BitFury’s new product, a light bulb that can mine bitcoin, garnered a lot of attention via Reddit a few days back as attendees of the Blockchain Summit started posting photos online. This event is an informal four-day gathering of the industry leaders in Richard Branson’s Necker Island.
“We believe that the project’s focus should not be on making money from bitcoin mining, but on creating innovative solutions with main purpose to use this product for educational purposes and fun,” said BitFury CEO Valery Vavilov.
How to Mine Bitcoin
Bitcoin startups have been working on ways to find uses for bitcoin in line with the broader trend toward connecting everyday devices to the internet. In particular, BitFury has been working on the light bulb that can mine bitcoin for quite some time and is already on its third prototype of the device.
The concept was first introduced by board member Bill Tai and head of product Niko Punin and the development has been going on for a year. For now, a couple dozen light bulbs have been completed as part of the pilot and the technical details are likely to be released later this year.
“We are now on our third generation of prototype and envision this as an educational product that will help lower the friction toward understanding the technology and making it super easy for kids and adults of all ages to touch bitcoin blockchain ecosystem,” Vavilov stated.
BitFury plans to have an open-sourced release in order to encourage more innovations for the product and other gadgets that can be made to mine bitcoin. They are also considering distributing a software development kit to inspire social applications of the technology.
“Our board member Bill Tai likens this to products he had as a child such as the RadioShack 100-in-one electronic projects kit, or to modern day Raspberry Pi bundles for first-time users,” Vavilov explained.
