How a Dutch startup mines cryptocurrency from your body
With the price of Bitcoin reaching the peaks of $19,086 earlier today, it should come as no surprise the flood of cryptocurrency-related news would reach the point of using the human body to mine crypto.
We've reached a point where a Dutch startup believes that human beings should be like they were in The Matrix, simply batteries to run the system. Founded in 2015, the Institute of Human Obsolescence (IoHO) is based in The Hague and presents itself as an organization devoted to exploring how individuals can capitalize on biological, and data production labor through art and research projects.
IoHO has built a body suit that harvests the excess heat generated by your body, and mines cryptocurrency with it. This means you could effectively be laying down for hours per day, or even sleeping and your body is generating money. This electricity was then used to mine crypto, with IoHO choosing to mine newly created currencies on the basis that they have a higher potential to grow in value. 37 workers were responsible for 212 hours of work between them, harvesting a total of 127,210 milliwatts of electricity, and mining 16,954 coins. 80 percent of the earnings went to the workers, while the rest went to the institute.
Corporations such as Google and Facebook use our data to make huge amounts of money, but IoHO imagines a world where we, the “data workers,” have the ability to earn some cash. The institution believes that all wealth created from data should be distributed equally.
Every swipe, scroll, post, click, and text reveals many things about our personality and behavior and in turn, generates value. So Beltrán posits: “Now we give our data voluntarily and free to companies such as Facebook and Google, why not benefit from it?”
To do this, IoHO proposes a distribution system they’ve termed the ‘Data Basic Income’. In this system, every participant receives the same amount of money in return for their data. Rather than harvesting the information participants create, IoHO collects people’s unique finger movements with a movement sensor, a choreography, or labor worth money.
The future? Manuel Beltran is an artist, activist, researcher, and founder of IoHO who started the project so that people would start thinking about a future where robots and AI will replace the human labor force. He said: "I met a lot of people who have pessimistic feelings about the future. Politics are out of control and we have no say. We are ruled by algorithms which we don't even understand. We don't know whom to fight and how we feel. Maybe art can help us to imagine and to start the fight".