Cashless transactions have been a thing for a long time now. It began with the introduction of credit cards and rolled from there, but cash is still available for those who prefer to use it instead of plastic for everyday transactions. People, on the whole, like cash.
The current pandemic though has seen a surge in cashless transactions for even the most basic shopping and many businesses are either encouraging it, or just plain demanding it, along with shoppers opting for cashless because they don’t want to handle actual physical money in case it’s contaminated and they catch the virus from touching it.
Okay, I get that, but that’s where the hand sanitiser comes into it; handle money, cleanse hands. It works.
But if you were someone with a lot of money, a patent on something that will make you heaps more, and an agenda for turning the world’s population on to cryptocurrency, you’d take advantage of the current desire to pay for everything electronically and quietly feed the fear about dealing with, or handling, cold hard cash. And if your patent involves the use of cryptocurrency to your definite advantage, well, you’d promote it for all it was worth, even if it’s not really worth anything except in an online transaction where the other party also uses it. But there’s not a lot of cryptocurrency transactions going on right now, so you would have to devise a way to make virtual currency every bit as desirable as actual currency and that would be a biggie.
Unless you found the world in a situation where cash, as a potential virus carrier, is becoming less popular with the masses. Enter COVID-19.
Back on 20 June 2019, Microsoft Technology Licensing filed an application (Patent Number 060606) for a system called Cryptocurrency System Using Body Active Data, which describes a system where a device can verify whether “the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions set by a cryptocurrency system” and once verified, the user is awarded cryptocurrency for completing “blocks” of verified tasks and transactions which are then added to a blockchain. On 26 March 2020, the Patent (Publication Number US20200097951) for the above was published by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
So what exactly is a “Cryptocurrency System Using Body Active Data”? Well, it monitors brainwaves, body heat, heartbeat and other personal biometric data emitted from the user whenever the user performs tasks provided by an information service provider, such as viewing advertising or using specific Internet services. Whatever it is they’re doing, the data from the transaction is then placed on the blockchain, which is the verification that the task was completed. By tracking the users’ brainwaves and other body responses, Microsoft hopes to use the data generated in a blockchain system which would then allow for the creation of currency as validated in a cryptocurrency system.
Anyway, in order to access validation data, the human user would require a censor, which is either attached to, or implanted in their body. Microsoft envisages users being rewarded for allowing their body to be monitored in this way by paying them in cryptocurrency for performing specific tasks; a process known as “mining”.
Huh? Is this set to be the next step in creating a whole new workforce and paid employment system? A new global currency system? To be honest, I really hope not, because everything that everyone does will be recorded, from cryptos to voting records to medical data and so on. I do not want my whole life on record in a public blockchain. And I like real money, thank you very much! And my financials and biometric data, private.
But what, exactly, is a blockchain? Blockchain technology was the brainchild of either an individual, or possibly a group, named Satoshi Nakamoto, and is a kind of “diary” or spreadsheet containing information about various transactions which is spread over many computers, at the same time, each of which have a copy of the blockchain. All information on the blockchain is publicly available as it is a decentralised, transparent, immutable system and the information is stored on many computers around the globe. No one controls it. It was originally devised for digital currency, Bitcoin, but it has evolved into something much bigger, as the tech community has discovered other potential uses for it. Basically, as I said, it is a time-stamped series of immutable records of data managed by a cluster of computers not owned by any single entity. It’s supposed to be very safe, as users are not “identified” publicly on the blockchain, but let’s face it, any hacker worth their salt could play serious silly buggers with it if they really wanted to. Anyway, one of its uses is it can store and transfer money and can replace all the current processes and business models that rely on charging fees for transactions. Transactions on the blockchain are free and many things can be fitted with blockchain code. It cuts out the middleman. Blockchain would change the way the financial world operates and has the potential to eliminate almost every financial institution, unless they made some big changes to their operations, like eliminating fees and commissions from their business model. That sounds great, yes? Well, not really. You know what they say; if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is.
I don’t know about you, but I am seeing something here that I don’t think I like. Sure, it hasn’t been implemented yet but like most things with a (possible) hidden agenda, should this technology become widely available, it will begin with being an “option” for those who want to use it, make their biometric data available and accumulate cryptocurrency for some future use. And then one day it may no longer be optional. It has the potential to be the way of the not too distant future and if cryptocurrency is set to become the new global currency, none of us may have a choice if we want to earn a living. This may be the only money we can use. But it’s what we would have to agree to and what we’d have to grant access to, in order to earn, that I don’t like.
I don’t like it at all.