Bitcoin as Infrastructure

IronIP uses Bitcoin as infrastructure, not as currency. No one buys, sells, or holds Bitcoin as an investment.

What Bitcoin does here

Proof-of-Work as a service. Miners spend energy securing blocks. IronIP reuses that work to secure device addresses. The device gets 89-bit security for free.
Immutable timestamped ledger. The anchor transaction proves "this device identity was registered at this time." Can't be altered or backdated.
No single point of trust. The anchor doesn't depend on any company, cloud provider, or certificate authority staying in business.

The GPS analogy. Think of it like using GPS satellites for timing — you're using the infrastructure, not buying satellites. IronIP uses Bitcoin's existing mining infrastructure to get a globally consistent, cryptographically secured timestamp. It doesn't require holding, trading, or speculating on cryptocurrency.

Who has wallets, who doesn't

Party	Wallet?	Role
Operator (backend)	Yes — one wallet	Creates anchor transactions. Pays fees (~$0.00004 per device registration). This is a backend service, like paying for any API call.
Manufacturer	No	Calls the operator's SDK during provisioning. Never touches Bitcoin directly.
Device	No	Stores ~1.2KB of parameters. Does SHA-256 hashes. Has no concept of Bitcoin or blockchain.
Verifier	No	Checks math against stored parameters. No blockchain interaction. Pure hash operations.

Addressing the "Bitcoin" concern

No cryptocurrency speculation. This is a $0.00004 infrastructure fee, not a financial product.
No tokens traded on exchanges. Any tokens used (like PushDrop for revocation) are device identity records, not financial instruments.
No blockchain on the device. Devices do standard cryptographic hashes, nothing more. They don't sync chains, validate blocks, or hold keys beyond their own identity.
Chain-agnostic. Works on BSV, BTC, or BCH. One config change. The verification algorithm is identical; only the anchor chain and cost model differ.
Customer-neutral terminology. The word "Bitcoin" doesn't need to appear in any customer-facing material — it can be described as "distributed proof-of-work anchoring" or simply "blockchain anchoring."

Why not a private or consortium ledger?

A reasonable question. Why use Bitcoin instead of a purpose-built private chain or a consortium ledger like Hyperledger?

No infrastructure to run. Bitcoin miners maintain the network. IronIP operators don't run nodes, validators, or consensus machinery.
No trust required. A private ledger means trusting whoever runs it. Bitcoin's proof-of-work is physics, not policy. The security comes from energy expenditure, not membership agreements.
Survives the operator. If the operator closes down, device identities still verify. A private ledger dies with whoever runs it. Bitcoin anchors are permanent regardless.
89-bit security for free. Replicating Bitcoin's aggregate hash rate privately would cost billions in hardware and electricity. You can't buy this much security at this price any other way.

Chain choice trade-offs

Chain	Cost per anchor	Throughput	Typical sec	Trade-offs
BSV	~$0.00004	High (>1000 TPS)	2 (89-bit)	Lower aggregate hash rate; narrower ecosystem
BTC	~$1.30-2.50	~7 TPS (fee market)	5 (~139-bit)	Highest security, highest cost; fee volatility
BCH	~$0.002-0.007	Medium	2 (89-bit)	Middle ground; smaller network than BTC

What Bitcoin isn't asked to do

To avoid scope confusion:

Devices never connect to the Bitcoin network.
Verification never queries a Bitcoin node.
The anchor transaction is never on the critical path of device operation.
Bitcoin latency or fee spikes don't affect deployed devices — only new registrations, which are batched backend operations.