Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 333. (Read 2032265 times)

I find the 21 Dot Co. plans to be interesting and potentially pretty exciting. Speaking of efficiency though, I can't help but wonder if this could be achieved more effectively with a different algo like Blake256 which, to my understanding, is vastly more efficient than SHA256. 

Obviously that would require using an altcoin instead of bitcoin, and I know this tends to be a very bitcoin-only thread, so don't run me out of town on a rail as a heretic for asking. 

the 21 mining chip rollout is mostly about smartphones.

this is a well documented fast, growing mkt that is leapfrogging laptops/desktops in developing nations like Africa.  there are literally billions of new customers on the line and they also happen to be unbanked.  this is a way to subsidize getting phones into their hands.  the other problem has been getting ppl in developed nations to use their credit cards with their phones.  the UI's have been clunky (ever tried buying anything from a website from your phone?) and no one quite trusts doing it.  Apple Pay has been failing miserably basically b/c the bank verification process has been defrauded with stolen cc info and there is no good way to marry the two technologies with all the ongoing hacks.  there is no safe way for the traditional fiat system to secure smartphone payments.  until now with 21.  

the mining chip appears to be quite efficient and will most likely include a private/public keypair to and from which BTC can be sent.  this will act like a secure element hardware device where the keys can't be hacked.  much like a Trezor or what LedgerWallet is trying to build into the sandboxed security elements or trusted space.  this will enable not only the micropayments from the mined BTC but a fully functional and safe wallet on the phone which should enable widespread ordinary commerce in these developing nations.  you know this is why Qualcomm is involved.  the smartphone makers will love it b/c this is a way to get new users of their phones in exchange for their paying electricity to charge their phones and mine.  battery life is likely not to be a factor as most ppl keep their phones plugged in most of the time.  i know i do while at work all day and at night while at home or sleeping.  the phone might as well be mining during those times and generating usable BTC for later services.  plus, electricity at work is free.  as well, this is a foolproof way to authenticate the phone with their wireless network on initialization.  Cloud service costs will be easily defrayed with micropayments.  makers of the smartphones will receive BTC payments which they can either cash in immediately or hold for future appreciation.  remember, we are still dealing with a deflationary currency (fixed supply) with huge upside potential and with the smartphone makers seemingly willing to determine their own financial future with this move, this will ensure Bitcoin's future.  and with that, a tremendous increase in value of BTC going forward as we have always believed.  this is the binary future unfolding to the upside before our very eyes.  this is also about the tech industry breaking free of the reins of Wall St which i've well characterized for a couple of years now.  

the great thing that will result is the decentralization of mining across millions and more likely billions of devices round the world all at the individual level that can't possibly be shut down unless you believe in unified gvt violation of human rights.  i don't.  if you do, you'll have to explain why we still have wars, conflicts, cross border intelligence agency hackings, Stuxnet, Sony hacks, China & Russia stockpiling gold while the US is disgorging gold, Angela Merkel phone taps, as well as a myriad of other international conflicts.

Bitcoin's future is bright.

edit:  the device makers will have the incentive to form their own mining pools to collect BTC which i am sure they'll do.  this will further decentralize mining.

For someone who trumpets regularly about his superior intelligence and his breaking insights into fields from physics to economics, you sure get a lot of the basics wrong.  If a mining device uses X joules of electrical energy to perform Y hashes, those X joules get converted into an equal amount of heat.  This is basic conservation of energy.  

What you're confusing this with is the Carnot efficiency of a heat engine working between a hot and cold reservoir to perform useful work.  Interestingly, a heat engine run in reverse becomes a "heat pump" and can be used to convert work into a greater amount of heat at the hot reservoir side; it's actually possible to get 2, 3 or more Joules of heat output for every Joule of mechanical or electrical energy put into the heat pump (because this extra heat gets "pumped" from the cold reservoir)!  

¹For the pedantic, minus a negligible amount lost as EM radiation, etc.

We don't know that yet. They haven't disclosed how the mining is actually going to work. I'd guess you are right about it being a pool, but whether that is an increase or decrease in security overall is a matter of interpretation (including, relative to what?)

His question was exactly efficiency. I answered both with respect to energy efficiency (much better than the best ASICs as currently deployed, given effectively free electricity) and overall efficiency (likely also, since the chips will likely be very cheap). If I recall correctly I also said I didn't think it was a particularly good idea, regardless of efficiency.

He didn't ask about Larry Summers, etc. That's fair game for you be interested in talking about, but not what he asked.

I'm not going to name the specific companies involved due to the risk of retaliation against the employees involved, but it might be worth asking the CEOs of established, respected Bitcoin companies about their policies regarding the right of their employees to express their own personal views in public.

You can't really blame XMR (which is priced against BTC, and more fundamentally trades relative to the greater crypto ecosystem) for BTC being down 75%. XMR is down relative to BTC over that time period (but up >100% since December, so why cherry pick starting points here?) but not anywhere near 90%.


