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).

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.

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.

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.

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?)

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.

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

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.

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.

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.