Difference between revisions of "Bitcoin"
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*<s>[http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/bitcoin-what-is-it Bitcoin Weekly's "What Bitcoin Is"]</s> | *<s>[http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/bitcoin-what-is-it Bitcoin Weekly's "What Bitcoin Is"]</s> | ||
*[http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/37619/page1/ What Bitcoin Is, and Why It Matters] ''- article in Technology Review, published by MIT press'' | *[http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/37619/page1/ What Bitcoin Is, and Why It Matters] ''- article in Technology Review, published by MIT press'' | ||
− | *[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKVbb4Ci2kg | + | *[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKVbb4Ci2kg What is Bitcoin? (YouTube)] |
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcchQs2YDZ0 Stefan Molyneux on RT: Bitcoins: digital currency of the future?] ''- a very nice layman's explanation of Bitcoin'' | *[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcchQs2YDZ0 Stefan Molyneux on RT: Bitcoins: digital currency of the future?] ''- a very nice layman's explanation of Bitcoin'' | ||
*<s>[http://actiontheory.liberty.me/2014/09/19/bitcoin-magic-fraud-or-sufficiently-advanced-technology/ Good article about how it works for the general public]</s> ''- register or pay or something'' | *<s>[http://actiontheory.liberty.me/2014/09/19/bitcoin-magic-fraud-or-sufficiently-advanced-technology/ Good article about how it works for the general public]</s> ''- register or pay or something'' |
Revision as of 14:06, 10 August 2017
Bitcoin is an open source peer-to-peer (P2P) electronic cash system that's completely decentralised, with no central server, trusted authorities or middle men. The availability of bitcoins can't be manipulated by governments or financial institutions.
Bitcoin is the first truly decentralised currency and has paved the way for hundreds more to compete together in Cipherspace over the coming years. This is one of the key factors in the transition of global society into the post-nation-state economy talked about in books like The Sovereign Individual and which is coming to be known by agorists as The Second Realm.
The value of the bitcoin approximately depends on the size of the network, and essentially gives you a 1 / 21000000 share in the value that can come out of this network and its ability to facilitate trade. When gold was the dominant currency, it seemed that it represented physical value while bitcoin is a looking glass that shows us what money really is: social value.
Bitcoin is the first online currency to solve the so-called “double spending” problem without resorting to a third-party intermediary. The key is distributing the database of transactions across a peer-to-peer network. This allows a record to be kept of all transfers, so the same cash can’t be spent twice–because it’s distributed (a lot like BitTorrent), there’s no central authority. This makes digital bitcoins like cash dollars or euros: Hand them over directly to a payee, and you don’t have them any more, all without the help of a third party.
You can find a couple of good introductions to bitcoin are here and here.
Contents
- 1 How it works
- 2 Bitcoin statistics and charts
- 3 Bitcoin exchange sites
- 4 New Zealand exchanges
- 5 Bitcoin in Brazil
- 6 Work for Bitcoins
- 7 Other projects on the blockchain
- 8 Further reading on bitcoin
- 9 Economics & Liberty articles
- 10 Other sites about Bitcoin
- 11 Related projects
- 12 Various commentators on Bitcoin
- 13 How bitcoin can help the world
- 14 Interesting articles about Bitcoin
- 15 Related news
- 16 Craig Wright throws in the towel
- 17 User Activated Soft Fork (UASF)
- 18 See also
- 19 Attachments
How it works
In a p2p computer network there are no servers, the entire network is composed of users running instances of the application on their computers. Each running instance offers a small amount of processing and storage resource to the network so that it can deliver the services it was designed for such as redundant storage, anonymity or voice-over-IP applications.
In the case of a p2p currency system, some of the services the network is designed to offer are privacy, verification, authentication, currency creation and transfer of ownership. To ensure a reliable and tamper-proof system requires a lot of resource, and that amount is proportional to the amount of coins in the network. The network is able to pay the users for the resource they offer by making the coin-creation process part of the network protocol itself instead of being handled by a central trusted authority. This creates a natural and incorruptible link between the supply of currency in the network and the demand for it.
Even aside from the ability to exchange bitcoins for other currencies, it still makes a very useful tool for independent organisations and groups because it allows them to trade and settle accounts amongst themselves independently and privately. It effectively gives them a "bank" that has a trustworthy system of accounts that can't be tampered with and requires no corruptible central authority to operate. See the following links for more detailed information about how it works.
- The Bitcoin Whitepaper - the original paper by Satoshi Nakamoto (you may want to learn about hashing before reading this)
- The Satoshi Nakamoto Institute
- Video about how it works for beginners
- Bitcoin - P2P currency for Bezadis - good Prezi about bitcoin
Bitcoin Weekly's "What Bitcoin Is"- What Bitcoin Is, and Why It Matters - article in Technology Review, published by MIT press
- What is Bitcoin? (YouTube)
- Stefan Molyneux on RT: Bitcoins: digital currency of the future? - a very nice layman's explanation of Bitcoin
Good article about how it works for the general public- register or pay or something- How Bitcoin works under the hood
- How the Bitcoin protocol actually works - starting from the real basics
- Bitcoin Wiki technical category
- Transactions explained in detail (video - 2 parts)
- Blocks explained in detail (video)
- A scalability roadmap
- The math behind bitcoin
- Good reading list by [https://twitter.com/NickSzabo4 Nick Szabo
Bitcoin was born on January 3rd, 2009, at 6:15PM Greenwich Mean Time, which is when Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first 50 coins, known as the "genesis block."
