Gadgetory

Linus tech tips coverage of CES 2014 is brought to you by NCI XCOM your source for great technology selection and service along with Corsair memory and Western Digital hey guys we're here checking out Bitcoin and butterfly labs and they had something that caught my eye immediately I'd actually seen a mini press release about this before I came to the booth and just wasn't sure where they were because there's a little bit of a mix-up it was really excited when I saw it so what can you tell me generally about this product so we have our new monarch product it's our six hundred Giga hash high-capacity ASIC mining card and it's actually a dual dual system where you can use it as a PCI Express card or you can use it outside of your computer as a USB device and if we were going to offer a number of different options for it from air cooling water cooling and in both an open loop and a closed loop version that open loop version looks absolutely insane you guys did a really good job with that and I like that you guys have all the different variations that someone could possibly want now how can you go about connecting this I know there's the USB version like what what requirements do you need for that you just minimal requirements you can use an Android laptop you can use mac you can use a Windows and it's it's just standard USB and you can use just about any mining program I know Mac miner sports it bit mint or CG minor B F G minor and of course our own AZ miner and then for connectivity sake a USB header can take crazy amount of these so you just need PCI Express power to put two sets of six pins and then USB header of some sort to go to the card right yeah and for every single root hub in your show every USB chip in your computer you can have up to 100 2627 devices connected to it so that's an absolutely insane amount of devices I know I've seen quite a few you guys on the forum purchasing up a bunch of really cheap power supplies and running a few cards off it this is a pretty good idea for that because it's not going to take a crazy amount of power to power each one you just have a couple power supplies powering your extra cards which is not a bad idea yeah each unit actually consumes roughly 350 watts yeah the main I've seen is this like it's a pretty off-brand about 20-25 dollar 450 watt power supply that people are buying tons of and running a bunch of cards so that would be perfect now what can you tell me about this hardware wallet so our newest product is called the bit safe and it is a hardware wallet and it will basically store your private keys securely and never expose them to the host computer so you could take this hardware wallet out to a public machine internet cafe it may even be compromised and have malware on it and we're working with some of the wallet manufacturers such as blockchain armory that sort of thing we will you'll basically be able to send a request to sign a transaction and it will go to the bit safe the bit safe will sign it internally and send it back out so the private keys will never be exposed and you'll never have to worry about your bitcoins being stolen the future is here that's freaking cool you can have a hardware wallet that's awesome because I've been I've been wondering about how that goes and it's interesting because every once in a while you hear that someone will lose their wallet yes it's just like thank God well you also bit when you first in Stan she ate your wallet you'll be able to print out a paper backup and store it in your safe so even if you lose your hardware wallet you just get a new one and you reload it onto that wallet it's a really good idea we've heard some a few horror stories about that so one of the features that we're including with it is actually a solar cell on the back so you can leave it sitting on your desk or what have you and it will charge the battery you can in the screen is a version of e-ink that is very low power so it will even operate the screen directly if you are very low on batteries you can't charge it via USB but as long as you let it sit in the light it'll charge itself I find a lot of these devices that you're able to just sit in pretty much any light they never really die anyways because as long as you don't keep it in your pocket 24/7 they'll usually have some amount of charge and you said it's really low-power - right right yes the the eating screen just used is just very minimal amount of power and it's we're trying to make his low-power so it'll last as long as possible without ever having to recharge now can you explain the different options you have when going through a transaction with this thing like what what can it do in terms of transactions so in addition to being able to plug it into a host computer the main feature and probably the main way people will use it is via the camera that it will have and you'll be able to scan QR codes with it it will also be able we're still debating on whether or not we're going to have a Bluetooth module where you can send that in real-time but the camera will allow you to use QR codes such as a like a llama sue ATM or someone's smartphone or even another bit safe which the bit safe will be able to display a QR code for receiving and another bit safe will be able to send to that one so if you had if you and a customer or a buddy or something had two bits a so you could theoretically just take pictures of each other's QR codes and transfer bitcoins that way yes absolutely so if you're out for dinner one night yeah you owe me the only quarter Bitcoin you can send it right there from bit safe to bit safe that's awesome how much would each one of these individual units cost and the hardware wallet each card will run it right now runs $2,100 for the 600 Giga hash for the 300 gigs around $1,200 the hardware wallet we want to make it as cheap as possible and we keep trying to get the price down get the price down it looks like right now it'll be probably in $150 range I would love to get a some sort of device maybe not the bit safe itself but something in the 30 or $40 range something we're looking at I don't know if we can do it with the at least with all the features we want but it's something we definitely want to do I've got a few people that I know that have more expensive wallets than that so well it is a little bit up there and I'd like to see around 30 for you as well I could see a few people buying it thanks for watching our our butterfly labs video if you want to see all of our CES 2014 content be sure to subscribe to Alanis tech tips and as always thank you to our sponsors ncx Corsair and WD