Exactly, that's why 21 isn't offering anything to consumers, or miners. They appear at this point to be a silicon IP company. Their products will be sold to manufacturers of consumer products (according to them), or to suppliers of parts to those manufacturers.
That doesn't obviate my point that comparing the end result of servicing miners with service contracts is not fungible to appliances sold at BestBuy to consumers.
You're still not getting it. There are no service contracts here (or maybe there are, but pretty much the same as any other appliance). You can buy two appliances at BestBuy. One mines, the other doesn't. The one that mines is cheaper. Other than that they are indistinguishable to you. You're likely going to buy the cheaper one. Or the difference might be a better warranty or some other differentiator. It is up to the manufacturer to decide how to incentivize the buyer.
One time I "bought" (not really) a cell phone and in addition to a cheap phone I got free tickets to a ball game. Whatever works.
Anyway, let's stop cluttering the thread. I think we've wasted more time and space than 21 deserves at this stage. They don't even have a product yet.
You've made a very compellling argument to end PoW asap if there are no counter measures and this becomes widespread.
I will be thinking about how to defeat this.
Again nothing wrong with getting people to mine their heat, if they keep their coins. Thus I think I see already how to defeat this movement at least for those who want anonymity. Also it shouldn't be too difficult to reverse engineer what ever turnkey appliances are developed and unlock the mined coins for the user (since obviously it pays more to the corporation than the NAV discount).
The masses will slide into this NWO. There is nothing we can do to stop them. For those that want anonymity and/or better arbitrage on the total income stream, mining for heat and keeping your coins may make a lot more sense.
Edit:
the problem is how to keep dumb masses out of your coin but get enough smart people into the coin to make it viable with a circulating use case for currency. A way to keep the dumber of the Socialism Age masses out is anonymity, they are afraid of it (trust their hand held by Big Brother). The way to keep the smart Knowledge Age people into the coin is anonymity, they know they need it to protect wealth. The remaining component is the compelling circulating use case to grow the network effects. Monero proposes a game use. I will propose a different use.