ButterFly Labs Mining Cards and Bitsafe Hardware Wallet - CES 2014
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,387 words · ~6 min read
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Linus Tech tips coverage of CES 2014 is brought to you by nc.com your source for
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great technology selection and service along with Corsair memory and Western
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Digital hey guys we're here checking out Bitcoin and Butterfly Labs and they had
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something that caught my eye immediately I'd actually seen a mini press release about this before I came to the booth
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and just wasn't sure where they were because there's a little bit of a mixup and was really excited when I saw it so
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what can you tell me generally about this product so we have our new monarch
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product it's our 600 gigahash high-capacity as6 mining card and it's
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actually a dual dual system where you can use it as a PCI Express card or you
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can use it outside of your computer as a USB device and it we were're going to
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offer a number of different options for it from Air cooling water cooling and uh
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in both an open loop and a Clos Loop version the that open loop version looks
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absolutely insane you guys did a really good job with that and I like that you guys have all the different variations
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that someone could possibly want now how how can you go about connecting this I
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know there's the USB version like what what requirement do you need for that
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you just minimal requirements you can use an Android laptop you can use Mac
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you can use a Windows and it's it's just
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standard USB and you can use just about any mining program I know Mac Miner
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supports it bit Minter CG Miner BFG Miner and of course our own Easy minor
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and then for connectivity sake uh a USB header can take a crazy amount of these
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so you just need PCI Express power two pin uh two sets of six pins and then a
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USB header of some sort to go to the card right yeah and for every single
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Root Hub in your so every USB chip in your computer you can have up to 126 127
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devices connected to it so that's an absolutely insane amount of devices I
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know I've seen quite a few of you guys on the Forum purchasing up a bunch of
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really cheap power supplies and running a few cards off it this is a pretty good
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idea for that because it's not going to take a crazy amount of power to power each one and you just have a couple
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power supplies powering your extra cards which is not a bad idea yeah each unit
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actually consumes roughly 350 Watts yeah
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the main I've seen is this like uh it's a pretty offbrand about 20 $25 450 wat
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power supply that people are buying tons of and running a bunch of cards so that
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would be perfect nice yeah now what can you tell me about this Hardware wallet
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I've seen so our newest product is called the bitsafe and it is a hardware
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wallet and it will basically store your private Keys securely and never expose
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them to the host computer so you could take this Hardware wallet out to a a
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public machine a internet cafe it may even be compromised and have malware on
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it and working with some of the wallet manufacturers uh such as blockchain
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Armory that sort of thing we will you'll basically be able to send a request to
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sign a transaction and it will go to the
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bitsafe the bitsafe will sign it internally and send it back out so the
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private keys will never be exposed and you'll never have to worry about your
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Bitcoins being stolen the future is here that's freaking cool you can have a
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hardware wallet that's awesome because I've been I've been wondering about how that goes and it's interesting because
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every once in a while you hear that someone will lose their wall wallet yes it's just like oh God and well you also
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be when you first instantiate your wallet you'll be able to print out a
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paper backup stored in your safe so even if you lose your Hardware wallet you
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just get a new one and you reload it onto that wallet it's a really good idea
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we've heard some a few horror stories about that so one of the features that
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we're including with it is actually a solar cell on the back so you can leave
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it sitting on your desk or what have you and it will charge the battery you can
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and the screen is a version of eink that
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is very low power so it will even operate the screen directly if you are
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very low on batteries you can charge it via USB but as long as you let it sit in
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the light it'll charge itself I find a lot of these devices that you you're
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able to just sit in pretty much any light they never really die anyways because as long as you don't keep it in
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your pocket 24/7 they'll usually have some amount of charge and you said it's
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really low power too right right yes the the eing screen just uses just very
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minimal amount of power and it'll it's
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we're trying to make as low power so it'll last as long as possible without ever having to recharge now can you
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explain the different options you have when going through a transaction with this thing like what what what can it do
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in terms of transactions so addition to being able to plug it into a host
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computer the main feature and probably the main way people will use it is via
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the camera that it will have and you'll be able to scan QR codes with it it will
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also be able uh we're still debating on whether or not we're going to have a
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Bluetooth module where you can send that in real time but the the camera will
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allow you to use QR codes such as a like a lamu uh ATM or someone's smartphone or
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even another bit safe which uh the bit safe will be able to display a QR code
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for receiving and another bit safe will be able to send to that one so if you
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had if you and a a customer or a buddy or something had two bit safes you could
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theoretically just take pictures of each other's QR codes and transfer Bitcoins
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that way yes absolutely so if you're out for dinner one night you be like hey you
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owe me you owe me quarter Bitcoin you can send it right there from bit safe to
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bit safe that's awesome how much would each one of these individual units cost
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and the hardware each card will run it right now runs
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$2,100 for the 600 gash for the 300 gash
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I think it's around $1,200 the hardware wallet we want to make it as cheap as
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possible and we keep trying to get the price down get the price down it looks
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like right now it'll be probably in the $150 range I would love to get a some
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sort of device maybe not the bit safe itself but something in the $3 or $40
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range something we're looking at I don't know if we can do it with uh at least
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with all the features we want but it's something we definitely want to do I i'
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I've got a few people that I know that have more expensive wallets than that so
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while while it is a little bit up there and I'd like to see around 3040 as well
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I I could see a few people buying it thanks for watching our our butterfly
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