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Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 321. (Read 2032265 times)

legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1198
May 21, 2015, 03:36:40 PM
In addition to the public being the victims of scamming in case of the hidden mining, the planned victims could also be future investors. This is also not a very new thing, as we all know.

It's not scamming or "hidden" mining, necessarily. In their white paper-isn thing they describe it as financing the phone via power bills. Let's assume people are actually told the power bill will be higher. Maybe that is seen as a way to offer financing in markets that don't really have the infrastructure for traditional credit, or where the handset maker doesn't want to (or can't for whatever reason) get in bed with the carriers. Instead of needing to collect payments or get a subsidy from the carrier, the phone itself makes the payments via mining. Even if the mining is somewhat unprofitable, as a credit-substitute there might be value there.


Rather stretched idea, but ok it is possible that they think along those lines.

Well they said exactly that. Go look in their paper.

Quote
I see other, simpler, cheaper and more direct ways to have the phone cost on the electric bill, but maybe that is only me.

Really how?
legendary
Activity: 1512
Merit: 1005
May 21, 2015, 03:26:58 PM
In addition to the public being the victims of scamming in case of the hidden mining, the planned victims could also be future investors. This is also not a very new thing, as we all know.

It's not scamming or "hidden" mining, necessarily. In their white paper-isn thing they describe it as financing the phone via power bills. Let's assume people are actually told the power bill will be higher. Maybe that is seen as a way to offer financing in markets that don't really have the infrastructure for traditional credit, or where the handset maker doesn't want to (or can't for whatever reason) get in bed with the carriers. Instead of needing to collect payments or get a subsidy from the carrier, the phone itself makes the payments via mining. Even if the mining is somewhat unprofitable, as a credit-substitute there might be value there.


Rather stretched idea, but ok it is possible that they think along those lines. I see other, simpler, cheaper  and more direct ways to have the phone cost on the electric bill, but maybe that is only me.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1198
May 21, 2015, 03:21:50 PM
In addition to the public being the victims of scamming in case of the hidden mining, the planned victims could also be future investors. This is also not a very new thing, as we all know.

It's not scamming or "hidden" mining, necessarily. In their white paper-isn thing they describe it as financing the phone via power bills. Let's assume people are actually told the power bill will be higher. Maybe that is seen as a way to offer financing in markets that don't really have the infrastructure for traditional credit, or where the handset maker doesn't want to (or can't for whatever reason) get in bed with the carriers. Instead of needing to collect payments or get a subsidy from the carrier, the phone itself makes the payments via mining. Even if the mining is somewhat unprofitable, as a credit-substitute there might be value there.

legendary
Activity: 1260
Merit: 1008
full member
Activity: 236
Merit: 100
May 21, 2015, 03:14:47 PM

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.

So I listened to most of it. I don't really care whether OEM's profit or how, I want to know why regular people would have any interest in this at all.

He's changing the original plan as stated on their website. Their website says in big bold words:

"We've developed a chip for embedded bitcoin mining."

But this guy is talking about distributed apps - eg turing complete computation. Those are two different and mutually exclusive things. So I don't know who's correct here.

Let's say the audio guy is correct and they're embedding distributed app computation into all your devices. The guy says "oh you'll get *slightly* higher priority for stuff because your device spent energy on someone else's computation". This still makes no sense. If I want the 1 cent of electricity I burned to get me slightly higher chance of getting a parking space, why can't I just spend money directly?

He still doesn't address why it's beneficial for devices to sell their computing power, breaking even or at a loss, vs just using money that the device's owner earned, for example, from their job.


in the audio they explain that they want to automate those tx's as opposed to having humans make them.  from what i could glean, an app would allow you to preset your preferences to allow, for instance, an Amazon drone to fly over your garage as opposed to your kids sandbox.  the drone center would have this info in their controlling servers which could then pre-compute a flight path over your house.  or the other example they gave was 2 Google driverless cars arriving at an open parking spot at the same time requiring an immediate decision/negotiation to take place determining which car gets the space.  the audio emphasized the "immediacy" of a decision making process enabled by essentially a bidding process somewhere out on some ethereal exchange which would determine who gets what first. humans arguing in a public garage won't cut it.  in order for these types of decision making tx's to take place, "cycles" (or Satoshi's i guess) need to be on the phone ready to be utilized.  the only way to ensure that these are in place ready to go is to have the phone itself mine them continuosly.  if you depend on someone to get a paycheck, go out onto an exchange to buy Satoshi's, pay the exchange fee, and then send them to their phone to enable this whole process, it will never happen.

