⧉ Infominer

⧉ Infominer

BitcoiNFo

34 minute read

lopp.net/bitcoin.html

Bitcoin Information & Resources

Bitcoin is a revolutionary system that is quite complex and has a steep learning curve. Below you’ll find curated educational resources and information about Bitcoin. You could spend months sifting through them all. Make sure you have a decent grasp of the system before you store a significant amount of value in it! The same aspects of Bitcoin that make it so valuable also make it unforgiving to those who make mistakes.

  • jlopp/jopp.net
  • Getting Started Bitcoin is a revolutionary system that is quite complex and has a steep learning curve. Make sure you have a decent grasp of the system before you store a significant amount of value in it. If you make a critical mistake such as losing your keys or sending your money to a scammer, no one can fix it!

Nakamotoinstitute.org

While Bitcoin.org is still a great resource, we feel that recent events are damaging Bitcoin.org’s neutrality. Furthermore, the maintainers and domain owners have, over the past few years, been taking unilateral actions which go against the wishes of and occurred without the consent of the community. These actions have been driving away frequent contributors to the project.

As a result of these, we have decided to launch btcinformation.org as a community maintained fork of Bitcoin.org. The goal of this site is to be a neutral, informational resource about Bitcoin and how to use Bitcoin.

This website, like Bitcoin.org, is fully open source. If you would like to contribute or view the source code, please visit achow101/btcinformation.org

Whitepaper

Whitepaper - Annotated

Fundamentals

History

Payments

BTCPay Server

Tech

  • Okamoto Beats Schnorr: On the Provable Security of Multi-Signatures

    The insecurity discussion starts near the bottom of page 2 of the paper The security issues the paper discusses are pretty simple to solve theoretically, but they all increase the communication complexity of the signing schemes from O(n^2) to O(n^3) Which means there’s that many more points at which the multisig can be sabotaged or an error of some sort can occur Which basically means that all of those schemes are useless for large numbers of participants Not that they were that useful for any significant number of participants with a complexity of O(n^2)

  • r/Bitcoin - The weird nonce pattern

  • Taproot, and Schnorr, and SIGHASH_NOINPUT, oh my! - Pieter Wuille, Bitcoin Core developer and Blockstream co-founder, spoke about Taproot, Schnorr, and SIGHASH_NOINPUT.

    In this talk Pieter went into the benefits of these ideas and discussed an upcoming proposal for a first step that combines a subset of these ideas. Some ideas will be left for future extensions, in order to avoid complexity and limiting the design space. Yet, this would bring privacy and flexibility benefits to Bitcoin, as well as moderate scaling advantages. The main focus is Taproot, which has the potential to make all outputs look identical, by merging pay-to-pubkey and pay-to-scripthash into one - but other changes will be needed to make it widely applicable and efficient.”

    • [Slides](https://prezi.com/view/YkJwE7LYJzAzJw9g1bWV/
  • To everyone rushing back into BTC from altcoins: What matters is that you learn why Bitcoin needs to be conservative in its development.

    Over the past year, the prevailing thought among many in the cryptocurrency communities is that bitcoin is not keeping up with other coins. That somehow bitcoin was being intentionally crippled, or that the developers did not know what they were doing. As we are seeing with the bitcoin dominance going up, that prevailing thought was wrong. The coins who were supposedly going to kill bitcoin have been all but abandoned in many cases. Many others are in the process of dying a slow death (which may take years to fully play out).

  • The Blockchain Backbone Model

    Today I gave a talk about the Bitcoin Backbone model, the first mathematical theory to prove bitcoin is secure, invented by @sol3gga, Nikos Leonardos and Juan Garay. [*]

Block Size

Segwit

Scripting

  • Bitcoin Covenants

    Abstract.This paper presents an extension to Bitcoin’s script language enabling covenants, a primitive that allows transactions to restrict howthe value they transfer is used in the future. Covenants expand the set offinancial instruments expressible in Bitcoin, and enable new powerful andnovel use cases. We illustrate two novel security constructs built usingcovenants.

