The sound of Bitcoin - Sound synthesis with cryptocurrency trade data

Martin Guder

Blockchain is a widely and also wildly discussed topic now-a-days. After researching about blockchain and cryptocurrencies, I soon realized, that the graphs of trading data, due to it‘s high trade volume and volatility, look very similar to wavetables/waveforms of audio signals.

What is the talk about: fetch the trade data, map it to an area of -1 and 1 and save it to a sample buffer. Et voilà, we can literally generate sounds with Bitcoin and other crypto currencies. The talk will be a diary from idea up until the realization of it. Ranging from how to break it down and fetching the trade data, as well as how to take this data and convert it into sound and represent it in an appropriate visualization and deliver an open API to the Web Audio community to utilize those sample buffers easy.

I work as an UX Designer, Prototyper, Generative Coder and university lecturor. Therefore my scope is usability of software paired with my passion for technology, music and how to bring this topics together.