These two comments from the /r/Bitcoin thread [1] sum it up nicely: "So it's an overpriced SHA256 ASIC attached to a Raspberry Pi? For $400?" [2] "I'd rather

These two comments from the /r/Bitcoin thread [1] sum it up nicely: "So it's an overpriced SHA256 ASIC attached to a Raspberry Pi? For $400?" [2] "I'd rather just buy $399.99 worth of Bitcoin..." [3] EDIT: Its first-listed "feature" on Amazon [4] seems disingenuous at best: "Buy digital goods with the constant stream of bitcoin mined by a 21 Bitcoin Chip" especially since the makers themselves refute this in their FAQ [5]: "Yes, you can indeed make a profit with the 21 Bitcoin Computer. However, you would do so not by directly selling bitcoin, but by selling digital goods _for_ bitcoin. That is, you are not going to get rich by immediately selling the bitcoin mined by the device for offline currency, but you can potentially do very well by selling digital goods and services to others for their bitcoin." In other words, there will hardly be a significant "constant stream of bitcoin mined" as the tech specs [6] make clear: "the 21 Bitcoin Chip has an efficiency of approximately 0.16 Joules per Gigahash and can calculate 50-125 Gigahashes per second" At the current difficulty, that would produce somewhere between 0.01289890 and 0.03224725 bitcoins per month [7]. Even if the difficulty remained constant, it would take many years to recoup the initial $400 investment. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3lucwl/21co_website_has_just_been_updated_introducing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3lucwl/21co_websit... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3lucwl/21co_website_has_just_been_updated_introducing/cv9cuvx https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3lucwl/21co_websit... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3lucwl/21co_website_has_just_been_updated_introducing/cv9djoo https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3lucwl/21co_websit... [4] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014RD021C http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014RD021C [5] https://21.co/faq/#making-a-profit https://21.co/faq/#making-a-profit [6] https://21.co/faq/#technical-specifications https://21.co/faq/#technical-specifications [7] https://alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator https://alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator