Francesco Gardin of Quantum Blockchain (QBT) told me that what really matters is developing the blockchain and that he has turned QBT to this very end. If I were to understand what he is doing and how I would applaud him to the rafters. But I do not. Instead I passed this problem of comprehension to a bright fellow who in turn passed it on to another one such. Here is the commentary received:
“From what I understand, they are trying to improve the inefficiencies of bitcoin “mining” and develop a new way of mining bitcoin.They are boosting ASIC bitcoin miner performance with machine learning by guessing the outcome of a given problem by the bitcoin mining algorithm.
They will then build and selling new ASIC machines with this incorporated technology and compete against major players such as Bitmain. Their R&D and patent consists of using machine learning to predict the results of SHA256 (a cryptographic hash function that is used to on a number of cryptocurrencies)
I can give my general thoughts on the project.
1. In an interview they mentioned that with machine learning, SHA256 problems can be done 30% faster but bitmain improves their ASIC miners by about 20%-30% year on year.
2. An ASIC miner’s value is more volatile than bitcoin’s price. When bitcoin’s price is low, running the miner will make a net loss, it will be much cheaper to just buy bitcoin at market price. Thus the interest in miners increase and decrease exponentially with respect to bitcoin price.3. Using machine learning to “guess” a predictable randomness of a given SHA256 open source (bitcoin) program risks the likelihood of a bitcoin fork if enough people are against your competitive advantage. Randomness is meant to be truly random and not predictable. If machine learning can “predict” the randomness, this will be seen as a flaw from bitcoin developers and will most likely be patched in an upcoming release.”
I trust that all this is clear to my more intelligent readers. I remain in the dark.
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Were I to seek to alight upon a ghost-writer, Isabel Oakeshott would not be on my list of potential candidates. Matt Hancock’s side seem to have a legal action against Ms Oakeshott in mind. I am not surprised.
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Capita (CPI) report this morning. Debt is clearly going right down. This makes CPI a strong buy at 31p. Hurry now. The takeover may never emerge. But I would not rule it out.
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I enquired in NY last night and although I have been surprised that Progyny (PGNY on Nasdaq) perked up the underlying position is totally unchanged. Stay short at $37. The target for now remains $10.