451
It's practically impossible for regular people to buy Bitcoin
We’re in the middle of a huge Bitcoin bubble resembling Tulip mania. There’s now huge demand in the mainstream to buy bitcoin for speculation mainly due to med…
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 488 posts.
452
453
454
455
456
457
Bitcoin as a law enforcement/natsec honeypot: what is the evidence?
Paranoia appears to be the order of the day, given what we know about the NSA and GCHQ thanks to Edward Snowden. Absent from the stories so...
458
459
Time-lock encryption
How do you encrypt a file such that it can be decrypted after a date, but not before? Use serial computations for proof-of-work using successive squaring, chained hashes, or witness encryption on blockchains.
460
Bitcoin is Worse is Better
2011 essay on how Bitcoin’s long gestation and early opposition indicates it is an example of the ‘Worse is Better’ paradigm in which an ugly complex design with few attractive theoretical properties compared to purer competitors nevertheless successfully takes over a niche, survives, and becomes gradually refined.
461
The NSA Is Breaking Most Encryption on the Internet
The new Snowden revelations are explosive. Basically, the NSA is able to decrypt most of the Internet. They’re doing it primarily by cheating, not by mathematics. It’s joint reporting between the Guardian, the New York Times, and ProPublica. I have been working with Glenn Greenwald on the Snowden documents, and I have…
462
463
The Strange Story of Dual_EC_DRBG – suspected NSA backdoor (2007)
Random numbers are critical for cryptography: for encryption keys, random authentication challenges, initialization vectors, nonces, key-agreement schemes, generating prime numbers and so on. Break the random-number generator, and most of the time you break the entire security system. Which is why you should worry…
464
Liberty Reserve Founder Arrested, Site Shuttered
The founder of Liberty Reserve , a digital currency that has evolved as perhaps the most popular form of payment in the cybercrime underground, was reportedly arrested in Spain this week on suspicion of money laundering. News of the law enforcement action may help explain an ongoing three-day outage at…
465
The Well Deserved Fortune of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin creator
I won’t discuss anything in this post. I’m tired of discussing technical things with people with skewed opinions and monetary interest. I’ve talked enough in the Bitcointalk forum…
466
Zerocoin: making Bitcoin anonymous
Wow, what the heck is going on with Bitcoin? When I started this post, the value of a single bitcoin had surged upwards of $250. It’s corrected a bit since then (down $100 or so), but it̵…
467
BitCon: Don't
<p>Ok, I've been asked enough times, here it is -- my view and analysis of "Bitcoin", which I have taken to calling "Bitcon." &nbsp;That probably deserves an explanation....</p><p>Let's first define what an
468
469
The Big Book of Bitcoin - An introduction
An introduction to Bitcoin without the jargon: Bookkeepers, Ledgers and Anonymity.
470
Dwolla Begins PayPal-Style Account Suspensions for Bitcoiners
99Bitcoins is your trusted guide to Bitcoin & crypto, offering easy tutorials, expert insights, and in-depth reviews to help you navigate the crypto world.
471
472
When Will We See Collisions for SHA-1?
On a NIST-sponsored hash function mailing list, Jesse Walker (from Intel; also a member of the Skein team) did some back-of-the-envelope calculations to estimate how long it will be before we see a practical collision attack against SHA-1. I’m reprinting his analysis here, so it reaches a broader audience. According…
473
SHA-3 to Be Announced
NIST is about to announce the new hash algorithm that will become SHA-3. This is the result of a six-year competition, and my own Skein is one of the five remaining finalists (out of an initial 64). It’s probably too late for me to affect the final decision, but I am hoping for “no award.” It’s not that the new hash…
474
Bitcoin Mining in Plain English
99Bitcoins is your trusted guide to Bitcoin & crypto, offering easy tutorials, expert insights, and in-depth reviews to help you navigate the crypto world.
475
6-8 Weeks Until Bitcoin Debit/Credit Card, says BitInstant
99Bitcoins is your trusted guide to Bitcoin & crypto, offering easy tutorials, expert insights, and in-depth reviews to help you navigate the crypto world.
476
477
Bitcoin
I've mentioned Bitcoin a number of times on this blog. It is something our firm is watching closely. We thought briefly about making a Bitcoin specific investment earlier this year but ended up deciding to sit on the sidelines for now. We are quite taken with the idea of a currency that is not controlled […]
478
Krugman on BitCoin
Digital, but still a barbarous relic.
479
Bitcoin is Not Anonymous
An Analysis of Anonymity in the Bitcoin System2011135 points53 commentscited by 3Crypto & Blockchain details
TL;DR Bitcoin is not inherently anonymous. It may be possible to conduct transactions is such a way so as to obscure your identity, but, ...
480