The southern suburbs of Quancheng, the campus of Shandong University.

The orange twilight slanted into the study room, crawling over the floor, the desk, and the young man's body.

The campus is already rich in work, less education, and less yang, and it is still close to the territory of the School of Mechanical Engineering, so it is even more difficult to see the girl.

On the edge of the desk in the back row, Fang Junqi and his dormitory brothers sat together, each burying their heads in their homework.

Similar to most of the students here, the four of them had headphones in their ears, and there was a faint sound of music wafting out, but they couldn't hear whose song it was.

Suddenly, he noticed some subtle ticking sounds in the music, and immediately raised his eyebrows and took out his mobile phone.

The phone's breathing light was now on, and it was flashing long and short to convey a message to him.

The default encoding of the breathing light/tick communication of the bee mobile phone is Morse code, and if you memorize the encoding rules, you can directly translate it.

Fang Junqi only knew the Morse code of SOS and 521, and the light signal in front of him was obviously not. Fortunately, he has other more convenient ways to obtain it, but he doesn't mind being blind.

Looking down, I crossed the lock screen clock, and sure enough, I saw a logistics message: [Bee City Express]: The product you purchased Bee Hive Smart Routing CSR3 has been delivered to the designated address, please pick it up as soon as possible.

Although lock screen notifications pose a risk of privacy breaches, they are much more convenient than breathing lights. Anyway, the butterfly screen of the bee 8 is enough to save power, and there is no OLEDThe aging and burning of the screen problem, but you have to enjoy this convenience at will.

His gaze lingered on the time numbers for a moment, and he simply packed up his things and prepared to leave.

Noticing his movements, Guo Ming next to him immediately asked, "Go back to dinner?"

He and Deng Shengyun were originally forcibly pulled, and they couldn't sit still and wanted to leave half an hour ago, so they naturally discovered Fang Junqi's actions for the first time.

"Well," the latter nodded, "it's almost time, and I'm just going to pick up the courier after eating." ”

Hearing that he was going to pick up the courier, Guo Ming's eyes suddenly lit up, "Your new phone has arrived?"

As he spoke, his eyes looked at the bee 8 in Fang Junqi's hand.

Relying on the crazy price increase of Bitcoin, the guy on the other side made a lot of dollars by speculating in coins, and he is an out-and-out little tyrant.

Every time Bee launches a new product, he has to be the first to take a look, and he often buys double copies. Yesterday, I watched the live broadcast of the bee autumn press conference, and Fang Junqi immediately ordered two Black Jade 2 full-screen mobile phones, one for his girlfriend and one for his own use. With a new phone, the original phone will naturally enter the obsolescence process.

Guo Ming preemptively booked to take over at that time, and now looking at it is like looking at his mobile phone. After all, the bee 8 is this year's flagship machine, although the price of the new machine has been adjusted, it has always remained above 4500 yuan, and it is simply a good deal to win 3000.

was thinking about showing his tail, intimidating the crowd, attracting bees and butterflies, solving major life events, and reaching the peak of his career, but he heard Fang Junqi say, "Not yet." ”

Seeing Guo Ming looking over in a daze, Fang Junqi pointed above his head, "My Black Jade 2 is still flying in the sky, and it will not arrive until tomorrow." This time it was the Bee Miner. ”

With an embarrassed smile, Guo Ming turned around and knocked on the table next to him, "Brother Yun, let's go and eat!"

The latter also has a temperament that can't sit still, he has already put down his textbook and brushed up the headlines, and when he heard Guo Ming's greeting, he immediately put away his mobile phone, turned his head and asked Boss Jin to leave together.

Seeing that the three of them had put away their things and stood up, Jin Cheng did not say unsociately, you go first, I will sit for a while, nodded silently and put away the books and stationery.

Half an hour later.

Fang Junqi pushed open the door of the dormitory, holding a colorful packing box under his arm.

When Guo Ming saw it, he hurriedly reached out to pass the box, "Brother Qi, can you take it apart and take a look?"

"Just a router, what's so nice about it?"

"Hehe, opening the box is addictive," Guo Ming explained with a smile, "Even if you know what's inside, you can't help but want to open it and take a look." ”

"You're not saved!" Fang Junqi shook his head with a smile, "Okay, let's dismantle it!"

"Order!" Guo Ming nodded vigorously, turned around and put down the cardboard box, picked up the utility knife on the table, and carefully cut the sealing tape.

The outer circular express box was left by Fang Junqi in the express cabinet, and the lineup of the bee miner could be seen by opening the inner product box.

