The new nomenclature of Telegram channels will take into account an order of Priority and this will be based on the practical and chronological order of events, to understand BitCoin and make applications, which use BitCoin and its blockchain, in everyday life:
The first three acronyms CSW, refer to Craig Steven Wright, as one of the greatest references, sources of information, found on the channel (after about 4 years studying it and 4 months analyzing the information from Slack, where he is commenting many topics since 2017, I have decided to take it as a reference of the things that work and AUTHORITY “WITHOUT RECOGNITION”) Note: check the references CSW 300
100- The first 100 numbers are especially technical and topics that should be studied before the rest: (I think there is not much friction for EVERYONE in agreeing on how events arose and those are the first topics that should be studied and to dominate)
200- The numbers 200 are channels whose study should be postponed for later, (there is a lot of information, so it is best to know what goes first and what goes after, taking into account that the first will help you understand the second and the second to the third and so on)
300- The CSW 300 are focused on all the information related to Craig:
300 Videos
300 BTC
300 Ethereum
300 Personnel
300 fails
301 People litigation
303 Satoshi Nakamoto
304 litigation
305 Data Sovereignty
306 Road Map *
310 Business
315 Projects
321 Family
326 Trustees
330 Friends
336 Staff
351 History
360 Myths
400- The numbers 400 are channels dedicated to BTC Core & Cryto and its creations with ITS ideological, NOT economic sense. What I call IMPROVISATION or patch after patch.
400 Cypherpunk
405 Crypto Projects
410 Old Crypto space
420 BTC Early Crypto space
430 BTC Recent Crypto space
435 Bitcoin Projects
440 BCH Recent Crypto space
440 BCH Recent Crypto space
500 preHistory
600 countries
Note: Surely you will not be able to enter many of the channels, if I do not include myself or another administrator manually within the channel, for that you must contact and identify yourself (We do not want anonymus members)
About finding information related to Bitcoin, quickly and efficiently.
The point is that since 2013 I took Bitcoin as a chaotic invention like a puzzle with hundreds of pieces, which interact with each other, some PIECES will probably never find them, other PIECES I will not know where to fit them, I always kept looking for a platform where upload the information that I found relevant in the form of “thematic blocks or pieces” of an immense puzzle , at the beginning in 2013 I began to make fan Pages with these thematic blocks, (currently I have about 57 Facebook fan Pages ), but with the appearance of Telegram, in 2014 began has to groups and channels to organize chaos is the kind of pieces ofOnline puzzle , where I can access from any device with an Internet connection and I have also made the channels collaboratively, that is, I have chosen some of the members of the channel and made them administrators, with the same privileges as me, especially, they can publish in the channels thus increasing the database.
1- Especially the PIECES, which I can’t find, I won’t invent them ,
1A- I will be able to speculate at a given moment to myself, to be able to imagine the puzzle made and which images are represented, but FILLING THE EMPTY SPACES WITH MYSELF IMAGINATIONS AS IF THEY WERE TRUE IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.
I have made a Telegram channel with each of the “pieces” that I think make up the puzzle , when I have had enough indications from various sources as a piece of the puzzle , recognizing that there are some pieces more important than others, BUT ALL ESSENTIAL , because they are part of a WHOLE, and like a clock, if it is lost, it damages a piece, no matter how small it may be, the clock would already tell the time accurately.
In each Telegram channel I have put all the information possible, to be able to know “the shape” and “the place”, where that piece fits, and Telegram has the great advantage that the search function is very fast and very exact, as well that when I want information, I just have to go to the channel in question and put a word in the search menu and voila , a relatively small list of results appears, and I can find what I am looking for very quickly and efficiently.
I have forgotten to say that for all of the above to work correctly, it is essential to be very aware at all times of CREATING and FILLING the channels with relevant information, this is how the database is created, from where you can later find what you are looking for.
1996 When she (Lynn Wright) went to Sydney to visit him, he brought a ring to the airport. ‘He was 26 and I was 44,’ she said. Neither of them had been married before.”
