Microsoft: a patent for cryptocurrency mining using your body

At the end of March, an excerpt from a Microsoft patent was published, referring to a system for mining cryptocurrencies through body activities.

The patent, registered under code WO 2020060606, was applied for by Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (MTL) of Redmond, the Microsoft Group company that owns the vast majority of patents previously owned by Microsoft Corporation and refers to a “cryptocurrency system using body activity data”. 

The summary description of the patent describes a system whereby the activities of the human body can be used for cryptocurrency mining processes. 

The system consists of a server that provides the user’s devices with the activities to be performed, and sensors within the devices that detect the user’s body activity to verify whether the detected data meets the required conditions. 

In this way, if the user performs the activities required by the server, he can receive cryptocurrency in exchange. 

Something similar is already happening today with apps installed on smartphones that detect motor activity by assigning tokens to walkers or runners, for example, but Microsoft’s patent goes even further, imagining specific devices capable of detecting much more data from body activities. 

The patent description states that these devices could map human body activities such as brain waves, or body heat emitted by the user when the user performs a physical activity, to be used as proof of work to verify that the user has performed certain tasks, such as viewing advertisements or using certain Internet services and be used in the mining process. 

This could reduce the computational energy for the mining process and also make it faster.

In reality, this is just a patent, which may never be used in practice for products to be put on the market, but the interesting thing is that a technology giant like Microsoft has become so interested in this technology that it has actually registered a patent. 

Microsoft’s request also explicitly mentions decentralized cryptocurrencies, and in particular Bitcoin, saying that they are virtual currencies not linked to fiat currencies, generally designed to allow instantaneous transactions and transfer of ownership without borders and without a central point of control. 

However, they can also be implemented within centralized systems, such as those imagined in the patent application.