  • Yes, Bitcoin Can Do Smart Contracts and Particl Demonstrates How

    The Bitcoin blockchain is not known for its ability to enable smart contracts. In fact, most developers creating smart contracts use a different blockchain, like Ethereum. But the truth is that the Bitcoin protocol can be used to create smart contracts. Particl.io, the blockc…

  • Bitcoin Magazine - Scriptless Scripts: How Bitcoin Can Support Smart Contracts

    Bitcoin’s capacity is limited. Meanwhile, smart contracts can be resource intensive. So even though Bitcoin has always supported basic smart contract functionality, the two have never been a natural match.But a recent topic of research spearheaded by Blockstream mathematici…

Decentralization

PoW Energy Use

  • The Cost & Sustainability of Bitcoin — Part I
    • The Cost & Sustainability of Bitcoin (August 2018)

      This paper serves to update the assumptions used in a prior version of this research from February 2015 (https://goo.gl/UZ9B3e) , and provides a systematic methodology of modelling the environmental and economic costs of Bitcoin. Furthermore, the

  • Gravity – LaurentMT – Medium

    In the last years, a lot has been written about the “huge waste of energy” resulting from Bitcoin’s Proof of Work (PoW). In this series of four posts, we‘re going to challenge this widespread opinion by questioning the main metrics used to highlight the alleged increasing inefficiency of Bitcoin’s PoW.

    In this first part, we‘ll first discuss the main utility of PoW in the Bitcoin protocol. Then, after a reminder of two important properties of Bitcoin’s PoW, we’ll define a mathematical formalization of this utility (Bitcoin.Days Secured) and we’ll use it to define two new metrics (Unit Cost and Average Cost). At last, we’ll check what these metrics can teach us about the evolution of the efficiency of Bitcoin’s PoW over time.

  • Jonathan Bitcoin Not Blockchain (@KryptykHex)

    #Bitcoin is by far the most energy efficient monetary system we’ve ever designed.

Privacy

Forks

Scaling

  • A scalable drop-in replacement for merkle trees - (*)

    The UTXO set is a growing problem. We had a talk this morning about dust in the UTXO talk. We have about 60 million UTXOs. The problem is that as we heard in the talk before, the blockchain is quite an inefficient data structure for UTXOs because if I want to download an old block, I need all the blockheaders in between. If I want to download an old transaction and check if it’s unspent and I only have the head of the blockchain, then I need to check all the inbetween transactions and check if they spend my transaction or not.

  • Scaling Bitcoin Workshops - Presentations - Video recordings of presentations live-streamed during Scaling Bitcoin events.

Bitcoin Core

Lyr2

Lightning

Liquid

Governance

  • Bitcoin Governance – Pierre Rochard – Medium

    Bitcoin’s governance matters because Bitcoin is the first successful, most liquid, and most widely known crypto-currency. In the words of Michael Goldstein, “Sound money is a foundational pillar of civilization, and Bitcoin restores this powerful tool for social coordination.” If Bitcoin’s governance model is flawed, it could prevent Bitcoin from reaching its full potential. If Bitcoin’s governance is flawed, Bitcoin’s stakeholders should work to fix it.

Philosophy

Maximalism

Finance

Austrian

Investment

Store of Value

Tether

Price

  • [ Romano ] (@RNR_0)

    Sell your kidney now to buy bitcoin & buy 3 kidneys back later.

    Here’s the multi million dollar chart you need.

  • Willy Woo (@woonomic)

    Bitcoin has seen only 3 bear markets in its history. We are in the third one now. One signal we can use to determine the end of the bear is for the price to cross above its 200 day moving average.

Application

Rootstock

Mining

Satoshi

  • Deadal Nix (@deadalnix)

    Some people seems to adulate Satoshi, think he can do nothing wrong and his word are to be interpreted as gospel. While I share Satoshi’s plan to create peer to peer digital cash, I do think it is important that we think for ourselves. Here are some errors Satoshi made:

Deflationary

  • CryptoZerp (@CryptoZerp)

    Eventually, you will need to accept the fact that #bitcoin was hard coded to pump. 1) Every 4 years the supply cuts in half. 2) Every single day more and more people want to buy it.