- How Segregated Witness works - segregated witness is a new potential addition to the bitcoin protocol to increase security and scalability (part 1 of 3)
- Segregated Witness FAQ
- Understanding change addresses
The Bitcoin Wallet
The term "wallet" is actually a little bit misleading because the information representing coins and transactions are actually stored throughout the entire network, not in the wallets. The wallet actually stores private keys that give the wallet-holder the ability to spend coins in the network that are confirmed as being currently associated with one of your private keys. A bitcoin address that you show to other people in order for them to send you money is the public half of one of the private keys in your wallet.
This means that it's very important to back up your wallet and to remember the password you've locked it with, because if you lost access to your wallet you'd no longer have control over any of the coins in the network that are associated with your addresses. You must back up your wallet whenever you create a new address, but there's no need to back up your wallet every time you receive new coins, because these are not stored in your wallet. For example, you could have a bitcoin wallet on a computer that's never been connected to the network and be paid into that wallets address for years before you got around to connecting it and checking your balance.
- 6 things you should know about bitcoin private keys
- Paper wallet - how to store your wallet information on paper
- MultiBit.org - secure, lightweight, international Bitcoin wallet for Windows, MacOS and Linux
- Migrating your wallet from Bitcoin-qt to Multibit
- Wallet do's & don'ts
The 21 Million Coin Limit
Many people are concerned about this "21 million coin limit" for example this blog post about Why Bitcoin Will Fail as a Currency is based on this belief. But it's not actually a problem because Bitcoins are divisible into eight decimal places (and future versions of the protocol could easily be designed to divide it further if there becomes demand for that) so even if there were only a few Bitcoins in existence, the entire Bitcoin economy could still operate properly.
Inflation and Transaction Fees
By convention, the first transaction in a block is a special transaction that starts a new coin owned by the creator of the block. This adds an incentive for nodes to support the network, and provides a way to initially distribute coins into circulation, since there is no central authority to issue them. The steady addition of a constant of amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending resources to add gold to circulation. In our case, it is CPU time and electricity that is expended.
The incentive (for nodes to support the network) can also be funded with transaction fees. If the output value of a transaction is less than its input value, the difference is a transaction fee that is added to the incentive value of the block containing the transaction. Once a predetermined number of coins have entered circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation free.
With the network having reached capacity in early 2017 the setting of fees for a transaction has become very important. The BitcoinFees21.co site has a good table to help in setting the optimal fee amount.
Bitcoin statistics and charts
- BlockChain.info - charts, statistics and block explorer for the bitcoin blockchain
- BitEasy - another good block explorer
- Statoshi.info - realtime bitcoin node stats
- BitcoinFees.21.co - good fee/delay prediction chart
- BTC.com/stats - good selection of stats including optimal fee
- BitcoinWisdom - awesome chart service covering many currencies and exchanges
- CryptoWatch - another excellent chart
- Bitcoin Analytics - excellent charts and reports
- Bitcoinity - excellent real-time price charts
- World map of recent transactions
- Global Bitcoin Nodes - graphical display of the distribution of nodes
- Coinometrics - really high-level analysis of the bitcoin economy
- MtGox Live
- Bitcoin Watch
- List of important events in the Bitcoin network
- Mt Gox lag charts
- Fiat Leak - realtime map showing fiat currencies moving in to the Bitcoin economy
- BlockTrail - interesting info about addresses and the blockchain
- Coin.Dance - which nodes are running core or which fork
- BitInfoCharts.com - good stats over all time and many coins
- Bitcoin market-cap to transaction value indicates that the mid-2017 "bubble" is no bubble
- Chart showing mid-2017 Alt-coin rise corresponding to Bitcoin scaling trouble
- BTC fork monitor
Bitcoin exchange sites
Buying Bitcoins is more difficult than expected considering that there's so many people trying to buy them. The reason is because Bitcoins more closely resemble cash than they do credit. This is because the transactions are irreversible whereas credit cards, Paypal and many other electronic forms of credit can be reversed up to six months later. To make matters worse, PayPal and most credit card company's have reversed many Bitcoin transactions because they consider Bitcoin to be a fraudulent operation. So the bottom line is that buying Bitcoins needs to be done with a solid irreversible form of currency such as cash in person or posting a cheque. Following are some exchanges offering various means of buying and selling Bitcoins. I find the easiest method is to use a wire transfer from a bank account which many exchanges accept (even though wire transfers can actually be reversed, but it's quite a procedure).
