The project digitizes a fruit fly brain and assigns it a simulated trading balance to operate on bitcoin prices.

Project design

An engineer affiliated with Coinbase provided a simulated insect brain with $100 to trade real BTC-USDC market data on a test basis.

The neural substrate is an emulation of a male drosophila nervous system comprising 166,700 neurons and 25.6 million connections.

Market prices from Coinbase are rendered visually so the emulated photoreceptors receive pixel representations rather than numeric feeds.

• Visual input is processed by the network, producing an output that chooses buy, sell or hold decisions.
• Successful portfolio growth triggers reinforcement of 15 dopaminergic cells within the model architecture.
• Losses activate simulated stress zones, and transaction fees are accounted for as negative returns.

Trading rules and limits

The simulated agent cannot use leverage or short positions and is limited to a maximum of $10 per trade under the default configuration.

Each simulated day allows up to 24 discrete trading attempts, preventing continuous high-frequency execution in the baseline setup.

By default the experiment runs with a virtual $100 balance on real BTC-USDC quotes, while an option exists to connect a live account.

Technical requirements and author note

To run the repository locally the developer indicates a requirement for Linux or macOS and at least 16 GB of RAM for the emulation.

The author clarifies this is an engineered reinforcement signal intended for testing, not a claim that the fly experiences pain or human-like emotions.

The project is available as an open repository on GitHub, where the code and setup instructions can be reviewed by other researchers and developers.

Context and reception

The experiment attracted attention because of its unconventional agent design and the juxtaposition of biological architecture with financial markets.

Observers noted ethical and practical questions about anthropomorphizing reinforcement signals, while the creator warned that rising markets can make any naive buyer appear successful.