21Vianet Group Inc. (VNET, Financial), one of the world’s leading Bitcoin (BTCS, Financial) startups, has announced ambitious plans to promote the Bitcoin digital currency in an expansive scale by introducing a series of embeddable chips that will enable consumer gadgets like smartphones and other internet-connected devices to earn the currency online by mining. On March 15, another bitcoin venture, the news service provider Coin desk, revealed that 21 Inc. had accumulated a record-breaking and staggering $116 million in funds with a series of investments from Silicon valley majors like founders of Expedia Inc. (EXPE, Financial), Dropbox Inc., PayPal Inc., Zynga Inc. (ZNGA, Financial) , chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM, Financial) and leading venture-capitalists Andreessen Horowitz and RRE Venture. The undisclosed product line that had attracted so much professional interest and financial backing lead to wild speculations and was finally put to rest by the announcement on a blogpost on May 18, 2015 by 21 Inc. co-founder and soon-to-be Chief Executive Balaji Srinivasan.
These embeddable chips, intended for industrial applications, also have financial support from hardware giant Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO, Financial) and former AMR Holdings chief executive Mark Templeton. The company is also strengthening its knowledge arsenal with Lawrence H. Summers, former U.S. Treasury secretary, and Ben Horowitz, the co-founder partner of Andreessen Horowitz taking over prominent roles and former CEO Mathew Pauker slated to assume the position of chairman.
The Bitcoin phenomena
The enigmatic Bitcoin is basically an online payment system that is based on an open source software that enable direct transactions between users without any intermediary an accounted in public ledgers in the first decentralized digital currency called Bitcoin. Originally invented in 2008 by the secretive Satoshi Takemoto who handed over the core code development to Gavin Andresen, this online virtual payment phenomenon basically has no single administrator or central database and hence has been categorised as a decentralised virtual currency by the US treasury department. This cryptocurrency is received as reward for processing a verified and recorded online payment in Bitcoins via a process called mining which is executed in a global network of high capacity data centres and servers. Seeing a large potential in Bitcoin transactions, with its low operating fee, high speed online execution and transparent record keeping system, in facilitating legitimate financial services, more and more merchants have started trading in this virtual currency leading to phenomenal growth in this payment service.
The envisioned future of Bitcoin
Unlike its past performance of dominating the cut throat bitcoin mining sector for maximum profit, 21 Inc. now looks focused on capitalizing on the latest Silicon Valley fascination of "Internet of Things" by empowering interconnected devices with unlimited digital currency transactions online and among themselves. Theoretically this vision could transform the current financial system introducing a new medium of commerce via interconnected devices and extensive network access and metamorphose Bitcoin from its image of profit making currency to one of convenience and a fundamental need. 21 Inc. expects the new 21 bitshare chip will lead to the development and wide usage of bitcoin-subsidized consumer gadgets worldwide taking the bitcoin application to a new level.
With its current popularity and predicted boom of future users, the Bitcoin core developers are contemplating on the best way to enhance the technology to adapt to burgeoning growth in transactions and records without any downtime. The ever-increasing chain of data blocks arising out of extensive data mining need to be expanded and the number of transactions processed per second needs to be augmented from the current lowly figure of three per second against 24,000 transaction processed per second by Visa’s (V, Financial) network.
