If you’ve ever needed an incentive to get fit, a new app launched in Britain could give you the boost you need. The new fitness app for Apple devices, Sweatcoin , rewards steps people have taken with digital currency, which can be used to buy goods and services.
The British-made app by co-founders Oleg Fomenko, Anton Derlyatka, Danil Perushev and Egor Khmelev, is the latest initiative in a growing fitness economy that features monitoring devices and apps, which reward peoples’ fitness activity with vouchers and discounts.
Their aim is to fix an evolutionary bug called “Present Bias,” which is the human tendency to underestimate things which happen in the future and disproportionately focuses our attention solely on what gives us pleasure right now.
Currently only available on iPad and iPhone in the UK, for every 1,000 steps a user will receive one sweatcoin (SWC) with rewards ranging in value on the Sweatcoin shop . For example, 20 sweatcoins will get you a pair of Apple headphones, 50 sweatcoins will get you a Wii console and a Wii bundle kit, and 1,300 sweatcoins will get you a PS3 and games.
Sweatcoin’s digital currency approach is driven by creating an analogue of fiat currency where issuance and printing requires centralization as the amount of Sweatcoin in variable.
Fomenko, who recently spoke to Bitcoin Magazine , said that there are two things that drive these requirements.
“Sweatcoin can only be issued on the basis of verified movement, and for that we use quantity of movement and geographical location, which can’t be put into the public domain,” he said. “Once issued, we are keen to ensure that Sweatcoin can be accepted and exchanged between any willing party while allowing us to focus on objective one, which is best done in a decentralized fashion.”
As Sweatcoin is community-focused, the use of […]
