Bitcoin: A Monetary Network Fueled by Human Energy

another take on the Bitcoin proof-of-work system

This is more of a journal entry type post, documenting the thought process of coming to the final idea. Sort of a fun thinking exercise. Note* Some ideas may not actually work in real life.

Lets imagine for a second that we are in the early days of Bitcoin, but utilizing todays technologies. For example, Bitcoin was released today (2020), and chip technology is far ahead beyond 2009 tech, speeding up the production of mining equipment, leaving CPU and GPU miners behind; for example ASIC hardware is the current choice because of its efficiency. The mining difficulty would skyrocket immediately, rather than taking 11 years to reach this point. In another way, the same could be said if Bitcoin was released in 1999 rather than 2009. What technology would have been used to mine Bitcoin in 1999? Most likely a CPU. How would the mining devices evolve if Bitcoin was released in 1999? Would there be another way of mining other than the CPU?

I always come back to this question. How the hell did they figure out how to run the internet using a telephone wire? The idea for the internet was a brilliant one, and it’s always evolving. The imagining of the internet idea was not limited by the current existing technologies. Simply, they some how managed to utilize primitive technologies at that time to create a future idea. When we think about the internet now, it is used on a daily basis, even if you didn’t know it. Technology has advanced so much from the early internet days; in how it is maintained and in how it is accessed.

I never really liked school, I didn’t get good grades, although I’ve always been passionate about learning things, when the subjects are of interest to me. Bitcoin is one of those things that has caught my attention back in 2015, as I tried mining it using a GPU. Two years later I got back into it again purchasing an overpriced Antminer S9 capable of 14TH/s, mining right at the beginning of the bull run to $20,000. I’m not a writer, this was just something interesting to think about and attempt to document the idea. The ideas probably already exist, but it was fun to connect the dots and discover the idea by linking different things.

Now in the year 2020, Bitcoin has evolved not only in its technology, but also in its understanding by people. It seems out of the result of the coronavirus, and the shutdowns of the economy, Bitcoin is getting its recognition. It is interesting to think that Bitcoin was created out of and due to the previous economic breakdown and recession caused mainly by Wall Street. Bitcoin was released, and it managed to gradually grow to where it is today. It was known prior to 2020, but it is definitely more well known during and beyond 2020. Negative economic activities seem to fuel Bitcoins growth, as investors attempt to seek alternative avenues. But, Bitcoin is also the peoples money. 2020 marks the beginning of the transition.

I want to talk about an alternative way for how proof-of-work could evolve. Think about the internet story above. How the hell did they manage to get the internet to work on a telephone wire? Such a great idea, and it was utilizing the technology of that time period, which would be outdated according to todays standards. The idea is the same, but how it is engaged with and run changes over time.

What about the first automatic watch? In late 1776, or early 1777 Abraham-Louis Perrelet managed to invent the automatic watch.

Quoted from Wikipedia “he invented a self-winding mechanism for pocket watches using an oscillating weight inside the watch that moved up and down. The Geneva Society of Arts, reporting on this watch in 1777, stated that 15 minutes walking was necessary to fully wind the watch.”

Essentially your body movement, or the swinging of your arm generates enough motion for the internal components to store energy in a spring, which results in showing you the correct time. If your motion stops, or you take the watch off, the energy stored is used up and the time on the watch stops. Fast forward, and some years later energy is stored within a battery, and then put into a watch. Let’s not ignore, that some watches still utilize the old technology of motion to create energy to power a watch. Sort of like a nostalgic cool thing, and to be honest, who wants to change out batteries?

I recently been fascinated with Michael Saylor and his take on Bitcoin. All of his podcast appearances and Tweets have been eye opening for many people. The way he uses analogies, I think is what really makes you see or understand Bitcoin in a way that makes sense. He recently started talking about Bitcoin being a battery.

Part of his Tweet “#Bitcoin is like a battery charged with monetary energy.”

We work at jobs, and we earn money. Energy in = work, energy out = money received. Thermodynamics says: Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. Therefore the energy output (money earned for the energy input) is transferred and flowing into the Bitcoin battery. If you believe in Bitcoin, you take your energy received and power up Bitcoin by buying it.

When I heard this battery analogy, I thought there was something weird about it, and I started thinking about it in an entirely different way he was describing. Either way, ideas started popping up. First one being the movie The Matrix. Humans are harvested for their energy, and are used as a power source.

Quote from the movie “The human body generates more bioelectricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTUs of body heat.”

I don’t know if those numbers are real or exact, but I do believe our bodies do produce energy, and in different ways at that, as long as calories go in.

