Bitter Coin

Martín Nadal, Cesar Escudero Andaluz
Installation, 2016
Interface Cultures 

Bittercoin is an old calculating machine hacked to be used as a miner validating the pending bitcoins transactions in the blockchain (online distributed database). BitterCoin combines the Internet of Things, media archaeology and economy. The operations are displayed on the calculator screen and printed afterwards.

The bitcoin was originally conceived as an electronic decentralized system for capital transactions. Each node (user) had the same opportunities to get a reward when validating a transaction. 

In the last years 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 equipment, computer farms requiring physical and environmental resources. A struggle that benefits only the owner of the most powerful and efficient technology. BitterCoin takes up this discourse in a rhetorical way. It works as the most basic computer, increasing the time needed to produce bitcoins to almost an eternity.

Exhibition at: IC at ars electronica 2016, Linz, Austria