Stefan Matthews (2020) Director at Bitcoin Association, Chairman at TAAL.com and NChain Group
Chief Information Officer
Centrebet Limited 2001 – 2011 Sydney, Australia ASX listed online sportsbook, casino games and poker operator, licensed in Australia, UK, Malta and Curacao.
Non-repudiation is the process of ensuring that a parties to a transaction cannot deny (this is repudiate) that a transaction occurred.
Repudiation is an assertion refuting a claim or the refusal to acknowledge an action or deed. Anticipatory repudiation (or anticipatory breach) describes a declaration by the promising party (as associated with a contract) that they intend to fail to meet their contractual obligations.
“I had stopped posting long before Bitcointalk was created. The database was taken across in part. A new user signed up on 5th May, 2011, and helped with things. The person behind the new user was called Gregory Maxwell.”
4th International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Security for Information Systems: CISIS 2011 – Hotel Melia Costa del Sol, Torremolinos, Málaga, Spain
24/04/2012 Bitcoin Virtual Currency: Unique Features Present Distinct Challenges for Deterring Illicit Activity. Unclassified for official use only. prepared by FBI. Cyber Intelligence Section and Criminal Intelligence Section.
“May 28, 2013— — Internet bank Liberty Reserve is being charged with laundering $6 billion in suspected crime proceeds, including the illegal profits from credit card fraud, identity theft, investment fraud, computer hacking, child pornography and narcotics trafficking.
Prosecutors say it “may be the largest international money laundering case ever brought by the United States.“
“That is why we are working with the tax office and ASIC and thinking down the track to have a full banking licence from APRA based on Bitcoin,” he said.
Dr Wright confirmed he is meeting with ATO officials in Canberra this week.
“When I said that Craig was part of the team that was Satoshi Nakamoto – that statement sort of hung there and became an urban legend. You might recall that I made that statement in May of 2016, but within days, the events went out of control and it all collapsed”.
(Min. 40) “Bitcoin with a stable protocol takes away power. If no one can change the protocol – not me, not God – there’s no power in money. Money is all about power… and Bitcoin will remove that power globally.”
“… My name is Dr. Craig Wright and under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto I completed a project I started in 1997 that was filed with the Australian government in part under an AusIndustry project registered with the Dept. of Innovation as BlackNet.”
“P(compromise) already has the possibility of a vulnerability and the possibility of it being attacked by someone with sufficient motivation and resources built in, doesn’t it?”
Correct
A normal or Gaussian curve is a good fit for white noise and random error. The number of software bugs is fixed on each iteration and hence the use of a normal distribution is an error. The number may be unknown, but it exists. An unknown set number is not random. The rate at which vulnerabilities is random, but it is not normally distributed.
“There are two problems with your approach that I think I would encounter while trying to use it. First, my company does a lot of in-house development. When a new web application is deployed, assuming we’ve tested thoroughly and remediated the vulnerabilities we’ve found, it would appear that the number of vulnerabilities is zero. This is false, of course.”
This is the wrong approach. In developing software, you have ‘a prior’ information already. You have statistics on the native coding error rate from prior exercises. This will be greater than zero. The SLOC (Source lines of code) data is also available. You should have some idea of the number of users.
This means that you should be using a Poisson decay model for bugs and vulnerabilities. This can be made more accurate as a Weibull function that incorporates users, SLOC, data from coding in past assignments (based on lines and correlated errors by programmer if available).
The assumption that all bugs are re-mediated is flawed. This would require that no software bug had every been discovered post remediation. Unlikely at best.
So, the very beginning of the modeling exercise must start from an unknown number of possibly theoretical vulnerabilities.
Unless you are starting with formally verified software, the start is an unknown but estimable number of flaws. For remote compromise, you need to include all paths. This is a network analysis (not as in hardware network, but mathematical)[1]. For a web application assuming a non-local attacker, this needs to incorporate the OS, your app, services used and any applications that an attacker can access remotely.
“What I don’t know is the density function to apply when estimating (since I have no historical data at time zero).”
Actually you do. There is the data from other products, but for your own, unless this is the first exercise ever done by the company, data will exist.
The simplest method is to create a poisson decay model. Base this on data from prior projects.
