how will 'micro miners' like 21 chips and bitfury lightbulbs work?

notlist3d

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Quote from: alh on February 24, 2016, 07:46:46 PM

As with most mining gear, the primary beneficiary of these gadgets will be the sellers them selves (i.e. Bitfury and 21 Inc.). Buyers won't make a dime on them. I'll furthermore suggest that 21 Inc did their "miner" as much to help them garner $116M in Venture Capital (VC) money. Hard to know what all they did with that money, but I'll bet it was a small sliver that went into the Raspberry Pi "Bitcoin Processor". They don't actually call it a "miner" in the classic sense.

I wonder if either one will do as well, or as poorly, as the Antminer R1.

The R1 made a decent U3 controller after crazy guy's firmware. I think the RPI kit was priced where they knew they would not have to make many. I know I bought a R1 to play with. But the 400 dollar price tag on 21 Inc... made me stay away. It did give them a item they could show off to investors... it no doubt helped in that area.

Everyone is real secretive they might have a great idea to do with all the money they have in hand. But we won't know till they launch it public or it leaks. And leaks don't seem to happen to much anymore NDA's are pretty tough.

alh

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As with most mining gear, the primary beneficiary of these gadgets will be the sellers them selves (i.e. Bitfury and 21 Inc.). Buyers won't make a dime on them. I'll furthermore suggest that 21 Inc did their "miner" as much to help them garner $116M in Venture Capital (VC) money. Hard to know what all they did with that money, but I'll bet it was a small sliver that went into the Raspberry Pi "Bitcoin Processor". They don't actually call it a "miner" in the classic sense.

I wonder if either one will do as well, or as poorly, as the Antminer R1.

leowonderful

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Bitcoin FTW!

The 21 ASIC chip itself good, with relatively low power to hash ratios. Bad thing is as all of the people above said, it's a raspberry pi with an asic that cost them about 60$ to make and resells to us for 400$. Bitfury lightbulbs and any appliance would never work because it would simply provide too low of a hashrate to ever profit. There's no real point either; its not like the electricity is free, and its not like the air circulation for an ASIC is better inside a lightbulb.
Both of these things are novelties and will never become mainstream enough to have a impact on the bitcoin community. Meanwhile, we're seeing the mining hashrate move from home miners to private companies making their own superpowerful asics and data centers. We're screwed and nothing will help us.

notlist3d

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Quote from: European Central Bank on February 21, 2016, 03:38:53 PM

More than I thought actually. I didn't think they were mining at all. What I meant by chip manufacturer wasn't one of the ASIC guys, it was Qualcomm now I've looked it up. They must have something up their sleeve to have attracted such a pile of cash but I guess we'll see along the way.

They claimed to have many things up their sleeves. But they only have done 2 things we know of. Make gear internally and release a very small RPI miner.

For all their talk about putting it in everyday items... it never really happened. Biggest focus by far was internal miners. If they change from this? No one can really say.

QuintLeo

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The light bulbs might eventually show up - as a very small niche "fancy lighting" type product, as there's no way they're going to be able to target the "general lighting" market with the things. Not quite a non-starter but bloody close for practical purposes.

Mining chip in appliances - total waste of time and effort IMO.

Raimonn

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I think that we will not see minning chips on lightbulbs or toasters. They could produce some units to test how it works or to study them. But minners need good cooling systems and those examples can't be used to cool down the chips. On the other hand, i see more possibilities with nodes. Now you can have a node at home with low consuming Raspberry Pi.

European Central Bank

legendary

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More than I thought actually. I didn't think they were mining at all. What I meant by chip manufacturer wasn't one of the ASIC guys, it was Qualcomm now I've looked it up. They must have something up their sleeve to have attracted such a pile of cash but I guess we'll see along the way.

notlist3d

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Quote from: European Central Bank on February 21, 2016, 03:19:12 PM

I thought the 21 computer was only for development. No consumer is gonna lay out for something like that. Weren't they setting up some type of deal with one of the major chip manufacturers?

They are a private company not public so we really don't know a whole lot. We do know they at least made some internally and slowly have grown less and less of the total hashrate.

Look at last 4 day's they are 2 percent of the total mined - https://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=4days . So that is pretty small compare to some who reported to have new chips like BW and Bitfury... they are much more right now.

I'm not sure we will see much more out of them honestly.

European Central Bank

legendary

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I thought the 21 computer was only for development. No consumer is gonna lay out for something like that. Weren't they setting up some type of deal with one of the major chip manufacturers?

notlist3d

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Quote from: European Central Bank on February 21, 2016, 02:06:39 PM

I've seen talk of Bitfury lightbulbs and 21 chips embedded in our toasters and stuff to mine. I assume these guys know what they're talking about but I don't see how they can stand up to mining farms.

Does anyone know how this stuff could possibly work?

21 chips.... are really not like what I thought they would. They talk about having them in every day object's. And what did they come out with? A 400 dollar RPI... it was not really integrating into everyday object. And price was made where most will not ever have a 21 chip RPI.

Bitfury lightlbulb is another story it was a prototype. They said they would release it and get made but seems it never did happen, they put focus on bigger miners which I can't really blame them. If they ever go back to it I still would love to have a mining lightbulb for 100 percent fun reasons.

MRKLYE

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Designer - Developer

All you need is wifi and electricity... and then you have some petty mining power or lottery tickets running.

European Central Bank

legendary

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I've seen talk of Bitfury lightbulbs and 21 chips embedded in our toasters and stuff to mine. I assume these guys know what they're talking about but I don't see how they can stand up to mining farms.

Does anyone know how this stuff could possibly work?

Topic: how will 'micro miners' like 21 chips and bitfury lightbulbs work? (Read 964 times)