Topic: It's Happening .... The secrets of 21 inc revealed, and its what we hoped for. - page 3. (Read 11643 times)

And this toaster scenario would be the equivalent to having the grille of your oven on 24/7, and you just put bread under when you want toast?

There is always the idea of value added form other things but the Blockparty social media, they state you can view your friends purchase histories. Seems odd, why would anyone take part under these conditions. How would a bank fare if it released an account where all your friends could review your purchase history? 

This idea seems very naive to me. But for the millions they've raised, they must have something up their sleeves.

Sounds like I'll be giving toasters to my whole family for Xmas and all the coins will be mine!  Muabahahahahah

It probably wouldnt make it worth creating the asics and the pcb needed for it.

Or will a really massive production be able to bring production costs down so far?

So the chips will use energy additional to a normal device or are they designed to work within the "energy footprint" of existing devices i.e. no net energy increase?

The latter doesn't seem likely.

Interesting since WLAN and co are normally enabled all the time. But still economically probably not viable.

I really would like to know their idea. Either they have a really good idea we did not think about, they lied about the investment funds they received or they dealt with persons that dont know bitcoin.

Wow, Okay. I changed my mind. If this really is what they're planning, this is NOT good for the general public. It would totally suck.

That's a bit more like it.

This sentence in particular stood out for me - "By the time its chips were to be embedded into Internet of Things (IoT) devices, 21 projected its cost to produce 1 BTC could be as low as $7.45."

I wonder what their projections are as the block reward dwindles towards a trickle in the years to come.

An article that's not based on the Alphaville piece, painting a rather different picture: Inside 21's Plans to Bring Bitcoin to the Masses

If you're worried, don't use the product. It's really that simple. For those who think the benefit outweighs the potential cons, they'll use it. That's all.

What really stuns me about these devices is the security implications. 

You realize we're talking about a box controlled by someone else, with its own network access and sensors and probably also attached to your own home network, sitting inside your home? 

Hello? 

Does this sound like a Bad Idea to anyone else?

These chips are an absolute plum of a target for anybody who wants to do REALLY invasive snooping. And I would guarantee that those capabilities will be baked in; it is simply too profitable for these guys to not do. 

IMO a better solution would be letting people buy those devices and offering cell service to anyone who pays btc.

We know that Qualcomm invested in 21 Inc. We also know that they are interested in and are developing millions of micro-stations to boost their network coverage and bandwidth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p2suMVsKow&feature=youtu.be

The question is who is going to buy their micro stations or pay the electricity and why would they? It would be ridiculous for them to require one for their devices.

Thus one can speculate that they may be interested in having 21 deploy millions of ASIC appliances for free where 2 extra chips are embedded one for mining BTC thus affording 21 to give away the appliances and the other own being a microstation for qualcomm where qualcomm subsidizes the price in exchange for cheaper bandwidth.

they are not talking about bitcoin in this video. but it makes sense to see that video in that context.

Does they speak about bitcoin too or only about a technique already widely used by big ISPs? I mean that normal persons allow other persons of the same ISP using their WLAN. So that the customers can have net outside often enough too.

Im not a native english speaker so i might have missed something.

Now that looks like a lead. Interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p2suMVsKow&feature=youtu.be Bingo!

Hm.  There is a place to go with this now that I think about it, but it's a little weird.

With current process technology, if you are willing to design for half the speed, you can do it for a quarter of the power.  And if you're willing to go a quarter of the speed, you can do it for one-sixteenth of the power, and so on.

It sounds like if 21 wants to integrate small-scale mining into a host of consumer products, they're going to need tiny mining rigs that run on just a watt or two - but those rigs, although much slower, could be drastically more *efficient* in hashes produced per power consumed than what's filling up server farms today.

If you take a 200w mining chip and then design for slower speed - half speed is 50w, quarter speed is 12.5w, 1/8 speed is 3.25 watts.  The payoff would be very slow, but positive relative to the hashes/power tradeoff that miners are doing now.  A fair number of the things we have in our homes consume 3.25 watts just in standby currents to keep a little LED on and a little timer running and their program memory refreshed, etc... 

Of course, equilibrium will be reached; whether the market is saturated by 21 inc's devices or whether miners replace their current infrastructure with similarly slow/cool chips, ROI on the more efficient devices will approach zero just as surely as it already has for USB sticks.

This is quite interesting. Has Qualcomm ever showed any interest in building miners or even Bitcoin ? Is it their first investment ? I always thought ASIC manufacturing is just for mid-size hardware factories.

It's safe to assume that they are working on a mining chip because of this: "Working with cutting-edge process technologies (sub-32 nm)"

There's no reason to use the cutting edge process tech for anything that is not used all the time.

As for the statement you quoted, I don't think that's evidence that they are integrating their ASIC's in appliances. I think it's more likely that the "bitcoin-related products" are just miners and the "external customers" are chip integrators. (building their own farms using 21 inc chips)