Sadly no free Bitcoin mining toasters quite yet, but venture capital funded Bitcoin startup 21 Inc. has finally brought its first product to market in the form of a “Bitcoin Computer.”

The 21 Bitcoin Computer is reported to be a small, bare bones, Linux-based piece of hardware in which the Bitcoin protocol is a feature of the operating system, and is aimed at developers rather than consumers.

The $400 device’s operating system is said to include a full copy of the Bitcoin Blockchain and related software that will assist developers to make Bitcoin a core feature of the products they build using the device.

“With this pocket-sized device, if you are an entrepreneur or developer, you can now instantly buy or sell digital goods and services at the command line using Bitcoin,” 21 Inc.’s Balaji S. Srinivasan explained in a post on Medium before noting that uses include the ability to:

• instantly mine Bitcoin from the command line
• sell API calls for Bitcoin, like English-to-Chinese translation or file conversion
• set up your own personal iTunes-like digital goods store
• reward peers for posting your links on social media
• make any IoT hardware Bitcoin-rentable, from smart locks to 3D printers

“The reason you can do these things so quickly is because the 21 Bitcoin Computer includes a built-in 21 mining chip (so you can easily buy things for Bitcoin) and a built-in 21 micropayments server (so you can easily sell things for Bitcoin), all accessible from the 21 command line interface” Srinivasan further noted.

$116m for this?

21 Inc. first came out of stealth mode back in March when it announced $116 million in funding from blue-chip venture capital firms including Andreessen Horowitz, RRE Ventures, Qualcomm and others, for what was then the largest ever investment in the Bitcoin-related firm, and would still be close to the top of the list.

The question then becomes that these firms invested $116 million into a firm that has produced what is essentially a Bitcoin mining Raspberry Pi?

Despite going to market with this product perhaps it’s better considered initially a prototype or a proof-of-concept, showing that the technology works before it is embedded in IoT devices as the company first promised it was going to do.

Or then again maybe it isn’t; this is Srinivasan on Medium again:

Our long­ term goal is to return economic power to the individual. Specifically, we want to make it possible for you to turn your bright idea into passive income by selling Bitcoin­-payable goods, games, and services over the Internet through a 21 Bitcoin Computer.

An awful lot of venture capital for a single Bitcoin version of the Raspberry Pi.

Image credit: 21 Inc.