Author
Tatsiana Yablonskaya
Taking strong interest in blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and IoT, Tatsiana Yablonskaya got deep understanding of the emerging techs believing in their potential to drive the future.
21 Inc, the best-funded company in bitcoin, has filed a patent application with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a form of digital currency mining circuitry.
On October 15, 2015 the world’s largest funded company in bitcoin, 21 Inc., applied for a patent for mining circuitry that “may be used to mine digital currency such as bitcoins,” with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The submission, however, was originally filed in April last year.
The following names are mentioned in the application as investors:
- Matthew Pauker, co-founder and chairman;
- Nigel Drego, co-founder and chief architect;
- Veerbhan Kheterpal, co-founder and president;
- Daniel Fir, co-founder.
The application for a mining circuitry patent shows that mining circuitry can be used to share profit or bitcoin rewards with other scheme members. The filing says:
“A transaction may be divided between multiple destination wallets. During mining operations performed by profit-sharing mining circuitry, the profit-sharing circuitry assigns a portion of the new currency to one or more predetermined wallets that have been assigned to the profit-sharing mining circuitry (e.g., hardcoded in the dedicated circuitry). For example, a percentage of the new currency such as 50% (or any desired percentage) may be assigned to the predetermined wallets. The predetermined wallets may sometimes be referred to herein as profit-sharing wallets or reward-sharing wallets. The remainder of the new currency may be assigned to one or more user wallets such as wallets of the miners that are operating the profit-sharing mining circuitry.”
The process of getting patent approval from USPTO can actually take years.
This is the second large step 21 Inc. takes towards improving bitcoin services for the last several months. Thus in September the company announced the first Bitcoin Computer enabling developers to:
- instantly mine Bitcoin from the command line;
- sell API calls for Bitcoin, like English-to-Chinese translation or file conversion;
- set up your own personal iTunes-like digital goods store;
- reward peers for posting your links on social media;
- make any IoT hardware Bitcoin-rentable, from smart locks to 3D printers.
The development was the result of new business plan 21 Inc. had presented in the beginning of the year. Thus it announced its intention to “add a bitcoin miner in every device and in every hand”. Funding from such investors as Andreessen Horowitz and RRE Venture, Qualcomm Inc., founders of giants PayPal, Dropbox Inc., Expedia Inc. and some others with total amount of $116 million provided necessary ground for research and development.
21 Inc. has already fully appreciated the potential of bitcoin and strives to constantly contribute to the development of the industry. “We want to use the success of the 21 Bitcoin Computer to help make Bitcoin the next fundamental system resource, available by default on every new computer. That journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”, – admits Balaji Srinivasan, CEO at 21 Inc.