
Cryptocurrency system using body activity data - borjamoya
https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2020060606&_cid=P20-K97WA4-38682-1
======
simias
I don't understand what makes this a "cryptocurrency" instead of just any kind
of currency token. I know that it's mostly a buzzword these days but at the
very least I'd expect cryptocurrencies to involve some kind of cryptographic
proof for transactions.

Here as far as I can tell it's just some centralized system monitoring
user/guinea pig activity and issuing some token currency based on an
unspecified algorithm. I mean isn't that effectively equivalent to store cards
that reward you with store credit when you purchase certain products? Or
videogame editors who give coupons to elected Steam users based on their
previous purchases? Or credit card rewards?

> [...]verifying, by a cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the
> device of the user, if the body activity data satisfies one or more
> conditions set by the cryptocurrency system; and awarding, by the
> cryptocurrency system, cryptocurrency to the user whose body activity data
> is verified.

I can't continue this comment because the sound of the bullshit alarm blaring
in the background is starting to get deafening. Excuse me, I meant
cryptobullshit cryptoalarm cryptoblaring.

There have been many attempts at making a useful proof of work for
cryptocurrency systems, the problem is that it's not enough for the proof to
require work, it also needs to be trivially and "objectively" verifiable by
any user of the system and it needs to reference the transaction data somehow
to avoid reusing old proofs. If you get rid of these constraints I don't
understand how you can claim that it's a cryptocurrency system or even that
there is any novel aspect to it.

~~~
AKifer
But this might find a fertile ground at those proponents of an universal basic
income. So anyone doing exercise "good" for his/her health will be rewarded,
perhaps the intrinsic value here is the saved indirect cost of healthcare.

~~~
nybble41
If payments are conditioned on the completion of assigned tasks then it's not
UBI. The beneficiaries still have to choose to participate and actually do the
work, so it's really just another job.

------
cocktailpeanuts
This is not a "crypto currency system". It's a business method patent for
shilling people with crypto when you do something.

The idea of "gamifying" physical actions has been around for a long long time,
most notably Foursquare and Fitbit. These guys are just taking that concept
and saying "we'll give you crypto instead".

I don't think this is patentable. It's too obvious. Even if it were to be
patented, it can't be enforced for anything more than patent trolling.

------
testplzignore
> The tasks include, for example, but not limited to, watching or listening
> information (e g. advertisement)

Drink verification can to continue.

~~~
matheusmoreira
So, is it too early to think about how to block this technology?

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Tade0
A while ago I had this idea for a "cryptocurrency" in which the proof of work
would be a detailed image of a small part of the sky at a specific time of the
year.

This in turn would be verified by telescopes watching larger patches of the
sky, so obviously having a less detailed image of that specific piece, but
enough to determine if the detailed image is believable.

~~~
rocqua
How hard would it be to take that less detailed image of that specific piece
from the verification telescope, and turn it into a believable fake of the
proof of work picture?

~~~
Tade0
I Imagine there to be more than one telescope and the picture would have to
fool all of them.

Very possible and the reason I'm here commenting on HN and not having my ICO
done in 2018.

------
emrehan
Proof-of-Work alternatives that could distinguish between a human and spoofing
attempts is an important problem.

This patent is about this problem but it does not put forward a solution. It's
probably an attempt for patent trolling in the unlikely case that a feasible
genius solution would be found.

~~~
jotakami
There’s already a “genius” solution: fiat currency which can be printed in
infinite quantity for virtually zero cost. But, if you don’t like the
downsides of fiat then you’re stuck with proof-of-work.