  • Bitcoin’s Deflationary Weirdness

    The purpose of our brief discussion was just to provide some general background information for Arnie’s listeners about Bitcoin, including what bitcoins are and why anyone would buy them or accept them in exchange for goods and services. We touched on several topics related to the Bitcoin phenomenon, but there is one very peculiar and puzzling feature of Bitcoin that we didn’t get to discuss and that seems especially important to me: the Bitcoin system has what appears to be a built-in deflationary architecture.

Risk

  • Elaine Ou 🐤 (@eiaine)

    People like to point out that Bitcoin’s irreversible transactions enable fraud, but never bother to mention that merchants lose $190 BILLION to chargebacks every year. Risk doesn’t ever disappear, we just push the liability on to someone else. https://t.co/ZfabEgJjtP

  • The Bitcoin Risk Spectrum – Nik Bhatia – Medium

    Bitcoin is already a reserve asset. It is the world’s first true example of decentralized digital scarcity, and its elegant, predetermined…

  • Jameson Lopp (@lopp)

    Libbitcoin developer @evoskuil on risk and security. https://t.co/eu7w1rNMPo

China

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.02466.pdf -“looming threat of china”

  • Ben Kaiser (@bkaiser93)

    1/8 A thread on my research with @mireya_anita and @A_led analyzing China’s influence on Bitcoin: https://t.co/LsIMEbePQk Important: we’re still waiting on peer review! We claim that China is a motivated, capable, and overall credible threat to Bitcoin. More on each adje…

Regulation

  • California Passes Bill Defining Blockchain and Crypto Terms

    A draft law designed to amend California’s legislation to create legal grounds for the implementation of crypto-related technologies has been passed by the state’s legislature. Assembly Bill 2658 contains important definitions of some key blockchain and crypto terms.

Fees

Social

Organizations

Resources

Podcasts

Periodicals

Video

Twitter

Twitter Lists

Books

Literature

Assorted

https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks

  • Baltic Honeybadger 2018 Bitcoin conference, Riga, day 1

    Timestamp: 35:48 - The Reserve Currency Fallacy by Eric Voskuil 1:05:34 - Trustlessness, Scalability, and Directions in Security Models by Matt Corallo 1:41:42 - 1 on 1: Current state of the market & institutional investors Leo Weiss with Tone Vays & Bruce Fenton 2:38:19 - The future of Bitcoin smart contracts by Max Keidun 3:02:50 - The Bitcoin Standard as a layered scaling solution by Saifedean Ammous (via Skype) 3:36:10 - Beyond Bitcoin: Decentralized collaboration by Yurii Rashkovskii 4:06:30 - 1 on 1: The future of Bitcoin wallets with Pavol Rusnak & Lawrence Nahum, moderated by Giacomo Zucco 5:48:10 - Extreme OPSEC for the Modern Cypherpunk by Jameson Lopp 6:24:20 - 1 on 1: Bitcoin payment processing and merchants with Sergej Kotliar & Alena Vranova, moderated by Vortex 6:55:01 - 1 on 1: Present and future tech challenges in Bitcoin with Peter Todd & Adam Back, moderated by Pierre Roberge 7:48:45 - The Future of Lightning by Elizabeth Stark 8:24:10 - 1 on 1: Investing in bitcoin businesses with Nic Carter & Florian Maier, moderated by Matthew Mežinskis 8:52:10 - Closing panel with Elizabeth Stark, Peter Todd, Jameson Lopp, Eric Voskuil, Alex Petrov, moderated by Roman Snitko

  • Mapping out bitcoin’s supply chain - The Block

    The Block complements our writings and analyses with charts, graphs, and maps is to give our readers a comprehensive look at the complex crypto ecosystem. Even the veteran Bitcoiner can get lost in the twist and turns that is the bitcoin labyrinth. Here, we take a high-level…

  • The Business of Bitcoin Cold Storage – Nik Bhatia

    Bitcoin is digital gold, and this continues to be its most appropriate and concise metaphor. I recently discussed some parallels between…

  • Pierre Rochard [⚡️] (@pierre_rochard)

    Why I’m focused on Bitcoin: • Schelling point consensus • p2p network governance with full nodes • proof-of-work secure timestamping • Lindy effect / first mover advantage • fixed issuance schedule • prudent engineering culture • promising research: lightni…

  • Bitcoin or Shitcoin? (highlights from our Spectator debate)