- Intersango - (based in London) allows international wire to deposit funds into EUR, GBP or PLY
- Bitstamp - (based in Slovenia) allows international wire in USD and a few other currencies
- Bitcoin-24.com - no BTC transfer fees, only $3.20 international wire fee, no ID for signup, based in Britain, accounts in Poland
- MtGox - (based in Tokyo) extremely strict signup & verification procedures
- BTC-e - (based in Russia) allows international wire in USD and a few other currencies, minimum US$5000 (also handles Namecoin, Litecoin and others)
- BTC China - doesn't currently have wire transfer option, support liberty reserve and Chinese payment systems
- IMCEX - a user-to-user Bitcoin, Namecoin and LibertyReserve exchange
- BitInstant - Providing instant transfers for the bitcoin economy
- bitcoin.de - German exchange
- BitFloor - US-based exchange focussing mainly on US users
CampBX- requires Dwolla to use which is only available to US employees (citizens)Crypto X Change- (based in Australia) does not allow international wire transfersBitcoinica- hacked and died May 2012TradeHill.com- shutdown late 2011- GoldSilverBitcoin.com - buy metals with btc
- Forex meets Bitcoin exchange - release the Kraken!
- Moneero Social - send Bitcoins to anyone on email or social networks
- BitQuick - escrow based system allowing direct connection to your bank account, 2% fee
- Brascoins - a Brazilian bitcoin exchange
New Zealand exchanges
- NZBCX
- Coined - no-signup bitcoin purchases, about 10% above ticker though
BitNZ- bank account closed 22-11-2015 :-(
Bitcoin in Brazil
- MercadoBitcoin - biggest bitcoin exchange in Brazil
- CoinBR.net - another exchange
- Bitcoin2You - and another
- PagueComBitcoin - pay boletos with bitcoin
- OriginalMy.com - Brazilian document registration
- Bitcoin Brasil Facebook group
- About the new BitcoinHub project
Work for Bitcoins
- 21.co earn bitcoin for performing small tasks
- ChronoBank - this could be the new decentralised "upwork" when it gets going
- MaidSafe code bounty - offering $20/hr in bitcoin
- Ethereum bug bounty
- Coinality - this seems not to really be much to do with bitcoin...?
Jobs4BitcoinsCodeForBitcoinsBitlancerrBitcoinJobs
Other projects on the blockchain
It has been a hot debate for years amongst the bitcoin developers as to whether or not the blockchain should allow the storage of data not related specifically to bitcoins. Even Satoshi himself weighed in on this debate saying that,
![]() | Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale. Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately. Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other. BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either. |
— Satoshi Nakamoto |
Eventually projects started to store custom data in the blockchain in exotic ways which began to bloat the blockchain, so the developers in mid 2014 added the OP_RETURN opcode to the official set of executable codes which allows 40 bytes of custom data to be added to transactions. With OP_RETURN, Bitcoin's long-running debate over acceptable uses of the block chain has received some much needed clarity. Applications can now inexpensively add a 40 byte data payload to transactions using the OP_RETURN script function. On a technical level, OP_RETURN doesn't enable anything that wasn't previously possible. Instead, OP_RETURN provides a standard interface through which new services can potentially be layered onto the block chain, and a central point of focus for future work on integration tools.
Here's a list of various projects and ideas that extend the functionality available in the blockchain.
- The Mega Master Blockchain List...
- How to make a distributed escrow service - a comment by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2010 from the Bitcoin forum
- Plato re using OT instead of increasing the block size
- About Side-chains
- Improvement proposals
- Smart property
- Distributed contracts
- Crypto-equity
- KeyBase.io - KeyBase is a people directory, see also the KeyBase FS
- Bitbills - the first and only bitcoins in physical form.
- BitcoinX - extending the blockchain to exchange many asset types using coloured coins
- btcwire - the bitcoin wire protocol package from btcd
- PeerCover - bitcoin-based insurance project at BitcoinStarter]
- BlockSign - sign legal documents on the block chain
- Silent Vault - using voucher-safe to make bitcoin anonymous
- BitNation - governance on the blockchain - still going, but all the developers quit :-(
- Counterparty - a platform for free and open financial tools on the Bitcoin network
- Proof of existence & OpenTimestamps
- CoinSpark - distributed asset ledger using coloured coins
- Chain - some kind of API for building apps on the blockchain
- BlockStack - fast, secure, and easy-to-use DNS, PKI, and identity management on the blockchain
- OneName - used to be on namecoin's blockchain, but now on bitcoin using BlockStack
- BlockchainAuth - allows universal login with your OneName/BlockStack profile
- Keyhotee - user authentication
- Bitmessage - email/messaging
- OpenBazaar - commerce/trade
- Twister - distributed twitter
- okTurtles - distributed solution to SSL certificate authorities
- Distributed crowd-funding
- World Passport - see also this tutorial by BitNation, this Wired article and an Interview with first ID holder
- Decentral Bank - bringing bitcoin 2.0 to modern banking
- Factom White Paper Outlines Record Keeping Layer Above Bitcoin
- Ledra Capital list of possible blockchain apps...
