Is proof-of-work mining a good security strategy vs. adversarial nation-state actors? — ← Part 2: Security vs. What? Double-spending is the “easy” problem of Bitcoin security. State/military attacks are the hard problem. I’ll try to keep this relatively brief because I’ve written about it before but proof-of-work mining is not a good security strategy vs. the state. There are two kinds of…

Why does Bitcoin need a high hash rate? What actually goes wrong within the network if it’s not high enough? — ← Part 1: Beware The Turkey Fallacy You can’t talk about security — fee-based or otherwise — and how much security is enough without first defining what is being secured against. So what is the actual attack that’s being prevented by all that resource-intensive mining distributed around the world?

And The General Theory of Destroyment of Interest in Money — “But Joe, surely you don’t think Bitcoiners would just sit there and allow the attack described in Part 2 to unfold, do you? They will do something, they will innovate, the swarm of cyberhornets will defend their hive!” Yes, agreed, true believers in the cause won’t go down without a…

In part 1 we looked at the myth of ‘unstoppable code’. ← How To Kill Bitcoin (Part 1): Is Bitcoin ‘Unstoppable Code’? Recap: We don’t need to stop the code. We’re going to exploit the Bitcoin protocol exactly as it is, break its guarantees, and render it useless instead. Fire In The Hole… You’re…

They say Bitcoin can’t be stopped. Just like there’s no way you can stop two people sending encrypted messages to each other, so — they say — there’s no way you can stop the Bitcoin network. There’s no CEO to put on trial, no central server to seize, and no…

“When you know your enemy, and know yourself, you need not fear the result of 100 battles.” — Sun Tzu, The Art of War This is a war. The coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has invaded our way of life and forced us into a brutal double bind where we have to navigate…

This is a follow-up to my last post which was about understanding how double-spend attacks work in practice and why they matter. tl;dr — 1) Nakamoto consensus via proof-of-work doesn’t provide meaningful assurances around double-spends. The proof-of-work your full node sees guarantees almost nothing about the finality of transactions. …

How double-spending works in practice and what must be done to prevent it — Trust minimisation is the idea. That’s what Bitcoin is all about — being able to hold and use money without relying on custodians, intermediaries, or central planners. You, by yourself, have everything you need to validate every single bitcoin and transaction that impacts your life, and the total money supply…

Why do people say Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme? Answer: Because people who own bitcoin (or PWOBs) are so often found trying to convince other people who don’t own bitcoin that they should. And because it’s easy to see there’s a self-serving incentive in play which might explain why —…