to produce bitcoin miners are pretty much negligible. (I estimate ~10k bitcoin miners produced per week)

Another thought, wouldn't your inverse premium idea just disincentivize decentralization? After all, the manufacturers are the main threat to decentralization, not the people with 1-10MW farms.

If there was inverse "premium" applied to VERY large purchases, it might blunt the impact of large mines. For example:

Buy 1 miner, it costs X.
Buy 5-50 miners and each one costs .95X.
Buy 1000 miners and they each cost 1.2X

I don't think this could actually work, but it would discourage massive mining farms and/or purchases.

Just a random thought.

The network seems pretty decentralized already. No single entity is anywhere near 51%.

To further decentralization, manufacturers could offer their customers decent rates without outrageous markups. When mining returns decline to non-astronomical levels it might make more sense to focus on sales than self-mining for manufacturers. That could create a situation where access to cheap electricity is more important than access to the cheapest hardware which would allow medium/large scale operations to thrive.

I don't see how gimmicks/schemes can further decentralization in any meaningful way. Especially not a scheme that automatically gives a single entity 75% of the hashrate of each device distributed. (assuming they at least give users control over their 25%)

Please share how do you imagine a decentralized network.

Of course.

Not at all. Your understanding is incomplete. We've both clearly expressed our views. Lets see how things play out

This is only true if the micro miners select a variety of pools, and not just the inevitable 21 Inc. pool. If the 1 million micro miners are all part of a single pool, then all you have done is distribute the hardware, and done nothing to decentralize the network. It's the number of reasonable sized pools that matter not the number of physical bits of mining hardware (IMHO).

I am always curious about peoples perceptions on what it means to be decentralized. To me, ten roughly equal sized pools is decentralized, even if they all ran the exact same type of hardware. Some folks seem to think that sheer number of mining hardware units does it (e.g. the micro miners). I am also curious as to the reasons behind the rabid desire for a decentralized network.

I too am not keen on "The Internet of Things" concept in general. Although, it will no doubt accelerate the push to IPv6 in my opinion.

Your opinions are contradictory.

If IOT devices are insecure, so are microminers (since they are just IOT + bloatware miners).

The IOT however isn't the backbone for a multibillion dollar transaction network, so a hack, although might cause inconveniences, is not really a big deal. On the other hand a hack of 21 inc's army of microminers could be catastrophic. I think we can all agree that a hacker is infinitely more likely to attempt a 51% attack than a company who has invested tens of millions into bitcoin/mining.


Firstly, 21 inc's plan won't be decentralized. They've already said all the miners will be using their pool. Most likely all btc will be stored on their servers to avoid dust clogging up the blockchain.

Secondly, you keep pretending that micromining will somehow remain competitive.  Rebranding home mining as "micromining" and unnecessarily adding costs/inefficiencies/gimmicks doesn't magically make it more profitable.


CueCat raised $180 million from equally high profile investors/companies and the end result was "fails to solve a problem which never existed". Sounds exactly like 21 inc.

Leaked image of a 21.co household appliance with embedded mining chip

(This is only a low-power protopype with Wifi, NFC, Bluetooth, and USB. The production version will have also G3/G4, HDMI, and a power plug rated 30A.)

Thats funny jimmothy. I think IOT is a bad idea and micro-mining is a good idea.

IOT is a bad idea because there are significant security issues with existing software and hardware infrastructure that need fixed before we start putting more 'things' on the internet. As an illustration of this thesis, visit DARPA's Cyber Grand Challenge at http://www.cybergrandchallenge.com where they begin by explaining:


Micro-mining is a good idea because it will decentralize the network, disenfranchise big players like KNC and enfranchise people who don't currently participate. As an illustration of how seriously people take this thesis, you need look no further than the amount of money 21 inc. has raised and the quality of their investors.

IOT = good idea*

Inefficient/expensive miner in everything = bad idea

*specifically non-21 inc related ideas. Everything I've heard from 21 inc seems like a poorly thought out solution to a nonexistent problem.

IOT market to triple to $USD 1.7 Trillion by 2020

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/internet-things-market-triple-1-140200967.html

Besides, why worry about additional public disclosures? It seems like they already got their $116 million. What more is there to gain from additional disclosure? If we see more it may be because they are trolling for more money.

Since they are not selling miners to the public why should they make public their chips tech data? Their plan is to sell appliances, not mining chips.

Their 14nm effort is apparently targeted to 0.15 J/(Gh/sec) at chip level at rated speed. Since 14nm gives roughly 50% power reduction versus a 28nm design then they're still using a cell based approach, ie it's nothing new. It's fine if you're playing with someone else's money and they have very deep pockets, there's 40nm designs that will do much better than this.

Not that it's important - this is just another in a long line of hyped up projects where it doesn't matter if they fail as long as the initial investors get their return when the inevitable IPO hits the stock market.

Still no information about the hashpower and consumption of the 21.co chips?

Usually, when a company hides "strategic" data, it is because the data is disappointing, or worse...

I think its a myth that you cant exchange parts on your notebook. I already changed mainboards on two different notebook models i owned. No problems. And other parts, like exchanging GPU to a bigger one, RAM and so on arent difficult. Whats correct is that youre limited at how much you can upgrade.

21 is stilly a mystery for me. I fear it will be bad for bitcoin because people will feel scammed. But ill give them the benefit of the doubt.

They never were really meant for it.  You have a limited airflow it can get hot depending on laptop.  Turn processor or GPU up on high intensity bad things can happen.

And worst thing is unlike a desktop you cant RMA part's.  Most of time laptops have to be sent in whole.  So means you use access.  In day's of GPU's it was common to clock one to high or use it to long and need to get a RMA.

Asics have simplified things a lot as far as equipment.