Cesar Escudero Andaluz and Martín Nadal
BitterCoin, 2018
calculator machine
Exhibited at “Perfect and Priceless” show, Zürich, Kate Vass Galerie, 2018-2019
Description:
The Bitcoin was originally conceived as an electronic decentralized system for capital transactions. Each node (user) has the same opportunities to get a reward when validating a transaction. This system has triggered a competitive struggle in which computing power is the most important variable for earning bitcoins. This involves the use of large computer farms spending physical and environmental resources, creating a struggle that benefits only the owner of the most powerful and efficient technology.
The only way to generate bitcoins is through a process called mining. Mining is a calculation process to confirm transactions realized by bitcoin users and used to secure the transactions and to control the creation of new coins, writing them into a public ledger of past transaction called the blockchain.
Bittercoin is an old calculator machine hacked to be used as a miner validating the pending bitcoin transactions in the blockchain. Embedded inside the calculator is a bluetooth microcontroller which allows the calculator keys to be controlled remotely via a mobile phone. The phone has three functional purposes; to connect the calculator to the blockchain, get the blockheader, and send it to the calculator. Once a blockheader is received, the calculator randomizes a nonce and begins the verification process.
The verification uses an algorithm that is displayed on the screen of the calculator as it processes and prints the immediate steps of its calculation. The connection by phone has been chosen for two reasons; to show visual output of the calculation process and to be able to exhibit the piece using a 3G Wi-Fi connection. If a nonce that produces a hash smaller than the hash of the blockchain target, then a new block has successfully been mined.
Bittercoin combines Internet of Things (IoT), media archeology, and economics. It works as the most basic computer, increasing the time needed to produce bitcoins to almost an eternity. The operations are displayed on the calculator screen and printed afterwards.