Gadgetory

it's been what the youngins would describe as a hot minute since we've last talked about the cryptocurrency space on this channel in large part because the popularity has died down a ton since it became much less profitable to mine but then when Anthony stumbled across the bit main ant router a coin miner mixed with a Wi-Fi router we had to check it out we just had to know why why would this exist why would anybody buy this especially when you can spend your money instead on our sponsor thermal take thermal takes level 20 cases feature radiator mounting for water cooling gaming focused aesthetics and beautiful tempered glass panels check them out at the link below so crypto mining is pretty much the pits these days but if you were to think hard enough you might remember the golden days back in late 2017 or early 2018 when well actually that really wasn't that long ago anyway one bitcoin was worth almost 20,000 u.s. dull hairs and every news outlet in the world was on the bandwagon with daily price updates projections and what-have-you well as it turns out a natural consequence of that kind of hysteria is everyone and his or her dog trying to get in on the action and there ended up being a handful of somewhat odd but then seemingly functional products that were forged at the heart of the hype storm itself so one classic example is car nose qc1 space heater it's a mining machine based on their very similar qh1 which is an ambient cooled work station that doubles as a heater when it's under load so the QC 1 was pretty much the same thing just with a fancy app interface tailored for miners it was advertised as a way to subsidize your heating bill by mining cryptocurrency and while actually even today that machine probably would still be profitable on top of your electricity costs with its dual internal rx 588 gig GPUs the cost for some reason was thirty-five hundred US dollars up front GPUs for a space heater that's only effective for rooms between 150 and 300 square feet by comparison a 100,000 BTU furnace which is good for about 2,500 square feet can be had brand new for just shy of $700 now obviously that doesn't account for installation costs but I think you get the point then there was the bit main r4 which was essentially just a cut-down ant minor s9 with a centrifugal fan that was SPECT to reach noise levels of only 52 decibels so they advertised it as being home friendly I don't know about you guys but my wife wouldn't let that thing anywhere near our house and we have a server room my wife still doesn't believe in me bringing us finally to the crazy crypto contraption of today's video the bit mean aunt router r3 LTC a litecoin mining open wrt router that pulse triple duty has a clock not to mention that it kind of looks like a cheap Bluetooth speaker so we bought this thing and if you ask bit main they'll say that it's meant to be a portable and ergonomic router okay I guess that say you can carry it with you on the go and have your Wi-Fi wherever you need as long as you also have an Ethernet cable and access to a power outlet okay and then as an added bonus you get a chance to win 25 light coins every 2.5 minutes which is basically the fundamental principle of mining they're describing the chance to mine a block of light coin every block cycle which is about 150 seconds what they don't mention is that with this amount of computing power your estimated time to find a block is almost a hundred and four years but I mean hey man it's still a router right so it's got to be a pretty decent one right wrong oh so wrong so the newer model that we have here the r3 is built for 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi with a maximum theoretical speed of 300 megabit across only the 2.4 gigahertz bend that's right it's not even dual band Wi-Fi and then as unimpressive as 300 megabit is in 2018 it gets even better because the single ethernet port at the back yes that means no included switch is only a 100 megabit port but then I guess you know when you're carrying around your brick sized mining router to the Starbucks nearby you're probably not gonna get and speeds any faster than that anyway all right then so to say what we actually think this thing is for I'm gonna need my cynicism hat I don't have a hat handy Jake find me find me a hat quickly because from everything that we've seen so far the only reason that this product could possibly exist is as a way for bit Maine to sell off thank you extra chip stock as each one of these units has six ASIC chips inside so the whole thing where it's masquerading as a portable and ergonomic router I mean that's just plain ridiculous look at it what the hell are they talking about it would take out half your backpack just for a miniscule chance to mine a light coin wherever you happen to be sitting with both Ethernet and power not to mention that the odds are that it would take longer than the amount of time that I still have on this earth another possibility I'll still be needing this hat is that it's just a clever ploy to buff their own and mining pool as earlier units were actually unable to switch pools and this one is still only able to be switched via command line something that I doubt most people would do and then making this possibility even more likely is that most people even if they did get some money out of the pool probably wouldn't even bother to withdraw the $15 a year that they'd make based on current estimates further padding bit means pocketbook okay then so it's not really a mining machine it's not really a router but at least it works as an expensive clock right okay yeah but the next time I spend $50 on a mining router clock I would expect it to at least have a alarm clock functionality probably the only saving grace for this thing is that you'll be adding a whole new level of meaning to your me me Wi-Fi name what are you looking for something that is an overpriced and stupid check out private Internet access VPN PIAA hides your true IP address and allows you to bypass your restrictions and censorship by make you appear as though you're connecting from somewhere else and you can use up to five devices at once it also helps prevent attacks by blocking unwanted connections it Auto blocks all traffic if the VPN disconnects and it keeps your data out of the hands of advertisers and other activity tracking snoops so go try it out at the link in the video description today it's affordable and it works so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured don't please don't buy the stuff we featured but but but we also have links to our merch store you can buy cool stuff in our merch store and you can buy stuff on our community forum wait you can't buy stuff there but you can join it it's cool loud it is can you imagine having that on your nightstand