“In addition to this, I may not have a detailed understanding of my user base to factor into the chance of vulnerability.”
What matters is the number of users. As an Internet application is open, this is difficult to model, but it will be estimable by traffic. You can also model the risk based on the level of knowledge regards the site based on how many people come to it.
“I can choose a standard density function, like the Gaussian for example, but I believe there will be cases where it’s difficult to predict with certainty what the risk will be, due to not knowing what key factors will push a particular population of users to produce even one attacker, especially when the population is smaller and more restricted than the Internet at large.”
You have a set but unknown distribution of bugs. This is not a Gaussian (normal) distribution.
“I believe that better models might be produced with more data, but I also believe those models will be influenced by observation. Risk modeling in the financial sector has to be a sure sign of this. Taleb predicted in 1997 that the model being used wouldn’t be accurate and he had analysis to back that position up.”
There are a few issues here. Models need to be tested against real world conditions. They have to be tested. At the least, remove some data from the source used to create the model to test the completed model.
Black Swans are not the issue in financial models. Freddy and Fanny have been basket cases for years. Models have demonstrated the problems for years. But bailouts and subsidies have covered these failings for many people.
Like the financial crisis, data exists in the case you have noted. The issue is whether people are honest enough to use it.
You cannot be said to receive stolen property with bitcoin without actively participating. Bitcoin is a UTXOs model. In this, you receive an envelope in the analogy of been using a series of tokens that are kept inside each envelope. In the current reporting model, the key is treated as if it’s an account. This is incorrect. Each individual UTXO, even when assigned to a particular key remains independent. Consequently, if you have a set of inputs in our analogised envelopes, even though they have the same seal to open them they remain separate.
If you have 500 tokens in an existing envelope and somebody sends 50 tokens to your public key or address, that is you can unseal that new envelope, if you receive that envelope you take responsibility for it. At any point you can return those 50 tokens (with a possible minor loss for mining fees that would not be your responsibility if you are returning tokens).
If you do not know where the tokens of come from or even worse if you do know that they are associated with the proceeds of crime order or could be stolen, the receipt and spending of those tokens will be a wrongful taking.
This also remove some of the issue associated with scaling. You should not be scanning for received bitcoin against the normal Blockchain. When you’re getting paid you would generally know about it. People generally don’t donate money to you randomly. That can be achieved through other means and allow individuals to set up donations and funding channels without having to scan the Blockchain. The SPV model of bitcoin was never supposed to end this way where people sit there watching the entire Blockchain.
There are many ways of notifying people that don’t require them to maintain the existing list of many UTXOs. More importantly, if somebody does inadvertently send you a UTXOs or our analogised envelope that contains stolen bitcoin, if you’re not scanning the Blockchain to collect anything that goes to your addresses without any knowledge of where it came from, you won’t be taking that wallet and putting it into your account. As such, there won’t be a taking. The tokens will be in an envelope that could be addressed to you but remain uncollected. It is the same as if an envelope full of cash that you have no idea about ends up in your post office box. In that case, receiving stolen money is just as illegal in the physical cash as if it was digital.
The way I designed bitcoin is analogous as I’ve said to a set of envelopes containing tokens. Each of these tokens is equivalent in nature to a grain of wheat. When grain is mixed, there are rules in law that allow for the tracing of separations. As bitcoin is fungible, you can trace through a mixture. It is not the same as if you were to mix wheat and rice or wine and vinegar. It is not the individual grains of wheat that matter, rather it is the quantity.
If a miner accepts payment from a stolen property hoard when they know that the particular tokens have come from a wrongdoing, they are facilitating crime. In the event that they are acting on a restitution order and are taking a payment as a bank would for the recovery of stolen property, that will be legal. Helping a criminal move bitcoin and being paid for that service puts the individual node in the position that they are facilitating crime.
