A research team from Swedish-based marketing and technology agency DigitasLBi has demonstrated a world-first bitcoin payment from a chip implant.
The three-person team is previewing the application and associated API at a workshop at the Oredev developer conference in Malmo.
In November, Finextra reported on the experiences of dutch crypto-currency fanatic Martijn Wismeije who implanted two NFC tags under the skin in his hands to store his digital cash.
"I’ve heard about people who have a public key stored in their chip, which in theory would make it possible to pay BTC to that persons Bitcoin wallet, but not paying from it," says DigitasLBi's Patric Lanhed, who performed the first transaction using a chip implanted in his hand. "This is what we been trying to figure out and last night we pulled it off. The worlds first payment from a chip implant!"
"One major part of this project has been to specify how to store different data on the chip," says Lanhed. "The aim is to have this accepted as a standard so we’ll be releasing this as open source."