Coinbase Engineer Creates Simulated Fruit Fly Brain to Trade Bitcoin
A software engineer at Coinbase has successfully created an open-source project called Stonkfly that simulates the brain of a fruit fly to make trading decisions on a Bitcoin account.
The model, which runs 166,700 neurons and roughly 25.6 million connections between them, uses a published wiring map of an adult male fruit fly's nervous system as its basis.
According to the engineer, Alex Wormuth, the simulated brain is shown a price chart and rewards profitable trades with a burst of virtual dopamine, but it never sees any actual price numbers.
The project uses a candlestick chart to display prices, which are then split across the fly's two simulated eyes. The light-sensing cells read the raw pixel colors, and the brain settles on buy, sell, or hold based on this information.
The model also includes some limitations, such as capping each order at $10 and limiting attempts to 24 per day in live mode.