César Escudero Andaluz, Martin Nadal

Bitcoin was originally conceived as an electronic decentralized system for financial transactions. Each node (user) in the peer-to-peer network has the same opportunities to get a reward when validating a transaction.

In recent 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 powerful equipment, and server farms spending physical and environmental resources. A struggle that only benefits the owner of the most powerful and efficient technology.

»BitterCoin«, an old calculator machine hacked for use as a miner to validate the pending Bitcoin transactions in the blockchain, takes up this discourse in a rhetorical way: it works like the most basic computer, increasing the time needed to produce Bitcoins almost to infinity.