Earlier this week, 21 Inc released new details confirming that its market strategy will concentrate on distributing bitcoin mining chips embedded in consumer and enterprise hardware devices.The formal announcement was made after it revealed the startup’s plans to use such products to promote the use of bitcoin for micropayments and as a means of mass consumer onboarding to the bitcoin network.In its pitch, that included both slides and videos, the startup demonstrated how it was possible to use Bitcoin to facilitate real- time marketplaces for Internet bandwidth.
When compared to a company overview that was created last fall, the latest release illustrates how secretive San Francisco- based startup has since evolved its strategy even if its core mission remains largely unchanged.Balaji Srinivasan, the co- founder of 21 Inc and newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, wrote in a blog post on Medium, that how such a strategy would enable bitcoin to be used for device authentication and to subsidize the distribution of consumer smartphones to the developing world.Srinivasan confirmed the extent to which 21 Inc has gone to create a complete support system around its key product,“Our team…has built not just a chip, but a full technology stack around the chip –including reference devices, datasheets, a cloud backend, and software protocols.”Due to the past communications from the company, the timing of some of the more concrete development from the company was not clear.
Srinivasan pointed out that the former chief executive officer Matt Pauker would be taking over as chairman, but no details were given as why the leadership shift was undertaken.IT giant Cisco and former ARM CSO Mark Templeton were named as investors, though it was not clear whether 21 Inc has opened a new round of fundraising.Srinivasan further revealed that 21 Inc would seek to begin mailing development kits which features its embeddable “BitShare” mining chip to developers.The company’s website is now accepting sign- ups for the kits, but no dates for shipping were provided.
As with past public criticism, Srinivasan spoke against speculative use cases for bitcoin, by detailing how 21 Inc seeks to create value for small amounts of bitcoin by increasing its utility and usefulness for the users.Chief among this would be the existing operators of large- scale data centers who Srinivasan stated that it could benefit from integration of BitShare chips into their operations,“This means any vendor can take a chip performing a normal function (say video decoding or networking), add 21’s BitShare technology and thereby enable the chip to continuously generate revenue simply by being connected to power and Internet.”21 Inc was founded in 1st of January, 2013 by Matt Pauker and Balaji Srinivasan. Its exact nature of operations is yet to be revealed to the public. 21 Inc was the main sponsor of Bitcoin Job Fair, which took place in Sunnydale, California on 18th of April, 2015.
