Chinese manufacturer launches bitcoin mining TV set

One of the world's top cryptocurrency mining manufacturers have created a new smart TV which incorporates bitcoin mining technology.

Recently, Springwise has covered an increasing number of innovations in the world of cryptocurrency. These have included a cryptocurrency baseball game and an ATM that allows cryptocurrency buying and selling. Now, a new innovation is bringing bitcoin mining into the living room.

Canaan Creative, the world’s second biggest maker of Bitcoin mining rigs, is releasing what it claims is the world’s first Bitcoin mining TV. The smart TV, called AvalonMiner Inside, includes features like voice control, real-time Bitcoin mining profitability display and a link to Canaan’s entertainment platform, where users can pay for content and gifts using Bitcoin. The TV has the capacity to process 2.8 trillion hashes per second. This is far less, however, than Canaan’s most powerful mining rig, which can process 11 trillion hashes per second.

Canaan may have released the new TV partly with an eye towards it recent IPO filing. According to an excerpt from the filing, the company feels that, “If we cannot maintain the scale and profitability of our single line of system products and, at the same time, offer new products, our ability to continue to grow will suffer.”Canaan’s TV is likely not meant to compete directly with dedicated mining rigs. Instead, the TV is the first of a new generation of blockchain-enabled IoT devices designed to run in the background. A network of millions of blockchain-enabled toasters, TVs and other appliances mining in the background could produce better results than a few hundred thousand mining rigs working at full capacity.

Takeaway: Canaan may be betting that the future of blockchain is in the IoT. Embedding mining tech in consumer devices could increase the hashrate while also reducing the dominance of large bitcoin mining farms. This could also make bitcoin mining more accessible to a wider range of people. Will Bitcoin mining one day be incorporated into a wide range of appliances?