When I implemented the alert key it was not merely because there was a vulnerability with bitcoin is some try and suppose. I’d started coding the alert key prior to the vulnerabilities that people note is the reason. Then this form of misattributed timing is normal against my comments. The 2008 banking collapse came at the time I launched bitcoin but I started coding bitcoin years before without knowledge of the collapse. One of the main reasons for the alert key was to cover theft of bitcoin and in particular proceeds of crime orders. The alert key allowed for the freezing of bitcoin that would be associated with wrongdoings. This would protect nodes. On alert, all nodes would instantly be stopped from transacting on the stolen bitcoin or bitcoin that is under the proceeds of crime order. Such a system simplified many scenarios that apply to miners as they are today.
Just because you receive bitcoin does not make it yours. If you receive money into your bank account and you spend it and it turns out that the money was never yours, you can be arrested for a crime. The same applies to bitcoin. If you don’t know the source of where you obtained individual bitcoin tokens, you put yourself into a large legal risk. This idea of just accepting dust and random payments is foolish at best. The simplest answer would be just to reverse them and send them back to the source they came from. The mentality within the bitcoin community seems to preclude that.
Going back to my original example, if you have 500 tokens and 50 tokens miraculously arrives in a new envelope, you do not have one envelope of 550 tokens. You have one envelope of 500 tokens and a second envelope of 50 that you did not request. If you then decide to move all of the 550 tokens into a new envelope destroying both of the original envelopes or UTXOs, you have actively taken the bitcoin. If you spend the 550 bitcoin or even the 50 bitcoin that you have received that you don’t know the source of, you could be spending stolen bitcoin. Spending stolen property is a good way of getting in trouble. It is a crime. None of this is new because of bitcoin.
People wonder why I used the UTXOs model and not an account based model. It is important because in the account based model that some coins have moved towards, you always end up with a scenario that an unintended party can cause mixing. This can cause loss to an owner who receives stolen bitcoin and is required to return them. In the account model, the original envelope of 500 tokens would be dipped into a new envelope on the receipt of the additional 50 tokens. Rather than having two separate envelopes, we end up with a single envelope containing all 550 tokens. If the owner of the original 500 tokens now seeks to spend their tokens, they can have a scenario where some of the tokens going to miners and others reduce the mixture leaving them at a loss.
In this scenario where both the wrongfully obtained (without knowledge) 50 tokens are in a separate envelope to the honestly obtained 500 tokens, the individual holding the 500 tokens never has their property mixed and will never have a loss associated with the receipt even inadvertent of stolen property.
10 – Keys are not ownership
Ownership can be represented and controled by the keys.
WP says Keys are controlled by the owner Property – Ownership https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAFLf1jzTt75dqZ9fng
Maybe a great World move, starts with a little action!!!!!!
Bitcoin SV Campaign “DONATE FOOD TO NEEDY PEOPLE ON THE STREET”
Hello community Bitcoin Sv my name is Herman Sánchez, I am Venezuelan, I live exactly in the State of Táchira (Venezuela), I am the founder of a humanitarian campaign that is responsible for donating food to needy people who live on the streets and who do not have the necessary resources to feed themselves, I invite you to know a little more about our work.
I have been involved in the world of cryptocurrencies for about 3 years and even more involved in BitcoinSV, I feel happy in this wonderful world, for 4 months I have started a very nice humanitarian campaign to help people who live on the streets and they cannot feed themselves properly, on different dates and activities we have managed to serve about 420 people who live on the streets, everything has always been duly registered, documented and photographed to give authenticity to our humanitarian activity, the funds for this activity were in a principle totally my own contributions, I wanted to encourage people to carry out charitable actions in their countries, some people have joined as sponsors of our humanitarian campaign and today by the hand of such an important and influential person from our BitcoinSV community such as RAMÓN QUESADA, we bring our humanitarian campaign to this great family, we tried to continue obtaining funds from different means for our campaign and thus contribute to a better world and what better than to go hand in hand with BitcoinSV, we understand that the world economic situation is not in the best way as a result of Covid-19 we try every day to help and provide food to these people who need it, the important thing will not always be an economic contribution, with our humanitarian activity we try to create awareness and spirit of helping others, it is time to help that person who needs it and who does not have the same fate us to count with a home, food and a family.
