How Does a Bitcoin Work?

Many cryptographic standards widely used in commercial applications were developed by the U.S. Government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Normally government involvement in developing ciphers for public use would throw up red flags, however all of the algorithms are part of the public domain and have been analyzed and vetted by professional cryptographers who know what...

As far as open-source protocols go, one area in which Bitcoin is unique is the sheer difficulty of making any changes to the protocol. Unlike most other protocols, where features can be added, modified or deprecated at a moment’s notice, in the world of Bitcoin even the slightest change requires the simultaneous cooperation of the vast majority of the entire Bitcoin network. The reason for this...

I’ve been reading up recently on the revelations that the NSA is subverting implementations/service providers to undermine various internet crypto standards (see this: ). Now this has all of the basic hallmarks of a ‘scare campaign’ where people are led to believe that crypto techniques/mathmatics themselves are insecure rather than the truth that the NSA is attacking the...

Such a sensitive topic, so let me note a few things before I start: I will omit the guessing game of what Satoshi’s appearance would or would not matter/mean, what he wants or does not want and just present the hard facts. Not disproved ≠ proved, so do not misunderstand me… oh some of you will, I know you will… The hilarious Satoshi hunts, like the Dorian Nakamoto and Craig Wright sagas are out...