------
zabil
Sounds similar to the fictional tech used in a black mirror episode.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits)

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madmaniak
Great technology. Can't wait to become a bot for a centralised server with a
nice carrying admin!

~~~
mikro2nd
I'm pretty sure Black Mirror covered this...

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greyman
Will this require a chip to be inserted in such a body?

Also, couldn't this be misused to pressure people to do what that controlling
system wants them to do?

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csense
This looks like it's supposed to be a Bitcoin-like system that sends newly-
printed crypto-tokens to users who exercise.

How does the blockchain know who exercised? The user's FatBat device tells a
server that the user exercised. The server tells the blockchain who the newly
printed tokens go to.

There are some big trust problems:

\- Trust the user not to attach their FatBat to a drill to trick its sensors
into thinking the user's exercising.

\- Trust the user not to hack the FatBat device (physically controlled by the
user) so the device lies about how much the user exercises.

\- Trust the communication channel between the server and the FatBat can't be
proxied or intercepted.

\- Trust the server doesn't lie to the money-printing part of the blockchain
about who exercised, or how much they exercised.

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sfj
The closest thing I have seen to this is motocoin, where the proof of work is
represented by a procedurally generated game the user must win to mine the
coin: [https://motocoin-dev.github.io/motocoin-
site/Motocoin.pdf](https://motocoin-dev.github.io/motocoin-site/Motocoin.pdf)

Long dead now, though.

------
dchyrdvh
Here's lazy and cynical me makes a guess what it is reading just the title.
It's a grabby data mining platform that hoards medical data and gives Stanley
nickels in return. Something like Fitbit, but with crypto currency buzzwords.

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lwhi
Incentivising exercise behaviour / data submission to insurers?

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madmaniak
"[0002] Several cryptocurrencies exist. Among these, the most well known is a
blockchain-based cryptocurrency. Most blockchain-based cryptocurrency is
decentralized in the sense that it has no central point of control. However,
blockchain-based cryptocurrency can also be implemented in a centralized
system having a central point of control over the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is
one of the examples of blockchain-based cryptocurrency. It is described in a
2008 article by Satoshi Nakamoto, named“Bitcoin: A peer-to-Peer"

I'm speechless.

~~~
mikro2nd
Why are you speechless? Your comment invites no conversation and provokes no
deliberation. Please expand on it.

~~~
jotakami
Because “centralized cryptocurrency” is an oxymoron

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
It's not an oxymoron. The first ever cryptocurrency was a centralized
cryptocurrency. While the centralized aspect was the reason why it failed, the
old systems from decades ago were indeed cryptocurrencies. Look up David
Chaum.

------
sharetip
Seems easy to game.

~~~
lucideer
If the human activity involves doing something reCaptcha-/mechanical turk-
esque then that's likely the point: incentivising development of systems that
game this would likely result in novel AI models/tech

~~~
sfj
How would you turn that into a proof of work system, if the answer is already
known beforehand?

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bitxbitxbitcoin
This is a digital currency not a cryptocurrency.

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sky_rw
Revelations 13:17 So that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that
is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.

Patent number is: 060606

Thats a funny coincidence.

~~~
henriquez
Did Microsoft really file this or is it some kind of 4chan prank? Embedded
microchips monitoring brain wave activity and releasing rewards for viewing
advertisements (one of the many examples from the document). These seems too
“out there.”

