Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 332. (Read 2032265 times)

And i will be using a spare Kw or so, via the combustion engine, on my way to work/at work/travelling etc.

That isn't a phenomenon unique to Bitcoin companies.

I smell a mountain from anthill propaganda attempt.

Data?

"Photos or it didn't happen"

I'll raise you,  and out bid your phone and get into the home business of making yogurt or drying paint or making candles with the extra heat.

Rpietila, my stance is one of anticipating the TPTB's strategies and chess moves and trying to outsmart them. I don't know why you perceive this as fear. I care to observe their strategies because it helps me refine optimum counter-moves and/or reinforce the existing trajectory I am currently on. I think it is quite myopic to think I (we) can optimize my (our) strategy by being oblivious to theirs. I hope you can distinguish between this stance and fear or capitulation. Otherwise, please explain to me why my stance is less than ideal?

I believe we who choose "give me liberty or give me death" can be most efficacious if we recognize that TPTB attempt to use the ignorant masses as chattel against us and plan our strategies of defiance towards victory rather than martyrdom. Perhaps you felt disappointment if I didn't see the huge synergy between gaming and anonymity and perhaps I am wrong about that, but note I have significance experience with software marketing and I've found that without significant need in the mind of the user then significant ramp (oomph) is not attained. I sympathize if this observation irks you because I know none of us want our hard work to fail. Any way, you need a coin for your game, and that it is anonymous appears to not cause harm while the coin is not yet large and if it becomes large then that will be a good problem to have. So I say carry on. I wasn't blowing catastrophic holes in your strategy. I agree very much with the distribution strategy we discussed.

The 21 Inc paradigm doesn't seem to be very efficacious if it is actually employing the concept of energy efficiency advantage, because for those people who can afford centralized always available electric water heating (versus for example those here in the Philippines such as my house which uses a 3000+W heating element at the shower head which is only on one a few minutes per day, thus only a few $s per month insignificant to me) will find that a $50 per month decrease in their monthly expense is rather insignificant to their economic spending habits. They are not likely to be able to spend all these as micropayments and will rather likely dump this for fiat any way. Thus nearly no network effects and no really radically significant change in attitudes towards energy efficiency for the world. Afaics in this mode this is an incremental boost and not a game changer.

The threat of significance from the 21 Inc paradigm is to get Bitcoin into the hands of people for which a few $ per month is a significant enough event and who can't today afford to be always online. My social network idea is based in large part around this same observation. Interesting they are attacking a similar market that I targeted. Clearly they recognize the challenge for them is to make sure this developing world demographic doesn't go astray into free market solutions.

Afaics I can estimate from my general experience level, it appears the most significant inroads would be made with Bitcoin mining in smartphones, because everyone in the developing world wants one and wants to be connected online always. But this will not make mining more efficient (no requirement for excess heat in smartphones) and so it needs to be some sort of ruse.

The more I think about this, they have some serious challenges to overcome on the economics. The main one is that they've got to top-down drive (against competing opportunity costs for all involved) economies-of-scale into this ecosystem to make it attractive to users because smartphones are not yet inexpensive enough to finance with hidden incremental increases in electricity costs, i.e. signup offerings for micropayments which are worthwhile to the user and/or sign arrangements with connectivity that are able to fool users that spending more $ per day in electricity than they would have paid for the connectivity in cash.

Luckily for us the banksters are trying to shoehorn something into the free market that probably has less entropy than the network efforts that can be obtained with a free market offering of decentralized micropayments to these same users along with synergy of the same micropayments to the mover and shaker Westerners who drive initial network effects which won't be available in this more centralized, top-down attempt.

But this is a wake up call that we need to stop being complacent and release our solutions pronto.

Hardware will decentralizes, profits may or may not. Control will depend on the education level of the market.

you know what i'll do?

buy a few extra batteries, keep them rotating thru charges free at work, while keeping the phone constantly mining at full capacity.

all of which may or may not contribute to the centralization of the network, which was the original point.

Having thought through the business opportunity, you would give free installation, and subsidize their electricity, if you really wanted to disrupt and make bitcoin boom, you would pick places where there is big government subsidizing of electricity. (Thinking Argentina or Venezuela,) and in effect you would export the subsidized electricity and sell some bitcoin into that market to pay for the electricity, it's a win win or all. :-)

true, this won't be for everyone.

but i think these companies could be building their own virtuous cycles on top of Bitcoin which could cause the next bull run in price.  if so, how would that affect the developing country person's decision making?  pay full price for an ordinary water heater, or almost free for one with a Bitcoin miner built in?

Efficiency isn't important, it's only important to individuals relative to your competition. Efficiency determines the total hash rate. The amount of energy consumed in PoW is determined by the price of bitcoin. We are in a price zone determined by the physical limitations of available energy space etc. Once we have halved we enter a new zone.

21 are positioning themselves to take advantage of a price spike like the run-up to $1200 when mining with a shitty GPU was more profitable than at any time prior, even more profitable after the more efficient ASICs for a short time. The price dip now has made bitcoin more efficient, not the advancement in tech. That's just given an opportunity to the innovators.

I mean the manufacturers may outsource to new or existing large pools (which will then pay the Bitcoins or fiat to the manufacturer), instead of each creating their own. Its fairly normal for companies to leave that sort of thing to a specialist and not try to do it themselves. I'd guess some will, some won't.

if they're going to essentially give the devices away for free, yes, those users will have to mine back at the company pool to pay the device off.

also, i don't think these companies would have invested in 21 w/o some larger plans:

“We think 21’s technology has the potential to span across a wide variety of industries and look forward to working with Balaji and the team.”
— Nagraj Kashyap, Senior Vice President, Qualcomm Ventures
“Bitcoin could be the internet’s next great protocol. With the blockchain’s distributed ledger and micro-transaction capabilities, it has the potential to become an enabling technology that expands well beyond digital payments. We’re delighted to be an investor in 21 and to work closely with Balaji and Ben.”
— Padmasree Warrior, Chief Technology & Strategy Officer, Cisco

fine, but if the proverbial "developing country" person is shopping for a water heater, she is just shopping for a water heater. not for the best combo heater/miner that heats water just right and contributes to the decentralization of the bitcoin network.

but yes, just speculating anyway. special thanks to smooth, your recent posts have been very stimulating.

It isn't clear those parties will create their own mining pools. They may outsource. But we don't know at this point, everyone is guessing, including whether this who concept gets any traction at all.

that's ok.  there are hundreds if not thousands of businesses that could eventually participate.

i believe, on a macro level, that these companies are driven by the same attraction we all have for Bitcoin; usage of a fixed supply, apolitical currency that should at least over the long term be stable in value.  not only that, it has the potential to increase, not decrease, in value in a pretty large way.  this innovative 21 business model facilitates the integration of Bitcoin into their business through the proper incentives.

I'm pretty sure that's wrong, but they can be configured to mine only when plugged in, which might be 20-25% of the phones in the world, which is still an enormous number, or mine at a lower power level when on battery (cutting the mining power to 1/4 cuts the power usage to 1/16, which might be negligible)

I agree the idea of a hardware wallet combined with mining in a small device makes a lot of sense.

water heater miners don't get to chose their pool, they mine for the manufacturer's.

i don't see how taking today's mining pools and adding dozens of phone maker, router maker, and other device making mining pools with their millions of users can result in centralization.

or it may concentrate it. we shall find out.

why would you need more efficiency when POW is designed to force real resource expenditure costs so as to prevent lazy, cheapass hacks?