Yeah, I get all that.

First of all, the use cases are nonsensical, are these the best they can think of?

It presumes a world where there is demand to make digital payments of very tiny amounts that don't exist today, but no demand to make payment of larger everyday amounts. That seems highly unlikely.

The car example doesn't even require money at all. It depends on the cars cooperating anyway - a non-cooperating car can always refuse to yield. So they might as well play a digital form of rock-paper-scissors. No mining or special hardware required.

In general, a device does not need money to communicate or "make decisions".  They already do that today.

The real driverless car use case is the car paying automatically for a paid parking spot. There's no way mining would yield enough for that. The real solution here is payment channels - between your main wallet and your devices, and devices amongst themselves.

There is no special hardware required. This is a world where people are going to have to have digital cash anyway.

legendary
Activity: 1512
Merit: 1005
May 21, 2015, 03:10:41 PM
The loss leading principle is known and works, for phones that could be as simple as a subsidized phone and paying more for minutes. Or the opposite, paying extra for the phone and free calls for two years (loss trailer...). Both are well known marketing strategies. The mining thing - why bother?

In addition to the public being the victims of scamming in case of the hidden mining, the planned victims could also be future investors. This is also not a very new thing, as we all know.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1198
May 21, 2015, 03:00:17 PM
He's changing the original plan as stated on their website. Their website says in big bold words:

"We've developed a chip for embedded bitcoin mining."

But this guy is talking about distributed apps - eg turing complete computation. Those are two different and mutually exclusive things. So I don't know who's correct here.

My read on it was that the guy on the call, if he works for them at all, is more on the IoT side of their business and not directly involved with the mining (portion of the) chip.
hero member
Activity: 924
Merit: 1000
May 21, 2015, 02:49:34 PM
Dollar will weaken as rates won't increase as per FOMC announcement yesterday. Might be a good point for commodities and hopefully Bitcoin.
legendary
Activity: 1400
Merit: 1013
May 21, 2015, 02:12:46 PM
I'm going with Rumsfeld, Cheney, et-al from their PNAC document on this one.  That is, the most likely end-game is a one-world government.  In that case I would expect the management strategies promulgated by the leadership to be in many ways almost indistinguishable from those employed by the Soviets and other totalitarian regimes, and I would hold near zero hope for anything resembling 'democracy' (though it may well be called that.)  The methods of control used would include austerity, surveillance, anonymous informants, etc.  Basically any structure which keeps individuals separate and suspicious of one another.
Of course they're going to try, but they can't pull it off.

They're a generation too late.
legendary
Activity: 4760
Merit: 1283
May 21, 2015, 02:09:58 PM
...
Personally, I do think a USSR-style breakup of the USA is in the cards, but I'm not at all sure about the timing.
...

I'm going with Rumsfeld, Cheney, et-al from their PNAC document on this one.  That is, the most likely end-game is a one-world government.  In that case I would expect the management strategies promulgated by the leadership to be in many ways almost indistinguishable from those employed by the Soviets and other totalitarian regimes, and I would hold near zero hope for anything resembling 'democracy' (though it may well be called that.)  The methods of control used would include austerity, surveillance, anonymous informants, etc.  Basically any structure which keeps individuals separate and suspicious of one another.

In terms of timing, the PNAC folks main thesis was that we have about another 100 years where a multi-polar world is practical and the U.S. may as well sit on the top of the stack during this time.  That strikes me as an adequate estimate.

I personally don't see why we cannot do something like 1) make use of our resources and infrastructure to have a decent life for our citizens, 2) rely on our nuclear capability and MAD for defense, 3) and treat other nations with dignity and respect but mainly butt out of their business and let them deal with their own problems without our 'help'.  This seems to be something of a 'third way' between what the Left and Right sees as the way forward.  Frustrating.

Going back to Bitcoin, this is one of the top reasons I am interested in it.  A viable currency solution which anyone can use and which is robust enough to withstand attack could be a very useful tool for those who wish to resist where whoever takes power wishes to herd us.  I'm drifting back to my position of giving up on Bitcoin except as a template for crypto-currencies to figure out what NOT to do.  We've still not managed to 'mainstream' it yet so all hope is not lost, though, as I see it.

legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
May 21, 2015, 01:48:02 PM

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.

