Russian artist Dmitry Morozov, also known as ::vtol::, recently debuted a new art technology installation entitled silk[1] that uses live data from bitcoin and litecoin markets across five different currencies to create music.
The work was shown this past weekend during Cosmoscow[2], a contemporary art festival held in Moscow. According to the artist’s website, silk is a kind of autonomous stringed instrument that responds to price changes denominated in rubles, yuan, euros, and US and Canadian dollars. The software draws bitcoin price data from BitcoinWisdom.com.
Here’s how Morozov describes the work on his official website:
“The installation is tracking the real time changes in the market activities related to [the] cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Litecoin – independent and uncontrolled by any state peer-to-peer payment systems. [The] constantly changing currency rate of Bitcoin against major world currencies is influencing the strain of strings in [the] installation and the way the picks are hitting them. The robotic system of the artwork is directed by a computer algorithm: influenced by dynamic changes of data, the installation sounds like a complex sound instrument.”
Morozov said that the work was co-commissioned by Laboratoria Art & Science Space[3], a contemporary art organization based in Moscow, and a company called Lykke AG.
“They were asking me to find some idea that will combine art and finances – and I think bitcoin is a very interesting ‘new’ thing that can change society,” he told CoinDesk in an email.
The result, as the video shows, is a strange, metallic and ever-changing soundscape and an “infinite number of variations and harmonies”, in the words of the artist.
“This piece explores how new technologies and progress in such areas of knowledge as cryptography, mathematics, computer science influence the financial system, inevitably changing the social structure of the society,” Morozov wrote on his website[4]. “These changes can be characterised by growing decentralization, transparency, unfalsifiability, immateriality of values.”
The work comes months after Morozov exhibited another sound-oriented work called Oil, which, according to The Verge[5], invited participants to record audio of themselves slowly crushing their smartphone or other possessions with a hydraulic press.
Check out a performance of the art installation silk below:
ChangeTip users can now swap their digital currency tips for real-life goods, thanks to an integration with digital gift card provider Gyft.
The bitcoin tipping service, which has raised $4.25m[1] in funding to date, brands itself as a ‘love button’ for various social media channels including Facebook, Twitter and Reddit.
Until now, ChangeTip users could top up their accounts via Coinbase, bitcoin or credit/debit card, however they could only cash out in bitcoin. Following the firm’s announcement yesterday evening[2], they now have the option to redeem gift cards from Starbucks, iTunes, Xbox and Amazon. They range from $1 all the way up to $2,000.
ChangeTip’s withdrawal page
Alongside denominations in dollars and ‘bits’ (0.000001 BTC[3]), the platform has various ‘monikers’ – such as coffees ($1.50), doughnuts ($0.35) and high-fives ($5.00) – that users can tip each other.
“We are doing this because it’s important for people to use their tips. If you receive a coffee, claim the coffee,” Victoria van Eyk, ChangeTip’s community manager, told CoinDesk.
“If it goes well I’d love to link monikers to gift cards, so you can send someone an item and have them claim it at a store,” she added.
Gyft, which has been accepting bitcoin since 2013[4], is one of the most popular merchants for bitcoin users. Earlier this year, a report from its processor, BitPay, indicated 39%[5] of its transactions were related to gift cards.
LOT Polish Airlines is now accepting bitcoin payments, meaning the digital currency can be used to pay for flights to more than 60 global destinations.
Tickets can be purchased on LOT[1]‘s desktop and mobile websites. LOT does not accept directly, but exchanges the digital currency for fiat using an unnamed payment service provider, the media outlet said.
LOT now accepts bitcoin[2] alongside payment methods including American Express, PayPal, MasterCard and Visa.
Jiri Marek, executive director of sales and distribution for the company, said the decision demonstrates how LOT is open to “every client need” as well as innovations in the travel industry.
Marek said:
“Many of our customers are shopping online, including flights. It is only a matter of time before virtual currency payments will become as popular as credit card use nowadays. We saw this potential.”
With the decision, LOT becomes the latest eastern European air carrier to accept bitcoin, following airBaltic in July 2014[3] and Air Lituanica in August of last year[4]. Mexico’s TAR later became the first air carrier in Latin America to accept bitcoin in June[5].
In more developed markets, Bitnet recently inked a partnership with UATP[6] aimed at encouraging airlines to accept bitcoin, though no integrations have been announced as a result of that deal.
A research study published by Boston’s Berklee College of Music outlines how a blockchain-based royalty payment system could improve working conditions for musicians.
Published by Rethink Music[1], an initiative under the auspices of Berklee’s Institute of Creative Entrepreneurship[2], the report outlines the current state of payments and revenue in the US recording industry and proposes a series of recommendations to improve transparency, reduce friction and provide a greater degree of fairness to working artists.