We have achieved the number of 8 charitable activities in which we have donated food to people who live on the streets and who due to adverse situations at their will, do not have for their daily sustenance or at least to be able to eat once a day. This activity is not governmental and is clearly non-profit, we carry it out with our hearts and with the awareness that we are bringing a breath of life to these people who need us so much and that the government of my country abandoned them and does not lend them any type of medical or food assistance.
I invite you to know a little more about our humanitarian campaign that we continue thanks to our community BITCOIN SV
We are a non-profit organization whose mission is to help people who live on the street by donating food in order to improve, enrich and contribute to the food and quality of life of the less privileged, as well as promoting the conducting charity campaigns. by the members of the BITCOIN SV community encouraging them to carry out these activities and thus generate new opportunities to help the people who need it most and live on the streets.
All in order to provide comprehensive responses to the problems of poverty and lack of food for people from the values of dignity, justice and solidarity.
VISION
We want to form an organization that is recognized and supported by the BitcoinSV community and continue to promote the improvement in the diet and quality of life of the less privileged who live on the street and who, due to this condition, are at a disadvantage. and exclusion by society, as well as continuing to promote charitable activities by the BitcoinSV community.
We intend to develop our mission together with the different organizations and individuals of the BitcoinSV community and to be able to provide a service to the person who needs it where justice, peace, freedom and solidarity are done. prevail.
We trust in the human capacity to build a more equitable and just world where each person can have a decent life and satisfy their food needs.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
Our values
Equality and Dignity: Always with the recognition as a person of all the inhabitants of the street, whatever their physical or social conditions, giving them the proper value of being human within society.
Solidarity: We act together to provide solutions that help us improve the quality of life and nutrition of less privileged people.
Justice: Where there is no discrimination, exclusion, and poverty that dehumanize, in which all people, especially the poorest, marginalized and less privileged, as part of society, hope to improve the quality of life every day.
Commitment: With the people who live on the streets. Their condition as persons implies that they are subjects of the rights that correspond to them as such.
Transparency: Transparency is Documenting and publishing our way of acting, as well as the responsible use of the means and resources that we have for the fulfillment of our mission.
OBJECTIVES
This campaign and solidarity activity has always had and will have the intention of donating food to needy people who live on the street until today we have served approximately 520 people to whom we have provided food but we have a new goal and we believe that we can achieve the goal of donating and providing medicines to people with heart deficiencies, vitamin deficiencies, illnesses such as allergies, flu and vitamin deficiencies who live on the streets and who, due to the Covid pandemic, are more vulnerable to being contracted by any disease from the non-existent public health services for people living on the street by the government, this foundation carries out non-profit activities, it is totally supportive. We will continue to donate food to people who live on the streets and we will also collect donations to be able to donate medicines to these people. Our intention is to help people who cannot obtain food or medicine due to their economic situation, as well as who live on the streets and do not obtain any help from the Government.
We count on the love and solidarity of all of you to achieve the goal of raising: $ 4000 equivalent to (23.3 BSV, 0.35 BTC).
Any help or donation will always be welcome, thanks to these contributions we can make more donations and meet our goals Our activities are fully documented and recorded through authentic photographs and publications, we will always publish accurate and timely information about our charitable activities.
TEAM
HERMAN SANCHEZ
Founder
Friendly and a perfectionist, Herman Sanchez is loved by both donors and partners in our program. His love for helping out and providing food to needy people living on the streets makes us proud and very fortunate to have such a wonderful founder on our team.
RAMÓN QUESADA
Voluntario
Great influencer in the world of BitcoinSV, he is a highly valued volunteer of our humanitarian activity. Ramon Quesada supports, organizes and promotes new programs among our staff, members, and volunteers. https://ramonquesada.com/ (Español) https://es.ramonquesada.com/
DONACIONES
We count on the support of people like you to generate sustainable changes in the lives of these people who live on the street. The financial help we receive makes a big difference in the way we carry out our programs here at the Hearts BSV Foundation “Donate food to needy people on the street”. However, if you prefer to donate your time and energy, we would love to be able to use your skills and talents in a way that helps the beneficiaries of our charity.
