Built this shadow box ticker 8 years ago. You slide a Bitcoin across the glass to unlock its hidden mode

Before vibecoding dashboards was a thing, I built this physical ticker that hangs on the wall. I was tired of pulling up apps or doing mental math to convert my stack into dollars, but I also had a dilemma: I didn’t want my actual holdings permanently blasted on my wall for every visitor to see.

My solution was to build a hidden “stealth mode” directly into the frame. By default, it functions as a standard BTC/USD price ticker. But when you slide a novelty Bitcoin across the front glass, a magnetic switch behind the faceplate trips, instantly calculating and displaying the stack’s total USD value. It’s been running reliably for 8 years now. (And for obvious OpSec reasons, the stack size shown in these photos is hardcoded to a dummy 0.5 BTC). I wish I still had 0.5 btc.

I was pretty optimistic when I designed it, there are 8 total digits available in the LED fields. Once Bitcoin hits $99 million, I’ll have to rebuild it. Under the hood, it’s powered by a generic ESP8266 and a pair of Adafruit 7-segment LEDs in each field. It connects to my home Wi-Fi and simply polls a price API every minute.