- BlockStore - a datastore using bitcoin's blockchain and a DHT
- RootStock - smart contracts for Bitcoin using 2-way pegged non-speculative RSK
Further reading on bitcoin
- The Nakamoto Institute
- The clear divisions on Bitcoin - Blogdial, June 22, 2011
- Another Take on Bitcoins - Gary Kinghorn, June 22, 2011
- A Bit of Sound Money: Free Banking or 100% Reserve Banking - Theodore Phalan, June 21, 2011
- Bitcoin's Value is Decentralization - Paul Bohm, June 17, 2011
- The Economics Of Bitcoin – Why Mainstream Economists Lie About Deflation, Michael Suede, June 11, 2011
- Bitcoin and the Denationalisation of Money - C. Harwick, June 8, 2011
- Bitcoin - a moeda na era digital - excellent book about Bitcoin by Fernando Ulrich
Economics & Liberty articles
- Bernard Lietaer's "Internet Currencies for Virtual Communities"
- The Real Problem With Digital Currencies and Privacy - by Anthony Freedman
- Further Observations on Bitcoin, Digital Currencies, Privacy and Liberty - by Anthony Freedman
- The Coming Attack On Bitcoin And How To Survive It - by Anthony Freedman
- The Economics Of Bitcoin – Challenging Mises’ Regression Theorem - by michaelsuede
- What gave bitcoin its value? - bitcoin satisfies all of Mises' criteria
- A Magna Carta for Bitcoin
Other sites about Bitcoin
- The Satoshi Nakamoto Institute
- BitcoinFilm.org - a short documentary about Bitcoin in Argentina
- The Bitcoin List
- Bitcoin Magazine - excellent articles on Bitcoin
- Bitcoin Bytes
- The Bitcoin Review
- Bitcoin.org
- BitcoinMe.com
- MyBitcoin.com - an easy to use online Bitcoin interface and free shopping cart for websites
- Bitcoin wiki - a MediaWiki for Bitcoin
- Bitmit - an online auction using bitcoin for the currency
- Bitcoin Wiki - Trade page which lists services that accept Bitcoin
- Cash n' carry Bitcoin
- BitcoinWeekly.com
- We Love Bitcoins
- List of Major Bitcoin Heists, Thefts, Hacks, Scams, and Losses
- AmpedMarket - a secure, anonymous marketplace integrated with the Bitcoin currency base on BitWasp
- BitPay - the "PayPal" of Bitcoin?
- Coinbase
- BitcoinStarter.com
- Coin Market
- btcwire - the bitcoin wire protocol package from btcd
- Bitcoin Myths
- BadBitcoin - the bitcoin scams directory!
- Jameson Lopp's bitcoin page
Related projects
- Namecoin
- Litecoin
- NodeBitcoin - Communicate with bitcoind via JSON-RPC
- BitWasp - anonymous bitcoin marketplace built for use in conjunction with hidden services such as .onion websites and eepsites
- Open Transactions
- Bitcoin 2.0? - Jed McCaleb's initial post about Ripple, more here
- Cryptfolio - keep track of your cryptocurrencies securely and stay updated with your online securities and funds
- Gliph - Secure Texting + Bitcoin Payments
- MasterCoin
- DAC - Digital Autonomous Corporations
Dark Wallet - Decentralised bitcoin mixing- TumbleWallet - decentralised bitcoin mixing wallet
- CoinJoin - a protocol for decentralised mixing (used by Dark Wallet I believe)
- PyBitcoinTools
- Twister - a decentralised version of Twister
- OneName - receive bitcoins with your name
- Reality Keys - facts about the future, cryptographic proof when they come true
- BitPhone - phone calls using bitcoin payment, no registration required
Various commentators on Bitcoin
- Max Keiser - Bitcoin: Currency of Resistance
- Cliff High podcast on Bitcoin - March 2013
- Daily Reckoning - Daily Reckoning on BitCoin
- SovereignLife on Bitcoin
- BBC item on Bitcoin
- Keiser Report on Bitcoin
- A computer scientist and a gold bug analyses Bitcoin
- Why Are Libertarians Against Bitcoin?
How bitcoin can help the world
- Bitcoin Neutrality - great lecture on Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos
- Bitcoin Is the Solution to the Military Industrial Complex
- Bitcoin Can Fix Broken US Non-Profits
Interesting articles about Bitcoin
- Tumblebit vs CoinJoin - good article about the various privacy mechanisms
- The Bitcoin core merge process
- The quiet exile of Gavin Andresen
- UASF: User-driven protocol development
- The mining delusion
- What is ASICBOOST?
- Understanding Bitcoin Unlimited, and see also How BU users may end up on different chains
- Excellent analysis of bitcoin volatility
- A primer on bitcoin governance - why developers aren't in charge of the protocol
- Classic? Unlimited? XT? Core? - Gavin Andresen talks about why he's working on all these diverse bitcoin forks
- Why Bitcoin’s Core Developers Want Multiple Versions
- Why Brazil’s Bitcoin Market is Struggling to Ignite
- Who's Afraid of the Workers' Revolution? - the backlash against the sharing economy has begun, by Jeffrey Tucker
- Bitcoin in the Philippines: A Perfect Cryptocurrency Storm
- The man who really built bitcoin - history of Satoshi and Gavin Andresen
- Decent decentralisation - bitcoin alone is not the answer
- Those who use the work of Mises to challenge bitcoin should think again - by Jeffrey Tucker
- SecondMarket CEO Barry Silbert: Banks can't ignore bitcoin anymore
- The rise and fall of the world's largest bitcoin exchange
- Bitcoin and Intrinsic Value: a Layman’s Response to Alan Greenspan
- The Daily Value Of Bitcoin Transactions Has Passed Western Union's And It's Catching Up To Paypal's
- 10 Reasons Why The Value Of Bitcoin Is Skyrocketing
- Why You Should Care About Bitcoin - money is going digital and it is impacting the biggest growth industry of the past 75 years
- Why won’t Bitcoin die? - The virtual currency has had many near-death experiences in its short four year life, but it just keeps bouncing back
- DEFCON 19: Hacking the Global Economy with GPUs - or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bitcoin - very informative talk about recent Bitcoin events
- Cleaning up the Bitcoin act
- The 10 Most Anticipated Bitcoin Projects for 2012
- The History of Gold and the Future of Bitcoin - "if the subjective theory of value means anything, 'unique cryptographic hash' is not inherently less valuable than 'shiny rock', even if it has no representation in physical space. Each has only the value that people give to it."