You are incorrect. That isn't exactly what Monero does. Monero doesn't do "distributed" mixing, it does counterparty-less mixing. Which means nothing distributed between any parties (or using any kind coordinating "node") and no shared secrets. There is no other proposed solution to do that. It can't be done in wallets.

His question was not asking about energy efficiency, but rather what is the holistic point of it all. And he is correct that the energy efficiency is scam. The real goal is enslavement of the developing world by loaning a smartphone in exchange for unnoticed electricity usage.

The real goal here is to extract say $3-5 per month (what ever the end user will not notice) from the electric bill and use this "loan repayment method" to get more smartphones and bitcoin to people in the developing world. This is  a way to loan a smartphone in exchange for electricity usage.

This can also help centralize the mining of Bitcoin faster as it will bloat the blockchain and tx rate forcing centralization of mining.

The user may get so few BTC that isn't worth converting to an altcoin investment.

It creates a market for the BTC centralized mining micropayments thus driving network effects against any other altcoin's attempt to do decentralized micropayments.

Simple, someone asked about efficiency, and whether cheap chips in a water heater, toaster, etc. can compete with cutting edge mining chips. I answered. The answer is yes.

That may be irrelevant to you, but it was relevant to the person who asked.

There's something buggy about coinmarketcap.com's XMR charting. The "All" chart only goes to Feb 15, before the recent increase in XMR price. For a better price chart, see: https://poloniex.com/exchange#btc_xmr

Security goes down! These nodes are all serving the designated pool.


Myopic. Big farms are just usury. This is same usury that is backing utilities. The real profit comes from a monopoly on money, what we were fighting by supporting crypto.


How can we have a meaningful discussion if you pigeonhole to the irrelevant factors only.

This is not about energy efficiency. You argued very hard that is it about efficiency (energy or otherwise).

The only reason to care about energy efficiency is either:

1. You personally care.

2. Society benefits.

I assert neither are true in the case of Westerners using electric water heating. And neither are true in the case of enticing dumb people to adopt Bitcoin so they can get some ringtones and later be enslaved with new requirements for this money.

This is benefiting the utility companies (which the TPTB/government now owns via carbon tax and other regulatory capture) and the enslavement of the dumb, which then pits us who want choice against the inertia.

Of course the way to hide this action is to obscure it in more of the same bullshit as climate change or global warming or environmentalism. This is clearly the fingerprint of the Rockefellers.

The network does. Difficulty goes up. Security goes up. Profitability goes down. Big farms fade away. Maybe. Who gets those Bitcoins does't even matter much. Burn them for all I care.

Of course 21's chips will probably just mine on a pool, which might make things worse than ever. I don't claim this is some kind of cryptonirvana. My comments were focused on the question of efficiency.

The rest of your post was most about whether this is a good thing. I don't know. I have nothing to say about that at this point.

I'm not sure they all have cold showers, but you don't need to look far to see electricity heating is very common wherever there isn't natural gas on demand.

FYI 3rd World people even those with subsidized electricity don't squander it like you think, many have pay as you go metering and are very conscious of when and where to use electricity, it makes up a much bigger portion of there monthly budget so its treated with more respect.

I imagine a network of POS terminals and Wifi hotspots like an internet of things micro hashing away. in some parts of the world hashing can even be used to desalinate water.

They received the most funding of any BC startup ($116 million).

Larry Summers is on their board. He was the first who floated the idea of negative interest rates and electronic currency.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/03/10/the-one-world-currency-not-arriving-voluntarily/

See Larry Summer's role in the NWO.

If you lock up enough people into Bitcoin, the "winner take all" proposition of network effects and money is more likely. You may be aware of the threat, but I assert most people are clueless. If we have some time to introduce them to the Knowledge Age and find things they like to do that they need a non-Bitcoin system for, then we have a chance to avoid the NWO-everywhere outcome. But this accelerated method of exposing people to Bitcoin via forced mining leapfrogs normal methods and means of discovery and adoption (which rpietila says can normally be a 24 month process for each individual).

Tell people they can get free money. Don't tell them their electric bill will increase by $1 per month. They don't notice. They get some free crap for their cell phone such as ring tones.  They become enslaved to the government coin. Later they need these credits to access their Facebook. Later you can't board a plane if you don't have these credits. Etc...

Did you crop my post or was I still editing it when you replied? I don't think you responded to my point at all.

I did not ask "free in that". I asked "free for whom?". Who gets something free that they even notice?

The danger is not from phones becoming more controlled, it is from locking in people who are not yet on any electronic money system into the government's preferred one.

Free in that of 100 customers in the world, 60 won't buy an electric heater. Fine. 40 will. If we divide those into 20 with miner chip (or even quite a few chips) and 20 without, both sets pay the same amount of electricity for the same amount of hot water. One mines Bitcoin, the other does not. Whether you think the 20 mining Bitcoin with no added electricity cost is a good or bad thing is likely going to depend on your opinion of Bitcoin, fair enough. But the fact of mining itself has no operational cost here, and I'm guessing that the chip cost can also be very, very low.