Among other recommendations, the report calls for the creation of a distributed rights database. This database “would each have separate servers, synchronized with a main database, where they enter information about musical works, which would then be propagated around the world”.
The authors suggest that an implementation of the blockchain be used to create a payment network for artists as part of that database concept. The system, if built, would be programmed to split payments between parties whenever a work is purchased.
The Berklee report states:
“The label would receive ¢68.175, and the recording artist would get ¢22.725. The blockchain network could also further divide this ¢22.725 between the members of a band, if applicable. This entire process would take place in less than one second, allowing all parties to access their money immediately after it is generated.”
Such a design would cut third parties from the process, ensuring that artists receive more revenue directly as a result of work sales and creating a transparent ledger of music industry payments.
The report also calls for education and certification programs for record labels that focus on fair music practices and the creation of a bill of rights for performing artists.
Matt Weiss is a portfolio director and business designer at IDEO Boston, where he blends his experience in strategic design for large corporations with his roots in the startup world. Alongside Dan Elitzer and Joe Gerber, he runs the Bits + Blocks Lab[1], a pop-up blockchain startup creation lab hosted at the Harvard Innovation Lab.
This post, which examines how bitcoin’s blockchain could reshape our medical experiences, is part of the Humans + Bits + Blocks[2] series. Read the previous post in the series here[3].
Blockchains and health could be a happy marriage across a multitude of applications. From robust interoperable health records to proof of medication adherence, opportunities abound to create new value and enhance health-related experiences.
For the purposes of making this exploration tangible (as is our goal with this entire series[4]), let’s follow the journey of a person with a chronic condition we’ll call Screenoritis* in a future with blockchains.
First, it’s important to know that Screenoritis is a troublesome condition. The prognosis isn’t fatal, but the symptoms of it are debilitating, ranging from sleeplessness to short-term memory loss. The good news? It is both treatable and reversible, though the path to recovery is not easy.
Jane is 34. She loves her job as an animator and works way more than the average person. It’s Thursday afternoon, she’s totally worn out from a super challenging scene she just finished, and she decides to take a break. It’s beautiful outside, so she heads out for a run by the river. About two miles in, Jane starts to feel a bit nauseous and then lightheaded. She slows to a walk, but even so collapses 100 yards down the trail. A runner coming from the other direction finds Jane unresponsive on the ground and calls 911.
When the ambulance arrives, the EMTs scan the fitness band on Jane’s wrist to retrieve her HealthChain ID, a unique public identifier used for health information. When Jane signed up for HealthChain, she created rules and named individuals who could verify access to her medical records. The EMT’s combine Jane’s ID with their own, which proves that they’re accredited emergency health responders.
They then issue a broadcast on the HealthChain network, which automatically generates alerts to Jane’s four emergency contacts asking them to validate that the EMTs can access Jane’s records. Ten seconds later, after two of her contacts grant access, the EMTs are able to access her emergency health info.
A few hours later, Jane wakes up in the hospital. She’s OK, but she’s shaken up and wants to understand what’s going on. The doctor on call sits down with her to explain her encounter with Screenoritis.
After reviewing some of the facts, the doctor asks if she’s willing to share her anonymized information in the public research repository – this has become standard practice, and she has no problem with it. She’s willing to share her medical history, pertinent data about the event she just experienced, and results from the tests they’re currently running.
Jane wants to learn what people like her have experienced and how she can get better. She and others have opted into share their information in order to participate in a private network. Compared to today’s self-guided searching, the doctor does a criteria match for her profile and finds an entire set of people who share many important characteristics with Jane, ranging from age to location to type of job.
Although Screenoritis is fairly widespread and medications have been developed to treat symptoms, recovery is still difficult and treatment of the underlying conditions have gotten little attention from the medical community.
As part of her initial research about the condition, Jane quickly discovers that there is a publicly crowdfunded bounty for the release of a treatment regimen that will treat the underlying causes of Screenoritis.
Her contribution is governed by a series of smart contracts that provide conditional access to treatments once they’re released. Unlike traditional crowdfunding, her contributions are held in escrow by the contracts until the treatment is ready for her.
Now that Jane has a solid understanding of her condition, she’s begun to see a specialist who has prescribed a daily physical routine for her in addition to well-known Screenoritis medications. Adherence to both is critical for recovery and also rewarded by her insurer. With a watch that can track her location and movements and pills that are instrumented to collect data, the information that the insurer and doctor needs is readily available. So long as Jane sticks to her agreed-upon treatment, the entirety of her bills are covered automatically — no paperwork needed.
