Bitcoin, the decentralized virtual currency now worth over $1 billion, was designed to be as open and transparent as possible. Unlike traditional currency, you can download every Bitcoin transaction that's ever taken place and, more interestingly, tap into those transactions in close to real time. Using this freely available data, University of California student Maximillian Laumeister created "Listen to Bitcoin," a website that generates soothing chimes for every transaction that takes place on the Bitcoin network.

"as realtime as you can get"

According to Laumeister, the site is "as realtime as you can get," and though the tones are generated randomly, their amplitude is tied to the value of each transaction. "Listen to Bitcoin" may not win any awards for its Windows Vista-screensaver aesthetic, but we found the sounds of virtual currency changing hands to be far more endearing than other monetary visualizations, like the US National Debt Clock.

Update: The original link to "Listen to Bitcoin" was hijacked some time after this article was published and includes Java-based malware. Laumeister has since relocated and renamed his site to "BitListen," which he claims is clean and free of malicious software. For more information on the malware, refer to this article.