Do you want to support the Foundation hearts BSV “Donate food to needy people on the street”? We would love to receive your help, the community we help will be delighted. Contact us for more information on donation opportunities. Regardless of how you can help, we guarantee that you will have a great impact on the lives of many people.
“Big things are made by a series of small things combined.”
Vincent van Gogh
If you want to observe all our humanitarian activity documented through images you can go to our Blog and you will find our multimedia library. All our humanitarian activities have been photographed.
Campaña #BitcoinSV: "DONAR COMIDA A LAS PERSONAS NECESITADAS DE LA CALLE"#DONACIONES#BSV:12Hwyakzo6Bt8khagN4upcCG69y6X2zyui#MONEYBUTTON: 33205@moneybutton.com#HANDCASH: readsv@handcash.io
The @RealCoinGeek team getting ready for the kick-off of the biggest global gathering of developers and entrepreneurs from the #BitcoinSV ecosystem – #CGLive
The @RealCoinGeek team getting ready for the kick-off of the biggest global gathering of developers and entrepreneurs from the #BitcoinSV ecosystem – #CGLive@BitcoinAssn is proud to once again play a vital role as an official sponsor.
nChain Acquires Award-Winning Software Development Company Equaleyes
LONDON, Oct. 1, 2020 — nChain, the provider of enterprise-grade public blockchain solutions, today announces its acquisition of Equaleyes, the multi-award-winning software development firm based in Maribor, Slovenia. This acquisition is the latest move by nChain to further bolster its development arm. Earlier this year, nChain acquired CREA and became one of the world’s most powerful Bitcoin development teams.
nChain Acquires Award-Winning Software Development Company Equaleyes
In his keynote at CoinGeek Live, Congressman Darren Soto provided a better understanding of the balance lawmakers are trying to hit when it comes to optimizing innovation around blockchain and digital currency
CoinGeek Live 2020: US Rep. Darren Soto talks balancing innovation and regulation for blockchain growth
The Bayesian Group has been working on “consumer-first, transparent solutions built on Bitcoin SV,” in line with its mission of furthering positive change by transforming the fabric of our global systems. […]
Re-imagining modern finance on Bitcoin SV blockchain at CoinGeek Live
The Bayesian Group through its brand Fabriik is building the future world financial system on Bitcoin. Money Button is the leading wallet solution for Bitcoin. Money Button has been acquired by The Bayesian Group to create a holistic solution integrating a hedge fund, a tokenization platform, and a digital asset wallet. Money Button powers the wallet component of the solution.
“Technology is about what you enable your customers to do and we’re delighted that we’re at the heart of helping service providers begin to think about the value they bring to their customers building out new services”
“We want to be at a point where people can do provable demonstrable auditable cheques in real-time and then potentially sell this same information or just transfer the same information”
Peter Bainbridge- Clayton, Founder & CTO, #Kompany
Catch Lance Morginn, President of Blockchain Intelligence Group at 9:55am PT / 12:55pm ET today to hear him talk about #blockchain intelligence, analytics, forensics & #compliance tools for #BSV.
Dr. Robert Huber and Phillip Runyan described at CoinGeek Live how faulty processes and corruption over the years have destroyed trust in the pharmaceutical industry, and how Bitcoin could help rebuild it. […]
Read More…
The post CoinGeek Live 2020: Veridat and JuvaTech using Bitcoin to restore trust appeared first on CoinGeek .
We take a look at the future of iGaming & the role of #BitcoinSV at #CGLive with a panel discussion:
Panel:
@CryptoFights
/ Kronoverse CEO Adam Kling,
Esports Entertainment Group CTO John Brackens
@Unikrnco
CEO & Co-founder
@Rahulsood
Daniel Keane, Paul Chiari and Brendan Lee spoke at CoinGeek Live about using the Bitcoin SV ledger to store massive amounts of data generated by everything from pumps to trees and even cows. […]
Read More…
The post CoinGeek Live 2020: How Bitcoin SV provides data ledger for Internet of Things appeared first on CoinGeek .
