On: A Bitcoin miner in every hand

[steckerbrett]

An iPhone 5 battery is about 5 watt hours, ten percent of this is 0.5 watt hour. [0]

The most efficient mining chip I could find information about is the BM1384, which consumes 2.058W at the lowest power bracket. [1]

We would exhaust our 10% allotment in 15 minutes.

In those fifteen minutes our speed would be 8.25 gigahash per second, which would produce 0.000003542 BTC per day [2].

Our total income for 15 minutes of mining would be 0.00000003689583 BTC. [3][4]

At $237.7/BTC our 10% iPhone 5 battery life has been exchanged for $0.000008770 USD.

Assuming 0.17 USD power cost in the United States, the power cost would be 0.000085 USD. [5]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_5

[1]: https://www.bitmaintech.com/files/download/BM1384_Datasheet_...

[2]: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

[3]: This number isn't even representable in Bitcoin, which maxes out at 8 decimal places of precision.

[4]: The reward halves in 62 weeks though.

[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing#Price_comp...

[bduerst → steckerbrett]

Following your example of using the most efficient miner available and ignoring heat, size, etc. restrictions:

Average cost of electricity for U.S. households is $0.12/kWh [0]

0.05 Wh = $0.000006 average cost

Net Profit = $0.0000008801 - $0.000006 = -$0.000005120

Net profit margin = -581.7%

[0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/10/27/141766341/the-p...

[aakilfernandes → bduerst]

The author states in the article he's more interested in expanding the use of the blockchain as a ledger (as opposed to a store of value).

[bduerst → aakilfernandes]

Which is strange given their cost-savings examples using bitcoin mining.

This might work for authentication, but they shouldn't sell it as "bitcoin-subsidizing devices for the developing world".

[johntb86 → steckerbrett]

And in 2 years of continuous mining it could generate $0.62 of bitcoin. Seems simpler to just ship it with the bitcoin preinstalled.

[WayneS → steckerbrett]

That makes is pretty clear to me. They are not generating actual Bitcoins. Read the article again.

"we are less concerned with bitcoin as a financial instrument and more interested in bitcoin as a protocol" 

[bduerst → WayneS]

Many of their hypotheticals selling their solution involve bitcoin mining to create cost savings:

>For example, one could build an internet-connected device that shared some portion of mined bitcoin between the user, the retailer, the handset maker, and the carrier — thereby reducing costs and/or increasing margins throughout the entire supply chain.

[pablovidal85 → WayneS]

I think they will, is just that their devices will not be sold for making profit, but for messaging and authentication.