So I listened to most of it. I don't really care whether OEM's profit or how, I want to know why regular people would have any interest in this at all.

He's changing the original plan as stated on their website. Their website says in big bold words:

"We've developed a chip for embedded bitcoin mining."

But this guy is talking about distributed apps - eg turing complete computation. Those are two different and mutually exclusive things. So I don't know who's correct here.

Let's say the audio guy is correct and they're embedding distributed app computation into all your devices. The guy says "oh you'll get *slightly* higher priority for stuff because your device spent energy on someone else's computation". This still makes no sense. If I want the 1 cent of electricity I burned to get me slightly higher chance of getting a parking space, why can't I just spend money directly?

He still doesn't address why it's beneficial for devices to sell their computing power, breaking even or at a loss, vs just using money that the device's owner earned, for example, from their job.


in the audio they explain that they want to automate those tx's as opposed to having humans make them.  from what i could glean, an app would allow you to preset your preferences to allow, for instance, an Amazon drone to fly over your garage as opposed to your kids sandbox.  the drone center would have this info in their controlling servers which could then pre-compute a flight path over your house.  or the other example they gave was 2 Google driverless cars arriving at an open parking spot at the same time requiring an immediate decision/negotiation to take place determining which car gets the space.  the audio emphasized the "immediacy" of a decision making process enabled by essentially a bidding process somewhere out on some ethereal exchange which would determine who gets what first. humans arguing in a public garage won't cut it.  in order for these types of decision making tx's to take place, "cycles" (or Satoshi's i guess) need to be on the phone ready to be utilized.  the only way to ensure that these are in place ready to go is to have the phone itself mine them continuosly.  if you depend on someone to get a paycheck, go out onto an exchange to buy Satoshi's, pay the exchange fee, and then send them to their phone to enable this whole process, it will never happen.
full member
Activity: 236
Merit: 100
May 21, 2015, 01:13:52 PM

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.

So I listened to most of it. I don't really care whether OEM's profit or how, I want to know why regular people would have any interest in this at all.

He's changing the original plan as stated on their website. Their website says in big bold words:

"We've developed a chip for embedded bitcoin mining."

But this guy is talking about distributed apps - eg turing complete computation. Those are two different and mutually exclusive things. So I don't know who's correct here.

Let's say the audio guy is correct and they're embedding distributed app computation into all your devices. The guy says "oh you'll get *slightly* higher priority for stuff because your device spent energy on someone else's computation". This still makes no sense. If I want the 1 cent of electricity I burned to get me slightly higher chance of getting a parking space, why can't I just spend money directly?

He still doesn't address why it's beneficial for devices to sell their computing power, breaking even or at a loss, vs just using money that the device's owner earned, for example, from their job.
legendary
Activity: 1400
Merit: 1013
May 21, 2015, 01:11:07 PM
remember what's driving these Silicon Valley ppl.
You keep finding the exact areas where I am most concerned.

I've talked to people who from the Silicon Valley startup scene who've related their stories about the ties between the angel investors who funded their ventures and the CIA, including being subjected to a "aptitude evaluation" which was basically an IQ + (lack of) empathy test.

Remember this article? https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

If you're betting on Silicon Valley to fight the Fed what you're betting on is the defection of crucial sections of the military-industrial complex of a magnitude equivalent to the dissolution of the USSR.

Personally, I do think a USSR-style breakup of the USA is in the cards, but I'm not at all sure about the timing.

Also, in the Soviet case their equivalent of the MIC were the holdouts who were the last to accept that the system could not continue and held a coup to attempt to keep it limping along.
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
May 21, 2015, 01:01:43 PM
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.
legendary
Activity: 1400
Merit: 1013
May 21, 2015, 12:44:22 PM
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.
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
May 21, 2015, 12:19:55 PM
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
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
May 21, 2015, 11:59:29 AM

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. Cheesy

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.

Quote
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.
Quote

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.
legendary
Activity: 1568
Merit: 1002
May 21, 2015, 11:54:30 AM
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. Smiley

time to dump NXT and buy Bitcoin?  Wink

i havnt held nxt for a LONG time. Smiley

(read the white paper in my sig to see why, seriously, its written by PhD's, industry leaders and a math god)
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
May 21, 2015, 11:51:05 AM
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.
legendary
Activity: 1512
Merit: 1000
@theshmadz
May 21, 2015, 11:46:00 AM
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."

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