Hearing the conversation between the two, Jin Cheng and Deng Shengyun also looked here, and then saw Guo Ming take out a plastic box with foldable dual antennas from the cardboard box, which is the classic shape of a wireless router.

"Huh?" Jin Cheng was curious, and turned his head to look at Fang Junqi, "The dormitory network is fine, why do you still buy a router?"

"It's not just routing," the latter explains, "it's been around the year before, and it's now in its third generation. Originally, it was called Roubao and Money-making Routing, but now it is renamed as a mining machine with the addition of blockchain bookkeeping function, which is actually somewhat suspicious of selling dog meat on the head of a sheep. ”

"Huh?" the other three shouted in unison.

Roubao they have all heard,These devices are sold by video websites、Download sites,They use these devices as storage nodes,Give tokens according to usage、Points return,Accumulate and earn a few cents a day。

Guo Ming said that he couldn't understand it, "Selling dog meat with a sheep's head, then why do you still buy it?"

Fang Junqi nodded, "It's true that the name doesn't live up to the truth, but it's a bee and a mining machine, and it still has some effect, so I should support it." ”

"Bees?" Jin Cheng became even more curious, "Didn't you say that bees don't like Bitcoin? Why do you start selling mining machines now?" ”

Before Fang Junqi could answer, Deng Shengyun spoke first, "Hey, boss, don't you look at how much Bitcoin has risen this year?" Even motherboard and graphics card manufacturers have put down their discipline and are competing to launch mining boards and mining cards, and it is normal for bees to change their attitudes!"

Mechanical automation majors have to deal with computers, and they all have some understanding of hot topics in the industry, and probably know basic concepts such as blockchain, bitcoin, mining machines, and mining.

Blockchain is essentially a distributed database technology, with the help of a set of mechanisms to store data in a large number of computers, and realize functions such as reading, updating, and verifying. Bitcoin is a distributed ledger using blockchain technology, where each block is a page containing tens of thousands of transactions and is stored on the computers of all participants around the world.

The so-called mining is to let your own computer participate in the operation process of this distributed ledger and distributed database, and by packaging the received transaction data into the block file, you can get the rewards given by the transaction network, including ownerless bitcoins, and a small amount of fees paid by transaction users.

In order to ensure that the process is credible and verifiable, Bitcoin introduces mathematical puzzles into it, the Bitcoin network produces a block about every 10 minutes, and the mining client needs to spend a lot of computing power to find a valid solution to the mathematical problem built into the block, and then put the solution and the collected transaction data into it to broadcast to the whole network to announce the completion of the work. Other mining clients receive these blocks and confirm the work with the result of this devalidation. When there are enough clients participating in the confirmation, the transaction record contained in the block is officially established, and the first mining client to complete the block can get paid. In order to speed up the problem solving, miners combine multiple machines to form a mine and then divide the proceeds equally.

The mining computer under this design is like a salesman who is crazy and fights for customers, forming a group PK, and he doesn't do much work but he is tired enough.

When exposed to high load for a long time, the internal electronic components of the equipment will deteriorate prematurely due to high temperatures, which can shorten the service life or cause damage failures. Boards with reduced performance and can still be used often flow into the second-hand market, harming those users who are greedy for cheapness, and completely damaged boards will be handed over to the manufacturer for after-sales, causing additional costs to the latter, and it is naturally difficult to win the favor of hardware manufacturers.

But that changed this year. The price of cryptocurrencies led by Bitcoin has risen wildly, with funds constantly entering the market for speculation, new cryptocurrencies constantly coming out to make money, and even forming a proper term for ICO (initial coin offering), and even the price of mining machines and mining cards is also rising.

Seeing the attractive prospects, motherboard and graphics card manufacturers have also put down their mustard and thrown off their discipline and launched mining motherboards and mining graphics cards. The former has up to a dozen graphics card slots, which can effectively increase the efficiency of graphics card mining, while the latter castrates the video output function, reduces costs and avoids confusion between mining cards and ordinary graphics cards, which helps manufacturers manage after-sales costs and maintain brand image.

Hearing Brother Yun's words, Fang Junqi shook his head and disagreed, "The attitude of the bee has not changed, and it is still optimistic about the blockchain and the decline of cryptocurrency." After all, there is a problem at the root. ”

"What do you say?" Jin Cheng asked curiously, although he had heard of Bitcoin, he had not learned about it carefully, and at this time he was also a little curious about how Fang Tuhao made money.

In 2009, when the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States swept the world, the Federal Reserve launched "quantitative easing" and used the money printing machine to save the economic crisis.