- Will Draconian Controls Drive Bitcoin Adoption?
- Engineering the Bitcoin Gold Rush - an Interview with Yifu Guo, Creator of the First ASIC-Based Miner
- The Eye of Sauron Has Spotted Bitcoin
- The future of Bitcoin - excellent article on the past and future of bitcoin as of 2013
- Barons of Bitcoin: the Tokyo-based powerhouse that controls the world's virtual money
- Bitcoin Lied, Confirmed Transactions Died - all about the blockchain fork that occurred between versions 0.7 and 0.8
- Why do VC's care about Bitcoin?
- Bubble or No, This Virtual Currency Is a Lot of Coin in Any Realm
- Bitcoins or Gold?
- WeBank - Report organised by Nesta and OpenBusiness.cc about P2P finance
- Bitcoin's Liquidity: A Third Look
- How to counterfeit Bitcoins - not!
- Bitcoin - Cyber Death of the Banking Industry
- I Tried Hacking Bitcoin And I Failed - Dan Kaminsky on Bitcoin
- The Great Gold vs Bitcoin Debate: Casey vs Matonis
- Wikipedia:History of Bitcoin
- Tax attorney's answers to tax questions about Bitcoin
- Bitcloud - ambitious ideas about replacing the internet
- Teenage hacker creates next-gen crypto-platform
- Bitcoin Is Not Quantum-Safe
- Longterm Technical Analysis of the Bitcoin Price
- Fernando Ulrich - is driving the cryptocurrency bandwagon in Brazil and the Portuguese-speaking world
- Bitcoin Transaction Volume Soon to Surpass PayPal
- Developers Battle Over Bitcoin Block Chain
- BitScan articles
- 'Bitcoin Jesus' calls the rich to a tax-free paradise
- Bitcoin Is Not Quantum-Safe, And How We Can Fix It When Needed
- Multisig: A Revolution Incomplete - by Vitalik Buterin
- Bitcoin, the US Constitution, and One Man’s Crusade
- Satoshi’s Genius: Unexpected Ways in which Bitcoin Dodged Some Cryptographic Bullets - 2013 article by Vitalik Buterin
Related news
- 15 Jul 2017: Bitcoin core dev Luke Dashjr examines segwit2x code and reports his findings in plain English
- 03 Jul 2017: Countdown to segwit - key dates to keep an eye on
- 22 May 2017: ShaolinFry on the recent Silbert scaling agreement
- 08 Apr 2017: The Latest Twist to the Block Size Debate Is Called a "UASF" - see also Shaolin Fry's discussion thread on BitcoinDev
- 29 Mar 2017: Bitcoin Unlimited Miners May Be Preparing a 51% Attack on Bitcoin
- 20 Jan 2017: Why Financial Privacy Is About More Than Using Bitcoin to Buy Drugs on the Internet
- 14 Jan 2017: China's largest bitcoin exchanges suddenly suspend margin trading
- 01 Jan 2017: BTC over $1000 again - first time since December 2013!!!
- 26 Oct 2016: TumbleBit - a mixing protocol that extends CoinSwap (paper, code, TumbleWallet)
- 28 Sep 2016: Bitcoin Returns to Its Cypherpunk Roots: An Interview With Lupták and Sip of Hackers Congress Paralelní Polis
- 25 Aug 2016: Bitcoin Privacy Tool "CoinShuffle" Sees First Transaction
- 24 Jun 2016: Segregated Witness next steps
- 08 Jun 2016: About BIP 151 - encrypting traffic between nodes
- 05 Mar 2016: Bitcoin! Keep Calm And RBF/CPFP On!
- 02 Mar 2016: Bitcoin core upgrade leaves many transactions, even from exchanges, in limbo due to fee too low!
- 26 Feb 2016: How to implement secure bitcoin vaults
- 26 Feb 2016: The first successful Zero-Knowledge Contingent Payment
- 23 Feb 2016: BTCC COO talks about the road ahead - whew, looks like all the hostile takeovers are finally history!
- 14 Jan 2016: A Bitcoin Believer’s Crisis of Faith - Mike Hearn leaves bitcoin core development and slams the door on the way out
- More to this than meets the eye? - point-by-point refutation of Hearn's departing rant
- Github comments re Hearn's Tor blacklist commit - looks very similar to Wikipedia talk pages responding to corporate vandals
- GCHQ too?!