I really hope this is fake.

~~~
rasengan
> I really hope this is fake.

This is not fake.

------
derefr
I’ve pondered a design like this before—something to replace birth
certificates.

Birth certificates are kind of problematic, in that each _legal person_ gets
certain rights, and so if you can trick the state into thinking you are
_multiple_ legal people (through e.g. identity fraud) then you get a multiple
of the rights of regular people—you can vote in elections multiple times, for
example; or in states with “negative tax” like Alaska, you can claim the tax
credit multiple times. Of course, you can also use N birth certificates to
pass through any KYC system N times, to create N entities in said system,
against the system’s wishes.

The problem with birth certificates is that they’re a single assertion about a
single instantaneous event: they just say “this person was born.” It’s very
easy to forge a new one, or to steal+repurpose someone else’s (especially if
they’re dead and this fact has never been recorded), because a birth
certificate only needs to be “verified” once, at point of issuance.

An alternative scheme would be to have some device that’s constantly doing
life-logging of your biometrics (like what’s discussed here), where each
segment of _unique_ biometric data the device records translates to one
“token” that can be put into any given proof-of-life _account_.

Such devices wouldn’t have to be constantly uploading data to the cloud;
they’d just be recording it and storing it. It’d be up to you to present these
devices for data-collection and collation, just like it’s up to you to present
your birth certificate.

The key difference with such a system, would be that if you just put on two
devices, you’re not mining proof-of-life at double the rate, because the data
segment collected by the two devices wouldn’t be _unique_ between them—you’d
only be able to earn one token per real human being per period, no matter how
much machine-power you devoted to doing so. When the data from the two devices
was collated, it’d be clear that there’s duplicate biometric period data, and
so you wouldn’t earn a token for said duplicate data.

It wouldn’t matter how you split up and rearranged the tokens generated by the
devices. You could hold all your tokens in one “identity”, or split them up
across multiple “identities.” But, if you split the tokens up, then each split
identity would only have 1/N of the proof strength of the identity of someone
who puts all their tokens in one basket.

With such a system, you could literally just have each token a person can
present translate to a vote, such that everyone who’s been alive for N periods
gets N votes, as long as they can proof-of-life all N periods. (This would, of
course, bias toward older people; but you can instead normalize the voting
power of each token by dividing by the person’s age. How to prove age? Record
the “genesis” token of each device through a trusted timestamping system—i.e.
activate each device online. Then the person’s legal age would be the
timestamp on the oldest genesis token they can prove ownership of, by proving
ownership of the private key that was used to sign the genesis-certificate-
request.)

I enjoy the fact that, other than the “trusted timestamping of genesis tokens”
part, this system has roughly nothing to do with a shared ledger or
“blockchain”; each device can just keep its own independent private log, and
the only time those logs leave the device is when the person themselves
commands the devices to export them. It’d also be up to you to wear or not
wear a life-logging device. But, of course, in avoiding having your life
logged, you’d be losing out on tokens for the periods you didn’t log, and so
depriving yourself of the things tokens translate into (voting power; federal
tax-credit hours; state-public-healthcare-benefit time-spent-as-a-state-
resident-proof hours; immigration time-spent-living-in-the-country-proof
hours; etc.)

...and of course this is a weird and dystopian invasion of privacy. Attaching
ankle bracelets to babies to ensure they get appropriately credited for their
own infancy sounds like something out of Black Mirror. I never said it wasn’t.
It’s a neat technical solution to a specific problem—not necessarily a _good
idea_ ;)

------
Theodores
It is a shame the cryptocurrency phenomenon has been and gone, with just these
quirky stories popping up now and again.

Imagine if the hype was in full swing now. Blockchain technology would be
delivering us from the global lockdown, probably making early adopters rich
along the way. HN would be full of stories about how blockchain startups would
be solving the pandemic. People stuck at home could be playing the crypto
markets 24/7 earning themselves vast imaginary fortunes that would 'pay' for
the vaccines to be 'developed'.

~~~
newswasboring
How exactly would blockchain solve a medical problem? It's not like blockchain
has died. All major currencies are alive and so are the speculators. What is
stopping cryptocurrencies from solving something which they could solve in
there "full swing" days?

~~~
kilpikaarna
That’s the joke, I presume.

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ForHackernews
Anything's better than today's proof-of-waste cryptocurrencies.

------
xwdv
Since we’re talking about gamifying physical actions to produce a currency,
I’ve always wondered if there was a way to gamify sexual activity such that
you can influence human breeding for collective societal goals. Might be
interesting to combine the idea of such currency with dating networks as well
to see what happens.

~~~
jotakami
Great idea, just have to wait for China to try it out

~~~
xwdv
IMO this doesn’t require a government to roll it out. Any sufficiently
motivated organization can attempt to influence human reproduction through
social applications, even simple dating apps today play a role in reshaping
demographics of couples.

We just need apps to implement some truly innovative gamification features,
for instance imagine getting points for meeting with a person in real life and
spending as much time as possible with them. Points can be assigned on a
variety of attributes that a developer wishes to select for.