Health and blockchains turn out to be a great match. Together, they can usher in a patient-centric revolution in how we take care of ourselves and others. In our most vulnerable moments, we’ll seamlessly share permissions to access important information attached to our identity. We’ll make advance promises of payment in return for new treatments that we desire. Rather than opaque risk models and quotas, insurance payments will be triggered by our verified healthy behaviors.
It’s time for health to get an upgrade. Far from state-of-the-art, our health is tracked, diagnosed and treated without the full benefit of technologies that we take for granted in other aspects of our everyday lives. The addition of blockchains could change that substantially, and we’re excited about these future opportunities becoming real.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, CoinDesk.
A multi-player server on the wildly popular video game Minecraft has introduced bitcoin to its world as a way of teaching children about digital currency.
While in-game currencies exist in several different minecraft worlds, using bitcoin means that players can take their money out of the game and use it in the real world too.
The server, PlayMC,[1] features an in-game currency called ‘bits’ which the company has set at 100,000,000th of a bitcoin (commonly known as a ‘satoshi’). The unit was chosen for its ease-of-use, as it represents a whole unit and allows players to be rewarded seemingly on a larger scale.
With additional opportunities for players to spend their bits on classes, items and other additional content within the game, PlayMC[2] says it provides a “safe gaming environment for kids to enjoy and have the opportunity to earn their own money”.
Minecraft for the uninitiated
As the third best-selling[3] video game of all time, Minecraft has sold over 60 million copies. Especially popular with younger people, it allows players and game developers to build worlds from 3D blocks not unlike digital Lego.
Everything in the game is based on these blocks, which can either be destroyed or moved and placed to create anything within a player’s imagination. It is an open-ended world with a high degree of flexibility as to what is possible, though some elements of the world are consistent across the different games.
Players can play alone or connect to servers[4] like PlayMC, allowing multi-player games and interaction in the online world with thousands of other players.
Plugins allow game creators to determine the nature of play and objectives of the game, which usually involves players acquiring resources in order to build tools and structures, and sometimes fight off enemies.
PlayMC’s bitcoin economy
PlayMC’s server has plugins that change the main Minecraft game into mini-games, where players either cooperate or fight against each other to win. Each game has different objectives and different ways for players to earn their bits.
A company spokesperson said:
“For example in our game type ‘ArcherGames’ players fight each other in a last man standing game mode. Each player is rewarded a small amount of Bits for killing other players and if they come in first, second or third they are rewarded with a larger amount of Bits.”
As well as awarding bits for standard play actions like kills and wins, PlayMC also allows its players to earn them for winning tournaments and powerups, and in non-game actions like bug reporting, blog post writing, bounties, and acting as server staff.
No parents had yet approached the company for more information on bitcoin but plenty of young players have been actively trying to understand digital currency, the spokesperson said.
Most of the team’s time is now spent clearing up misconceptions about bitcoin and providing links that explain bitoin in simple terms.
PlayMC also has an extensive explanation of bitcoin and its in-game ‘Bitconomy’ on the company website[5].
E-commerce for kids
PlayMC follows in the footsteps of other bitcoin-oriented Minecraft servers such as BitQuest[6], though PlayMC is aimed specifically at children.
One of bitcoin’s touted advantages is the way it provides access to electronic payments to those under 18. Children generally have restricted access to banks or credit card accounts.
Of course, anyone wishing to turn their bits into fiat currency will still need to go through a bitcoin exchange, which have similar verification requirements to banks. This could actually promote a bitcoin-based economy by engaging users who can’t easily escape it.
PlayMC was founded from a partnership between AcroMedia and developer Brandon Gordon, the latter of whom has been involved with Minecraft for five years and bitcoin for three. Given his personal interests, incorporating bitcoin into the game “seemed like a no-brainer,” he said.
The server was founded to introduce new levels of reliability to Minecraft, which often have an ‘anything goes’ reputation and servers come and go with regularity.
It boasts 99.9% uptime and is regularly updated to the latest Minecraft version. Its community is always able to make suggestions and the focus is being as kid-friendly as possible.
A new survey published by Goldman Sachs has found that just over half of US millennials believe they will never use bitcoin.
Fifty-one percent of the 752 survey respondents said that they had never used bitcoin nor do they have any plans to do so. Twenty-two percent said they currently use it or have used it in the past, and intend to use it again.
An additional 22% said that they have never used bitcoin before but plan on using the digital currency. Just 5% of respondents said they have used bitcoin but do not intend to use it again.
The data forms part of a broader look at the financial inclinations of millennials, including how the demographic chooses financial services and how they manage money.
Among a group of payment options that included credit cards, Apple Pay and Square, bitcoin wallets scored relatively low in terms of trust. Less than 5% of respondents indicated they trust using wallet services, with Coinbase[1] and BitPay[2] being named directly in the survey data.