- Very good analysis of the classic/core dichotomy, and a likely lay of the land if classic succeeds
- 14 Dec 2015: Uproov: Blockchain Timestamping Goes Professional, Notary Offices Decline Begins
- 09 Dec 2015: Gizmodo and Wired investigations may have found Satoshi Nakamoto, but the evidence is pretty dodgy, ok really dodgy
- 09 Sep 2015: Close to the ending of the MtGox’s bankruptcy proceeding
- 02 Sep 2015: Open letter from bitcoin developers to bitcoin community
- 28 Aug 2015: Majority of miners supporting BIP 100 rather than a hard fork
- 12 Aug 2015: Major internal debate over block size may lead to a fork (BIP 101)
- 09 Aug 2015: Bitstamp hack was due to their IT guy running windows
- 06 Mar 2015: Deutsche Bank Veteran: Brazil’s Weakening Currency Creating ‘Perfect Environment’ for Bitcoin
- 10 Feb 2015: Bitnet Partnership Opens Up 260 Airlines to Bitcoin Payments
- 14 Jan 2015: Bitcoin crashing badly, under $200 today! (peaked down to $176 in the night)
- 12 Jan 2015: Gavin Andreesen testing 20MB and 200MB block sizes
- 10 Jan 2015: Latest OpenSSL version incompatible with bitcoin
- 05 Jan 2015: Stamp just got Goxed!
- 01 Jan 2015: Japanese Police Suspect 99% of Mt. Gox Bitcoins Missing Due to Fraud, Not Transaction Malleability Hack
- 15 Dec 2014: Johoe Strikes Again, Lifts More than 300 Bitcoins from "Secure" Wallets
- 02 Dec 2014: Huge 214K BTC transfer ($81 million USD)
- 30 Nov 2014: Spar: The First Bitcoin Supermarket Opens Its Doors In The Netherlands
- 26 Nov 2014: Kraken to Assist in Search for Missing Mt Gox Bitcoins
- 24 Nov 2014: Two 17-Year-Old Students create trustless escrow service for bitcoin payments
- 23 Nov 2014: Cancer patients forced to use Bitcoin-driven illegal online markets to buy drugs
- 31 Oct 2014: World's First Crypto-Currency Bank: Fidor Bank AG and Kraken Welcome Potential Partners in Establishing Banking Platform
- 09 Oct 2014: Andreas Antonopoulos Appears Before Canadian Senate
- 05 Oct 2014: BTC under $300 today!
- 05 Oct 2014: Fake Chinese Bitcoins & Litecoins Commonplace At Chinese Exchanges Evidence Shows
- 05 Oct 2014: Greenpeace USA starts accepting bitcoin - Bitcoin Helps Us Promote Free Speech, Independence
- 04 Oct 2014: The Sky is Not Falling: Reflections on My 16 Months in Bitcoin - bitcoin price is so low ($350) simply due to higher merchant/investor ratio
- 03 Oct 2014: Circle Goes Live. Buy And Sell Bitcoin With Your Credit Card
- 28 Sep 2014: As the Fed's secrets are revealed, will the world turn to Bitcoin?
- 27 Sep 2014: Finally bitcoin is mainstream enough that you can buy them with credit card
- 24 Sep 2014: The first marriage on the blochchain
- 23 Sep 2014: Bitcoin Price Surges Amid Positive PayPal News
- 11 Sep 2014: Bank of England issues research paper on bitcoin
- 08 Sep 2014: Paypal to start accepting bitcoin payments
- 02 Sep 2014: Britain Confirms Long-Suspected Positive Stance on Cryptocurrency
- 30 Aug 2014: The Bit Drop: All residents of Dominica to receive Bitcoin in 2015
- 29 Aug 2014: Remembering Hal Finney: Bitcoin Pioneer With ALS
- 27 Aug 2014: Dark Wallet vs Bitcoin Fog: Battle Of Anonymous Bitcoin Services
- 21 Aug 2014: New York To Bitcoin Startups: Get Permission Or Get Out
- 14 Aug 2014: Bitfinex: cascading margin calls resulting in flash crash
- 11 Aug 2014: 39 bitcoins stolen from BitNZ
- 12 Jun 2014: $18 Million Worth of Silk Road Bitcoin to be Sold By US Government
- 22 Apr 2014: Digging for answers: The “strong smell” of fraud from one Bitcoin miner maker
- 21 Apr 2014: Airbitz & Dark Wallet Devs Win Bitcoin Hackathon with DarkMarket!
- 17 Apr 2014: Bitcoin for bud: Weed vending machines in Colorado will accept cryptocurrency
- 16 Apr 2014: Mt. Gox Officially Files for Liquidation
- 15 Apr 2014: PBOC Deadline Day: Business as Usual for BTC China
- 11 Apr 2014: Instagift hopes to help take Bitcoin mainstream
- 11 Apr 2014: Bitcoin Markets Rise On News Of Chinese Bitcoin Exchanges’ Response Plan To Bank Accounts Closing
- 04 Mar 2014: In depth analysis of the Mt Gox events
- 23 Feb 2014: Mt. Gox Resigns From Bitcoin Foundation
- 12 Feb 2014: Major Multinational Bank Trials Integration with Bitcoin
- 10 Feb 2014: Failing Bitcoin Exchange MtGox Spreads Misinformation Creating Price Scare
- 10 Feb 2014: Mt Gox statement blaming bitcoin protocol for the problems - specifically blaming the Transaction Malleability problem, see also forum discussion
- 09 Feb 2014: Why Mt. Gox, the World’s First Bitcoin Exchange, is Dying
- 05 Feb 2014: Poll: Are you having Mt. Gox Withdrawal Issues?