Seeing the sudden surge in inflation, the developer under the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto" published a technical white paper to put forward the concept of Bitcoin, trying to use this peer-to-peer electronic money to circumvent some of the stubborn problems of traditional banks: it will not be temporarily unusable due to temporary workers cutting optical fibers and branch computers being poisoned; it will not be seized and cancelled; its number is limited to 21 million, which will only deflation and not inflation, and there is almost no need to worry about the problem of "money is worthless".

Unfortunately, this assumption is too idealistic.

The decentralized trading system will naturally threaten the interests of traditional banks and the national fiat currency system behind them, and will inevitably attract hostility from traditional banking banks and even regulatory restrictions at the national level. Since the beginning of this year, "the people are very good" has successively stopped bitcoin trading platforms and ICO transactions.

These policy risks aside, Bitcoin itself still has some technical problems that are difficult to overcome.

As a medium of exchange, the total amount of money in circulation should be linked to the total amount of goods in the market, and more money and less goods are worthless, and more money and more goods are worthless, which will have an impact on the economic system. In order to maintain growth and promote employment to attract votes, the officials of various countries can only give up the most stable and real gold standard, and instead develop the fiat currency backed by national credit.

Due to the constant volume, the increasing cost of acquisition, and the entry of speculators, the price of bitcoin began to rise sharply after 2014, and the problem of deflation gradually became apparent.

In previous years, miners could easily mine a large number of ownerless bitcoins, and the unit price of bitcoin was extremely low and transactions were inactive, but this year, with the decay of unowned bitcoin production, the unit price of each coin has risen to more than $10,000. Correspondingly, the "micro" fee charged according to the amount of data has also become higher, which in turn squeezes Bitcoin out of the field of micropayments.

On the other hand, as a distributed ledger, Bitcoin and its many imitators have efficiency shortcomings.

Ledgers are distributed all over the world, and every unapproved transaction needs to be broadcast across the network and sent to the miners' computers, and each transaction must be confirmed by the majority of miners before it can be officially validated, which means that the more participants and the more popular the cryptocurrency, the less efficient its transaction is.

Because the value of Bitcoin was very low when it was first born, it only took a few cents to buy a Bitcoin, and using this "money" as a fee can create hundreds of transaction data, which in turn causes miners' computers to freeze and the transaction network is congested, so it is vividly called a "pollen attack". To solve this problem, Satoshi Nakamoto proposed to limit the block size to 1MB, but it also cost Bitcoin a further reduction in efficiency.

The Bitcoin network generates a data block about every 10 minutes, and according to the average of 250 bytes per transaction, a 1 megabyte block can only record 4096 transactions, which means that the Bitcoin network can only withstand less than 7 transactions per second on average, which is really a bit pitiful. Miners pack transaction records to generate blocks in turn according to the amount of fees, so if you want to complete transactions as soon as possible, you need to continuously increase the fees.

This is also the reason why the issue of Bitcoin scaling has been debated for several years and has not been conclusive, and developers, mining farms, and large market makers each have their own interests to consider, and it is naturally difficult to reach an agreement.

"I see," Jin Cheng nodded, indicating understanding.

"What are you talking about?" Guo Ming interjected, "I just want to know how Brother Qi made money by speculating in coins!"

"Yes, yes, I want to know too," Deng Shengyun immediately nodded in agreement.

They only know that someone has made a fortune because of speculation, but they don't know how much.

"Hehe," Fang Junqi smiled wickedly, "I don't mine or speculate coins, I just need to sell one or two coins when I look at it." ”

"Then where did you get your coins?" Jin Cheng keenly grasped the point.

"Of course it was given by someone else," Fang Junqi grinned, "You all made the story of buying pizza for 10,000 bitcoins, right?"

Rumor has it that on May 22, 2010, a programmer bought 2 pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins. With the crazy appreciation of Bitcoin, the "value" of these two pizzas is also constantly refreshing, and every time this date, someone will post a special article to commemorate the so-called "Bitcoin Pizza Day".

It's unknown whether pizza worth tens of millions of dollars exists, but it is true that Bitcoin was super cheap in 2010.

However, another fact is that even if Bitcoin was super cheap at the time, it was impossible for ordinary people to spend money on such an "investment product" with great uncertainty. On the contrary, those rich people who have surplus money are likely to use their "pocket money" to buy some as venture capital.

Atletico Madrid has a considerable amount in his hands, and Fang Junqi, Zhang Xuyao and other close friends have received gifts from him.

(End of chapter)