    BitMEX’s recent live event with The Spectator (“Who’s afraid of Bitcoin?”) was an exclusive affair, with fewer than 200 people in the theatre. All the sessio…

  • The LTB Network [Jan/3➞₿ 🔑∎] (@TheLTBNetwork)

    Check out the latest episode of @TheCryptoShow featuring @ProfFaustus and @DanielKrawisz - this time discussing thoughts on the #fork, the origins of #bitcoin and #LightningNetwork. https://t.co/TpRGZ4MPMM

  • Why Bitcoin Is Not a Startup – The Bitcoin Observer – Part II — MoE As a Unique Type of Economic Good

  • Seth586😈guides [BIP157+FULL NODE]⚡ (@seth586)

    I just published Neutrino can be dangerous, so lets grow Bitcoin’s immunity with a BIP/BOLT https://t.co/I0IBwtR8x7

  • Eric Voskuil (@evoskuil)

    “Substitution Principle” is the 62nd topic in the series on understanding #bitcoin: https://t.co/f00mq70Edp

  • Visualizing Bitcoin Transactions in 3D and Virtual Reality

    Abstract Bitcoin transactions form a graph that can be visualized in 3D and Virtual Reality (VR). This article explores how you can see these visualizations. The image below shows some of the network of transactions linked to the bitcoin pizza transaction . The red cubes are …

  • Daniel Ƀ (@csuwildcat)

    Someone asked about Bitcoin/cryptocurrency volatility last night at an event, suggesting it can’t be good at what it’s supposed to do unless it’s as stable as USD - my response: “It operates as the most advanced DPKI layer we’ve ever seen, whether the price is $1 or $1 mil…

  • Eric Turner (@ericturnr)

    Started putting together some research on “bitcoin banks” inspired by @nic__carter. So far I am interested but not sold on the idea. What sources am I missing? https://t.co/6QaEakpLZg

  • Permabull Niño (@ImacallyouJawdy)

    As part 1 of a 4 part series that @MustStopMurad and myself are teaming up for, we’re excited to explore Bitcoin with you from an accounting point of view, via: https://t.co/kBrK3NYqX5

Takes

  • Ragnar Lifthrasir 🏴 (@Ragnarly)

    @brian_trollz @peterktodd Bitcoin is a place where we can all learn, make mistakes, and sometimes be assholes, but be quickly forgiven. Unless you don’t admit your mistakes anddouble down on them. I think Bitcoin is a relatively benign, forgiving place. But I grew up dif…

  • Christopher Allen (@ChristopherA)

    The view amongst most bitcoin people I know is not that they don’t care about privacy or fungibility — they care very very much…But it’s one that cannot fail, or it’s one that we better not cause to fail. And that takes precedence over everything else.”— A…

  • Bitcoin Black Cab (@btcblackcab)

    I’m fed up with being judged as unreasonable for supporting bitcoin. I’m interested in bitcoin. No one says to an ethereum supporter “why don’t you give credence to dentacoin or doge or whatever”. I back bitcoin and I back people that back bitcoin. https://t.co/…

  • David 🖍 @dksf

    1/ Censorship Resistant Non-Sovereign Monetary Store Of Value is a simple Bitcoin utility which doesn’t require that I find the other participants to transact with to get utility (though I must believe they exist). It’s functionally similar to a single-player mode for Bitcoin.

  • Kyle Samani (@KyleSamani)

    0/ Bitcoin is by definition a pyramid scheme / multi-level marketing scheme

    To be fair, it’s the most “fair” and egalitarian pyramid scheme ever devised, but it is none the less a pyramid scheme

  • Jay 4.669 [ #NOhalfX ]

    Fundamental theory of Bitcoin: Distributed consensus can be reached on the condition, 1) nodes continuously and indpendently derived the same random variables 2) outcome is independently verifiable 3) real world effort implicitly tied to digital signatures

  • Charlie Lee [LTC⚡] (@SatoshiLite)

    1/ On-chain Bitcoin and Litecoin payments are not peer-to-peer. Payments are sent from sender to miners, who record it on a distributed ledger. The recipient receives the payment when it’s recorded. BUT, this is facilitated by a p2p network where transactions are broadcast…

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