I then began to think about accelerometers in our smartphones, could this be the “new” version of the watch mechanism where energy is transmuted? I wasn’t sure if an accelerometer could be used to create energy. Meaning, your smartphone is on your body, you walk 15 minutes and the accelerometer detects this motion, and at the same time, could it be possible to power a small CPU?

Here is an explanation of how accelerometers work “the accelerometer consists of many different parts and works in many ways, two of which are the piezoelectric effect and the capacitance sensor. The piezoelectric effect is the most common form of accelerometer and uses microscopic crystal structures that become stressed due to accelerative forces. These crystals create a voltage from the stress, and the accelerometer interprets the voltage to determine velocity and orientation. The capacitance accelerometer senses changes in capacitance between microstructures located next to the device. If an accelerative force moves one of these structures, the capacitance will change and the accelerometer will translate that capacitance to voltage for interpretation.”

So it looks like it does produce a voltage. If this voltage is enough to power a CPU is a whole other question.

In order for proof-of-work to work, energy is required, as well as computational power. The greater the computational power, the more energy is initially required. As the technology matures, less energy is required, but more computational power is available. The Bitcoin network automatically adjusts its difficulty based on what technology is used to mine the Bitcoin. More computational power thrown at the network allows the network to accept this greater energy, and adjust itself to absorb it, making the difficulty higher or more challenging for these mining devices.

If all ASIC Bitcoin miners were powered off, the Bitcoin mining difficulty would drop, allowing people to mine Bitcoin in the background possibly using something as basic as our smartphones. How would the Bitcoin price react? I’m not sure. I’m just sticking to the technology aspect here.

SHA-256 is the function utilized by Bitcoin. ASIC miners are good at hashing SHA-256, in terms of energy efficiency and computational power. GPUs and CPUs can also do this but are not as good, the Bitcoin network would adjust automatically dropping the difficulty, making it easier to discover new blocks every 10 minutes, while simultaneously processing transactions. Smartphone CPUs are not as powerful as GPUs or PC CPUs, therefore the Bitcoin network difficulty would further drop to accommodate the smartphones CPU.

Now let me bring up a new type of watch that has been invented, and it is powered by a humans body, but much more differently than the automatic watch. I only discovered it while writing this post, which helped link the whole idea. This watch is powered by MATRIX.

MATRIX is “at the forefront of thermoelectric innovation. Our technology generates electricity from temperature change. And we create cooling from electricity, with no moving parts.”

This watch is powered by the heat produced by the human body. MATRIX is the technology, and PowerWatch is a company that utilizes it.

A quote from their site “PowerWatch to be powered by the body heat of its wearer. This maximizes activity and provides more flexibility when it comes to smartwatches. It’s the world’s first smartwatch to be powered like this, and it NEVER requires charging. You can always be on the move and never have to worry about charging up.”

It’s interesting to see that a human bodies heat can power a watch, as if the body is a battery charging the device. Similar to the way motion activated the internal functions of the first automatic watch, where now heat from the body powers it.

The whole idea comes boiling down to, proof-of-work powered by human thermoelectric energy, and processed by a tiny CPU built into the device, the low mining difficulty would allow this. The proof-of-work Bitcoin network would require an update, (something like the layer-2 Lightning network for example) that verifies in some way that the energy that’s powering the CPU was actually powered by a humans heat through thermoelectric energy. Something like a new detection protocol to ensure no one is trying to cheat the system. If the CPU can not authenticate utilizing the new heat protocol, it can not join or disrupt the network. A full scale monetary system fueled totally by the thermoelectric energy of a human being. In return, Bitcoins are earned, transactions are processed and verified. Therefore making super computers or quantum computers obsolete in mining or hacking the Bitcoin network, no possibility of a 50% attack due to the massive decentralization of mining by each individuals body. Additionally, the problem of electricity use by huge mining farms is solved. But again, I’m not sure what would happen or if it even matters what the price of Bitcoin would end up being, since it would be the money created with human energy, and used by everyone in the world.

That pretty sums up the idea. The Bitcoin network running and powered by the human battery through thermoelectric energy, through the use of wearables. It’s kind of a creepy idea to think about, especially when thinking about the movie The Matrix.

After writing this I decided to search the internet for the exact idea. I knew I couldn’t have been the first to have it. A Dutch company has been testing this idea for about 2 years now, and it actually works, but better on other coins that have a much lower difficulty. I’ll link it here: https://www.vice.com/en/article/vby7ny/bitcoin-body-heat-mining

And another concept here by Microsoft: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/microsoft-cryptocurrency-mining-brain-waves-body-data-bitcoin-a9480766.html

Anyway that was fun to think about and actually write out the thought process. I think there may be flaws throughout, I just wanted to get the idea out while it was still fresh. If anything else comes to mind, maybe I’ll write some more.