Open data is freely available with attribution as currency, while funding work and demonstrating value can be difficult. Closed data requires monetary access through subscriptions, where development is funded and value is obvious financially. The document proposes using micropayments of bitcoins for accessing raw or cleaned biodiversity data, with the community mining bitcoins to fund processing raw data into cleaned datasets.

1. Open data
• Free and open data
• No money, so “credit” or
“attribution” is our currency
• We struggle to fund our work
• We struggle to demonstrate
“value” (hits, downloads,
citations…?)

2. Closed data
• Access to data costs money
(trade access for big
subscription fees)
• Money funds development of
data
• Value is obvious ($€£)

3. Bitcoins for biodiversity
(micropayments and mining)
• Micropayments using bitcoins
(every transaction costs a tiny
amount)
• Access to raw, messy data is free
(most of our data is sh€#*!ty)
• Access to clean data costs
something (trade money for time)
• Biodiversity community uses excess
capacity to mine bitcoins