Few privacy concerns
Notably, a significant number of respondents displayed a general apathy toward financial privacy.
Goldman asked how willing millennials would be to “accept inconveniences” in exchange for reduced privacy and better security.
Thirty-four percent of male respondents and 48% of female respondents said that they were “not too bothered” as long as their service isn’t directly affected.
Twenty-two percent said that they are in favor of sacrificing privacy for the sake of security, whereas 20% of survey-takers replied that they weren’t willing to give up financial privacy.
Thirteen percent said that they are happy to accept loss of privacy for higher security, while 11% indicated that they didn’t care because they presume the government is already monitoring their transactions.
Respondents also expressed a high aversion to fees, with many suggesting that the costs would be a major influence in their choice of financial provider.
A startup that uses the bitcoin blockchain to establish digital ownership of art and other creative works has raised $2m in seed funding.
Ascribe[1] received backing from Earlybird Venture Capital, Digital Currency Group, Freelands Ventures and a group of angel investors, according to a report by TechCrunch[2].
Founder Bruce Pon told the news outlet that the idea for the product first took shape in 2013, explaining:
“The idea to use blockchain to allow artists to create digital scarcity germinated in mid-2013 when [founders] Trent and Masha [McConaghy] asked ‘Can you own digital art like you own bitcoin?’”
The prototype for the project, Pon explained, was built by McConaghy in fall of 2013, with the founders leaving to pursue the project full time in 2014.
“Since then, we’ve been refining the technology and working with early users,” he continued.
Artists that use ascribe essentially create digital deeds for their work, which are then subsequently time-stamped onto the bitcoin blockchain. As shown below, once a file is uploaded to Ascribe, it creates a digital certificate that can be then be traded, tracked or loaned, thereby creating a chain of ownership for that work.
Proof of the transaction can then be found on the bitcoin blockchain[3]. Ascribe utilizes an open-source protocol called SPOOL that sits on top of the bitcoin blockchain as a registry for works.
Ascribe has seen growing interest from both artists as well as companies that provide digital media, according to the company. Notably, the startup began partnering with Creative Commons France earlier this month[4].
MovieTickets.com, one of the largest movie ticket purchasing platforms in the US, now enables movie-goers to buy movie tickets with bitcoin at 985 theaters.
The move was made possible through an integration with bitcoin payment processor GoCoin[1]. As a result, theater chains that use the credit card processing services offered by MovieTickets.com[2] will be able to accept bitcoin for any film offered.
GoCoin CEO Steve Beauregard indicated that this includes Regal Cinemas, the nation’s largest theater chain with more than 500 locations. Holdouts notably include AMC Theaters, which itself boasts more than 300 locations in North America.
The partnership is the latest betwen GoCoin and a movie industry firm, following the May announcement that it was in talks with production studio Lionsgate Films[3].
Beauregard told CoinDesk:
“We think that the future of digital content is being able to use digital currencies to purchase content.”
The promotion was inspired by the promotional strategy for Dope, the hit indie film that scored big at Sundance and earned high-profile celebrity fans from James Franco to Russell Simmons.
MovieTickets.com CEO Joel Cohen suggested that, however, the company saw the potential in enabling the technology in more of its offerings.
“Our intention is to keep the option available beyond the film’s theatrical run for other films to benefit from. The more payment options we offer, the broader our customer base becomes,” he told CoinDesk.
‘Dope’ promotion
Hailed for its progressive take on youth black culture, Dope[4] centers on the exploits of modern high school students inspired by 1990s-era hip-hop. Notably, bitcoin plays a role in the film itself, as its protagonists use the digital currency to profit from the illicit sale of ecstasy online.
As for the decision to include bitcoin as part of the marketing for the film, this was accomplished through a partnership between US distributor Open Road Films[5], MovieTickets.com and GoCoin.
In statements, Cohen aimed to describe the company as open to innovative and unique partnerships that drive attention to moviemakers.
“It’s cool, it’s original and we’re going above and beyond the common boundaries to drive ticket sales,” Cohen said.
Dope is scheduled to be released in the US on 19th June.
Mexico-based airlines TAR Aerolineas has become the first in Latin America to accept bitcoin payments.
The airliner will accept payments in the digital currency following a partnership between Openpay[1] – a Mexico-based payment service provider – and payment processor BitPay.
In a statement, Jose Calzadias, commercial manager at TAR, said[2] that the company, which serves 12 destinations throughout Mexico, would continue to evaluate payment options that give “real added value” to customers.
The news follows Latvian airline airBaltic’s Twitter announcement[3] that it was accepting bitcoin in July last year.
Disclaimer:CoinDesk founder Shakil Khan is an investor in BitPay.