Unbounded Enterprise is a Bitcoin (BSV) transaction processor, services provider, and services aggregator which aims to drive the integration of Bitcoin into start-ups and existing businesses. […]
Read More…
The post Unbounded Enterprise Launches: Offering Transaction Processing, Bitcoin Services, and Mining Pool appeared first on CoinGeek .
At CoinGeek Live 2020, Anypay, Zumo, GAP600 and Centi executives took the stage to speak about why customer experience is the key to mainstream Bitcoin adoption in payments. […]
Read More…
The post CoinGeek Live 2020: Improving the payment experience with Bitcoin appeared first on CoinGeek .
“BSV is the only public blockchain that exists that can support the transactions cost, speed, and scale required to service enterprise-sized behemoths like the pharmaceutical industry”
Bitcoin SV (BSV) serves as a global ledger that makes use of the original Bitcoin capabilities. No wonder people from all over the world are involved.
Especially in Spain and Latin America, BSV seems to win users, developers, enthusiasts, businesses and media traction. Time for CoinGeek to meet some of the Spanish and Latin American Bitcoin SV proponents.
We caught up with Ramon Quesada and Jaime Sánchez, both highly involved in developing a BSV society in Spain and Latin America.
Hello Ramon and Jaime! Kindly introduce yourself to our readers.
Ramon: Hi, my name is Ramon Quesada, I’m from Cuba, but I have been living in Valencia (Spain) for close to 30 years. I first heard about Bitcoin in spring 2013, I fell in love with the concept at the first glance, let’s say I have been looking for something that gives me freedom all my life, and that’s what I saw in Bitcoin when I started to read about it. Since then I’ve been involved to learn and create a community in Valencia, you may see more info on my blog.
Jaime: Well, I was born near to a small city in La-Mancha, Spain, 29 years ago. I am involved in Bitcoin since 2013 when I was studying computer science at the university. I literally spent weeks at the library just reading about that. Since then I dropped full time to Bitcoin to try to understand it. I refer to myself as a multidisciplinary researcher, working with some fintech startups in these years. I can say my experience is focused on derivatives markets and financial controlling. For more info: this is my website.
Take us inside the digital asset world of Spain and Latin America—how broadly known is “general crypto” in your countries so far?
Ramon: Well, I used to run an online newspaper franchise as a team manager, Cointelegraph España (which is not what we have today, Cointelegraph en español, is not a franchise) from the end of 2015 till August 2017. BTC was changing a lot, especially the transaction fees, the confirmation time etc., that made things go bad for merchants and users.
So BTC almost lost the sense of medium of exchange for merchants and users, and from that perspective, I was losing sponsors in order make the franchise successful, and the point is that there were very few companies at that time that used to sponsor us, so franchise was over, and now by the time that has passed, things for merchants and users were not getting better, I would say things are even worse.
So then came the ICO era, and after that the BCH fork, and after that BSV—when I saw the roadmap of BSV, at the end of 2018—I said to myself: this is a completely different story! And this must be the opportunity to the ecosystem to grow.
BSV has only one year and a half so far, and we start to see growth in Spain (HandCash was an standard point to follow and to learn from) and in a few countries in Latin America (we have a friend in Argentina working for Money Button, another reference for the community). We also have some friends from Venezuela (Kuwai dev), they are working in some project in the MetaNet space, and they are coming out with their apps this same year. These are just some examples of what we have, but not all of them. Now the difference is that the BSV blockchainprotocol is already done, so we are ready to receive developers to construct on top of BSV.
Jaime: I can say this “crypto world” is driven by new users each time price goes up, in Spain for example you can find meetups about these 1000 alternative coins trying to find devs to develop in their tech, and on the other hand you can see typical monthly meetups about false narrative, BTC maximalist, and DEFI.
People do not want to learn about tech, just a tiny group building with blockchain tech, it is just a few, and they are building incorrectly, with no scale projects and proofs of concepts. The community is guided by trends, ICOs, STOs, now the DEFI scam. Nobody is trying to understand the real tech on their own. Everything is about the price, buy and sell, and exchanges do events and marketing to catch new “retail investors.”