- 04 Feb 2014: Russian Prosecutor’s Office: BTC-e Investigation Report was a Hoax - lol I was in the trollbox when this happened :-D the FUD was intense!
- 21 Jan 2014: Bitcoin tuition fee payment at Cumbria University
- 11 Dec 2013: Debunking the JP Morgan patent for a Bitcoin-like payment system
- 09 Dec 2013: Mt. Gox Makes Bitcoin More Accessible in Latin America
- 06 Dec 2013: This Is, Quite Simply, The Biggest Endorsement That Bitcoin Has Ever Received
- 06 Dec 2013: China bans banks from handling Bitcoin trade
- 27 Nov 2013: BTC over $1000 today!!!
- 23 Nov 2013: Bitcoin Tops PayPal For First Time in Total Transactions
- 17 Nov 2013: BTC hit $500 today!!!
- 13 Nov 2013: BTC over $400 today!
- 07 Nov 2013: BTC over $300 today!
- 04 Nov 2013: BTC China beats Mt. Gox and Bitstamp to become the world’s No.1 bitcoin exchange
- 15 Oct 2013: China's Google Is Now Accepting Bitcoin
- 08 Aug 2013: Court officially declares Bitcoin a real currency
- 29 Jul 2013: Thailand bans using Bitcoin in any way, local startup reports
- 03 Jul 2013: Gox sanctioned - banks disable payments to and from Gox
- 20 Jun 2013: Mt Gox Halts Run on USD as Market Share Falls to New Low
- 28 May 2013: At This Rate, The Last New BTC Will Be Issued 15 to 55 Years Ahead Of Schedule
- 17 May 2013: "Non-political" Bitcoin is "like internet – can't be put away easily"
- 26 Apr 2013: Bitcoin: world's fastest growing currency migrates off the internet
- 18 Apr 2013: Bitcoin-24's bank account frozen by German authorities
- 10 Apr 2013: Bitcoin Suffers A Correction Amid Apparent DDOS Attacks On Some Exchanges
- 10 Apr 2013: Major BTC collapse today from $266 down to $90!
- 09 Apr 2013: BTC over $200 today!
- 01 Apr 2013: BTC over $100 today!!!
- 31 Mar 2013: Challenging the dollar: Bitcoin total value tops $1 billion
- 28 Mar 2013: BTC over $90 today
- 26 Mar 2013: Bitcoin on BBC Newsnight
- 26 Mar 2013: BTC over $80 today
- 24 Mar 2013: Bitcoin Privacy Extension to Have Backdoor for Government Snooping?
- 21 Mar 2013: BTC over $70 today
- 20 Mar 2013: Fleeing the Euro for Bitcoins
- 20 Mar 2013: BTC over $60 today
- 19 Mar 2013: Is Bitcoin the New Safe-Haven Currency? Bitcoins Surge After Cyprus Bank Raid
- 19 Mar 2013: FinCEN sounds death knell for US based Bitcoin businesses
- 18 Mar 2013: BTC over $50 today!!! - probably jumped up a bit due to the Cypress drama
- 12 Mar 2013: Major glitch in Bitcoin network sparks sell-off; price temporarily falls 23%
- 05 Mar 2013: BTC over $40 today
- 01 Mar 2013: BTC over $35 today
- 21 Feb 2013: BTC over $30 today
- 12 Feb 2013: BTC over $25 today
- 07 Jan 2013: BitPay Banks $510K In Investment To Become PayPal for Bitcoin, Already Has 2,100 Businesses On Board
- 07 Dec 2012: Bitcoin exchange gains clearance to operate as a real bank in France
- 28 Nov 2012: The block completion reward halved to 25 BTC today.
- 14 Oct 2012: More surreal events in the Crypto Cold War - the BitCoin blockade of Iran
- 02 Sep 2012: Bitcoin alive and here to stay, or slowly fading away?
- 20 Aug 2012: Plummeted all the way down to about $7.50, then quickly bounced back to a stable $10
- 17 Aug 2012: BTC hit $15 today
- 16 Aug 2012: Trading Bot Runs Amok on MtGox
- 08 Aug 2012: My Answer To A VC's Bitcoin Question - Forbes
- 02 Aug 2012: BTC just went over $10!
- 11 JUl 2012: Paypal’s Abandonment of Major Cyberlockers May Become Bitcoin’s Big Win
- 29 Jun 2012: Betting on Bitcoin: Coinbase Wants to Be the PayPal of Internet-Only Currency
- 26 Jun 2012: BitPay Shatters Record for Bitcoin Payment Processing
- 22 Jun 2012: The Bitcoin Richest: Accumulating Large Balances
- 19 Jun 2012: TORwallet Sparks Trust Without Jurisdiction Debate
- 18 Jun 2012: Are Bitcoins Becoming Europe's New Safe Haven Currency?
