21 Inc., a bitcoin startup and creator of the 21 Bitcoin Computer, announced it had open-sourced 21 – its software package that simplifies to work with Bitcoin over HTTP.
“21 is now free software, and it turns any computer into a Bitcoin Computer”, the company said.
The startup said in a blog post that 21 enables seamless machine machine-to-machine payments by facilitating getting bitcoin on any device, adding bitcoin to any application and earning bitcoin on every HTTP request.
The company strongly believes in the imminent ‘third web’ – the Machine-Payable Web, where the links between nodes represent payments between machines. In this context, it said that it built 21 to allow the development of machine-payable web services.
21 Inc further emphasizes that Bitcoin in particular, and digital currencies more generally, is uniquely suited to handle machine-to-machine payments, thereby enabling developers to call new paid web services as easily as they link to new websites.
“You couldn’t really have had a Machine-Payable Web before Bitcoin, because the ability of a machine to possess, send, and receive currency autonomously depends critically on the nature of Bitcoin private keys as bearer instruments”, it said.
The software makes it easy to get bitcoin on any device in any country. According to CoinDesk, 21 can be used to connect any device to the 21 network and 21 Marketplace, capabilities that were available only to owners of the 21 Bitcoin Computer previously.
After installing 21's software, users can get bitcoin without a bank account or credit card, build micropayments into apps, and earn bitcoin with HTTP requests.
