Last week, a Danish company called BiChip announced the launch of a new cryptocurrency which uses a very unusual ‘wallet’: a chip which can be fitted under the human skin.

The Copenhagen-based firm is part of a growing movement called Transhumanism, which believes in augmenting human beings with technology to improve upon their natural (or God-given, depending on your perspective) abilities.

We are not quite at the stage where we can replace our eyes with 4K cameras or fit propellers to our heads so we can zoom around the skies, so transhumans are starting off by asking followers to install chips as the first step towards this technologically-enhanced future.



These tiny chips can be scanned using radio frequencies to expose the data within and can also serve as tracking devices which reveal the wearer’s movements or whereabouts.


But will people be willing to overcome the ickiness and get implants fitted in their body?

BiChip certainly hopes so. It plans to produce one million chips next year and then go on to make a further two million. The firm claimed its devices are some of the most advanced in the world.

The Danes are already facing stiff opposition from religious people who believe the arrival of this technology is the fulfilment of a prophecy from the biblical Book of Revelation, which describes a ‘Mark of the Beast’ on people’s right hands or foreheads.

We spoke to the Chief Technical Officer of BiChip, who told us his work is so sensitive that he only uses his first name, Simon, and doesn’t appear on camera.

He is a passionate believer in Transhumanity and believes humanity’s destiny lies in upgrading itself using technology to become a new augmented super-species.

This is a biometric chip designed to be implanted under the skin

‘We have spent 40 years and billions of dollars creating robots which look just like people and called them humanoids.

‘But why do we need them? We already have humans.

‘Why not update ourselves instead? We can use technology to add more features to humans.’

His company are starting with microchips capable of storing vast amounts of information which can then be scanned to reveal their contents.

The possible uses are manifold. The chips could serve as digital passports, removing the need to carry around a paper version which, let’s not forget, now has a chip installed within it anyway.

They can also serve as a super-secure cryptocurrency wallet. This is the use that BiChip are currently exploring with the release of their own virtual currency called BiChipCoin.

Hanson Robotics’ flagship robot Sophia, a humanoid robot powered by artificial intelligence (Picture: AP Photo/ Kin Cheung)

The advantages of carrying crypto in a chip attached under your skin are clear: it’s impossible to lose and hard to hack, unless you physically lopped off the limb to which the chip was attached.

Even this brutal form of attack could be stopped in future because chips will be programmed so that they only work when attached to their owner’s body and switch themselves off upon their death or when the chip is removed.



BiChipCoin will also let you pay, send and receive money by ‘a wave of your hand’, although it can be used without a chip too using an online wallet.

The currency works a bit differently from Bitcoin, according to its creators, who claim it’s based on the companies real assets and properties, making the currency work a bit like traditional stock.

‘It has value backed by real company assets,’ Simon added.

‘Bitcoin has no back up because no-one knows how created it.

‘If its value goes to zero, no-one would know how to respond.

‘We guarantee the value of our cryptocurrency.’

Simon said the company’s first generation chip will be out next year and will serve as a more than just a cryptocurrency wallet.

‘When you have a chip in your hand, you can easily pay with it and transfer money easily to anyone else with the chip.

‘But you can do a lot of other things. If your passport was stored in there, you wouldn’t need to have a physical copy and could update it from home, rather than having to go into a government office.

‘It can also be used to store medical data or security information.’

Zoltan Istvan believes biometric chips can radically improve human society

Zoltan Istvan, the world’s most famous Transhuman, is an outspoken advocate of microchipping and human technological augmentation.

He’s so passionate about the potential benefits of using technology to improve humanity that he believes death will become a ‘curable disease’, which could mean that millions or billions of people now living will never die.


Istvan admitted that Western societies have a ‘resistance’ to microchipping, but has recently visited countries including the United Arab Emirates where he met with a receptive audience.

He has also worked with the US Navy to discuss the idea of installing chips in sailors working in high-security environments like nuclear submarines, where the devices could be scanned to prove their identity.

It’s much harder to extract a chip from someone’s hand than it is to steal their ID card, meaning chips could serve as an infallible security device.

We asked Istvan, who ran for president as head of the US Transhumanist Party, what sort of role chips could play in modern society.

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‘My guess is that many governments and corporations see opportunity in this tech to improve services and efficiencies,’ he said.

‘I think it’s now a matter of years before widespread adoption.

‘It makes perfect sense for the military to make their own chips, which could also be used by the CIA, Navy and Air Force.’

He went on to make the very controversial suggestion that chips could be used as a form of border control and could also be implanted into prisoners to track their movements.

‘Implants can be used to allow in large amounts of immigrants and still be able to track them,’ he said.

‘They also scare some people so Trump could use it as a tactic to lessen immigrants’ desires to come to the US. Implants are dramatically cheaper than building a wall.


‘Chips also offer a humanitarian positive, as you can let in more people because they can be tracked and found whenever necessary.

‘Most war refugees don’t care about a chip in their bodies. They care only about getting out of war and into America. So by chipping immigrants from so-called dangerous countries and also prisoners could easily be the future in the US.’

He added: ‘Another major idea could be to fit prisoners with chips.

‘Implants are way cheaper than tracking device bracelets (which are currently used), and we have about two million people in prison in the US and another million that come and go out on probation.

‘This sounds like something Trump would approve.’

However, there is already huge resistance to the idea of fitting humans with chips.

BiChip’s Simon, a convert to Christianity, claimed he was banned from churches in Copenhagen after priests found out what he was doing.

‘A priest told me I had been occupied by Satan,’ he revealed.

‘He said: “You have the devil inside you.”‘

Istvan has been greeted by a similar response in religious parts of the US due to a prophecy in the Book of Revelation which said the Anti-Christ would arrive on Earth and force people to wear a ‘Mark of the Beast’.

‘And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads,’ one passage says.

‘And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.’

So are chip implants a sign that the apocalypse is on the way – or just a handy new bit of tech which we’ll all get used to very quickly?

‘I think the humanitarian and efficiency benefits of implants far outweighs the negative authoritarian possibilities,’ Istvan concluded.