- 13 Jun 2012: Why Apple Is Afraid Of Bitcoin
- 12 Jun 2012: Bitcoin, the City traders' anarchic new toy
- 04 Jun 2012: Banks get ready for virtual cash
- 14 May 2012: Bitcoinica site breached
- 09 May 2012: FBI release a report on how Bitcoin works
- 21 Apr 2012: Bitcoinica Registers in New Zealand for Bitcoin Margin Trading
- 24 Sep 2011: Developers of the crypto-currency are designing initial support for multi-transactions - Multi-transactions allow the possibility of ‘contracts’.
- 16 Aug 2011: TradeHill: USD Domestic and International Wire Transfers are Available Again
- 22 Jun 2011: EFF backs away from Bitcoin
- 20 Jun 2011: True News: Vancouver Riots, Greek Austerity & Bitcoin Thefts
- 19 Jun 2011: DailyTech: Inside the Mega-Hack of Bitcoin: the Full Story
- 23 Jun 2011 a more accurate telling of the hack
- 17 Jun 2011: Symantec Uncovers Bitcoin-Stealing Trojan
- 16 Jun 2011: Bitcoin theft: half a million dollars gone?
- 14 Jun 2011: True News: Bitcoin, Free Markets and Economics 101
- 12 Jun 2011: guardian.co.uk - Bitcoin: the hacker currency that's taking over the web
- 07 Jun 2011: Bitcoin Triples Again
- 06 Jun 2011: IT staffer installs bitcoin miner on ABC's servers
- 03 Jun 2011: New Decentralized Currency Stimulating Underground Barter Economy
- 04 May 2011: Bitcoins Beat the Bankers – Webs First Peer-to-Peer Bitcoin Crypto Currency Empowers Users, May Replace Banks
- 30 Apr 2011: CoinPal gets shut down
- 23 Mar 2011: Google engineer releases open source Bitcoin client
- 20 Jan 2011: EFF calls Bitcoin a Step Toward Censorship-Resistant Digital Currency
- 07 Jun 2010: Our local news item introducing Bitcoin
Craig Wright throws in the towel
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I’m Sorry I believed that I could do this. I believed that I could put the years of anonymity and hiding behind me. But, as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof of access to the earliest keys, I broke. I do not have the courage. I cannot. When the rumors began, my qualifications and character were attacked. When those allegations were proven false, new allegations have already begun. I know now that I am not strong enough for this. I know that this weakness will cause great damage to those that have supported me, and particularly to Jon Matonis and Gavin Andresen. I can only hope that their honour and credibility is not irreparably tainted by my actions. They were not deceived, but I know that the world will never believe that now. I can only say I’m sorry. And goodbye. |
— Dr. Craig Wright |
User Activated Soft Fork (UASF)
UASF is a means by which the network can have the power shifted back into the hands of the users. It was introduced a long time ago, but has been made very popular recently by the core-developer Shaolin Fry from his BitcoinDev discussion post which lead to a number of mainstream articles such as this and this.
To run your own bitcoin node that signals segwit-UASF, install the pre-compiled binary for your OS from BitcoinUASF.org, or clone the correct branch from the bitcoin repo and compile/install it, for example:
git clone --branch 0.14-BIP148 https://github.com/UASF/bitcoin.git
cd bitcoin
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install
The dependencies can be a bit of a mission to install, here's some info for installing them on Debian and on Ubuntu. The main issues are with the BerekelyDB library which needs to be an old version to ensure the wallet format is compatible with old wallet backups. If you just want to signal for UASF and don't need to use the wallet you can disable it and not worry about the BerekelyDB at all by using the following configure line instead.
./configure --disable-wallet
See also:
See also
- What Happens When ANONYMOUS Gets A Bank?
- The War on Digital Currency
- FellowTraveler on Github - developer of Open-Transactions (bitcoin / voucher-safe integration)
- AgoristRadio.com w/ Justin of Voucher-Safe - Bitcoin & Voucher-safe
- libbitcoin - a bitcoin library targeted towards high end use. The library places a heavy focus around asychronicity.
- Bitcoin Isis portal on Osiris
- Alan Szepieniec Presents Bitcoin at Polish Mises Institute - In a step ahead of their U.S. namesake, the Polish Ludwig von Mises Institute hosted Alan Szepieniec to present bitcoin during the 2011 Summer Seminar in Warsaw.
- Must money be backed by gold?
- Peer to peer
- Using MultiBit to buy online with a Bitcoin swatch
- Bitcoin cash-mobbing
- Tonika - social routing with organic security
- Random numbers, Encryption and Hashing
- How Digicash blew everything
- Wikimedia's lame reason for not accepting bitcoin
- Pirate?
- transactions to our address
- Bitcoin card
- Bitcoin Privacy Extension to Have Backdoor for Government Snooping?
- Bitcloud
- RushWallet Delivers Fast, Frictionless and Login-Free Bitcoin Wallets
- The Sidechains whitepaper
- Inside a Chinese Bitcoin mine, and page 2
- Edward Snowden's Bitcoin address
- Quick instructions on how to create a vanity address by Bitcoin Goddess
- Original bitcoin.org page from web archive
- Online transaction systems
- Money
- Cryptocurrency
- Digital economy