{"id":551,"date":"2015-12-08T13:02:56","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T21:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidsterry.com\/blog\/?p=551"},"modified":"2015-12-08T13:02:56","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T21:02:56","slug":"the-implications-of-the-21-bitcoin-computer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidsterry.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/the-implications-of-the-21-bitcoin-computer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Implications of the 21 Bitcoin Computer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just read this post by @joelklabo<\/a> and I wanted to put down some of my thoughts on the Bitcoin computer by 21, Inc. Before I decided to purchase, I was definitely skeptical. The price tag is a bit rich given the mining economics and cost of a Raspberry Pi, I was not a buyer. What changed it for me was actually joining the Slack channel a day or two after it was opened. While Reddit was set on a boring “it doesn’t mine enough” mode, the Slack channel was full of energy, with proud new owners posting their endpoints, doing tutorials, and generally discussing the future.<\/p>\n

Then it clicked and I made the purchase.<\/p>\n

We humans are creatures of habit and self-centered ones at that. We tend to evaluate new pieces of technology by what they can do for us. Does it make a better cup of coffee? Can I drive farther on a charge? The 21 Bitcoin Computer is not an end-user device. Instead as Joel points out, this thing is a dev kit and the fact that it comes with a Python library that not only implements a standalone HD wallet but seamlessly connects to 21’s offchain account system, means we can actually do new things quite easily.<\/p>\n

It’s almost one of those, why didn’t I think of that, kind of moments. Coinable could have done this the moment they rolled out their API a year or more ago. Make off chain payments easy when you need them, have a standalone wallet for when you don’t.<\/p>\n

So what is that future? Before I got the 21, I designed some 3d printed stands and cases for it. Since then however, I’ve been working on another idea I’ve been kicking around which is that of a decentralized professional services marketplace. Think of it like an OpenBazaar for Upwork. The idea is a couple months old and it is in progress.<\/p>\n

As I’ve been working toward that dream however, there’s a bigger idea that the 21 is highlighting for me. Machine payments. Computers with wallets.<\/p>\n

See, the web is largely segmented into:<\/p>\n

A. Things we view\/use in exchange for viewing ads<\/p>\n

B. Subscription services<\/p>\n

C. A wasteland of unmonetized data and services that pop in and out of existence never having had any hope of stability<\/p>\n

For A, we might use the 21 or a browser extension connected to an off-chain wallet service to kill the ads, or just use adblock if we’re inclined to participate in arms races and don’t really care about what we’re viewing. I do, by the way. B is figured out though the cognitive load of signing up for a monthly or yearly payment means we tend not to sign up for things that are worth $5\/mo or less.<\/p>\n

C is where the 21 really livens things up and contains within it an entire new substrate upon which a machine-payable web can be built.<\/p>\n

Try to think of services that had a hard time being monetized or that were primarily consumed by other computers. RSS feeds. Community databases. Niche search sites. Networks of sensor information. In each of these cases, a computer with a 21 account can pay satoshis for each query or visit. Multiply that times millions of devices and you start to have a functioning system of value for value: a machine payable economy.<\/p>\n

Anyway, it’s a thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just read this post by @joelklabo and I wanted to put down some of my thoughts on the Bitcoin computer by 21, Inc. Before I decided to purchase, I was definitely skeptical. The price tag is a bit rich given the mining economics and cost of a Raspberry Pi, I was not a buyer. What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-completely-awesome","category-decentralization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidsterry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidsterry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidsterry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidsterry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidsterry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/davidsterry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":554,"href":"https:\/\/davidsterry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions\/554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidsterry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidsterry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidsterry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}