In Spain, if you go out and ask random people on the street, they think Bitcoin is a risky speculation, related with drugs and black markets and their confidence is low. That’s the majority point of view.
Can you name some of the biggest exchanges in your countries and some media outlets that report on digital assets?
Ramon: There are some small websites here in Spain, unfortunately they have to follow what the community agenda marks. Now most of them are publishing more pro BTC and DeFi news. We have a couple of friends that cover BSV/MetaNet news here in Spain: https://www.tucriptomoneda.com and https://observatorioblockchain.com.
We hope these examples would replicate in other countries in Latin America.
Jaime: For example, in Spain Bit2me or Bitnovo are the mains exchange actors, tiny startups and early adopters operating as a broker with a fee, but no real exchanges because of the law. In Spain it is not clear how to operate as a real exchange.
Both of you seem to have acknowledged that the original Bitcoin only lives on in the form of Bitcoin SV (BSV) nowadays. How much attention does Bitcoin SV get in your community?
Ramon: It is a small community, let’s say after a year and a half, we are just starting, but we have already done some social network to share information with the community, because we have 7 years’ experience of doing blockchain/crypto community:
This is our latest torpedo, with only 24 active users, we haven’t opened it for the entire community yet, thanks especially to Jaime Sánchez we did run it up in only a few days and here is the current content: https://foro.bsvespanol.org/
Jaime: It were difficult times. We have tried to explain technology, history and “why BSV” in some meetups in Madrid (were supposedly a more techy community exists), but we found criticism, attacks and a lot of mixed concepts badly argued by people that think they have more knowledge or the correct knowledge about Bitcoin.
It’s so difficult to create a “community”, but now we think—and being 7 years in this ecosystem—we have found the correct way, not arguing with them, just building our own infrastructure with our new Spanish forum related only to BSV and focus on the history of Bitcoin (the real one) and development. We are building the correct time line for the new users of the future.
What about the “crypto media” reports about Bitcoin SV in Spain and Latin America? Are they reporting neutrally, not at all or even negatively connoted?
Ramon: They are pro BTC, without neutrality, but we keep fighting for our freedom!
Jaime: “Crypto media” publish what companies are paying them to publish, simple, and some clickbaits with no real value are just sensationalism.
Is there kind of a language barrier for people from Latin America to get crucial information about Bitcoin SV?
Ramon: Definitely yes!
Jaime: Yes, absolutely. We`ve spent more than 6 years in this tech and always English has been a “problem” for new Spanish or Latin American people. There are professionals, high qualified, great people with creative skills and thoughts, others maybe don’t have a high level education, but a lot of interest to learn and how to start using this, not just buy and sell. When they understand the real usability they wake up and want more. For the professional side, the main part missing is a good documentation or official standards to start with.
Our main mission was always to be the bridge between these people, and I have to say that Ramon Quesada did a really good work in these years, working 24/7 in filtering the good information. I’ve learned so much sharing time with him, we spent time in events, different communities and projects in these years; we were learned, studied and kept doing it. I am proud to share this adventure with Ramon, with all the people that we knew in these years, and to be part of something greater than ourselves that can impact millions of lives in the future.
How is “crypto twitter” in Spain and Latin America positioned concerning Bitcoin SV?
Ramon: We are few, but we believe we are in the right path, so we tweet every day! We are growing slowly but very firm, I want to thank all friends that help sharing our tweets, and especially Luis Carrión, he never gives up tweeting and twetching, I have no words to thank his fantastic work! Also see:
The problem is the money behind the exchanges and companies which are not showing themselves publicly, they are moving the markets in this kind of casino party, the 98% of the ICOs are not presenting any project working with blockchain in these past years.
“Crypto twitter” is not good for knowledge, sadly it’s a waste of time, because when a good info appears, nobody is watching, but if you are part of the business, you know, you need to be a player, it is the price to pay. On the other hand, you have this kind of gurus collaborating with some entities, companies or official government initiatives just talking and talking and doing meetups for nothing. But they created their mini-community and they are validating their ideas for themselves. For sure, we are the only Spanish “real Bitcoin knowledge base” right now
How easy or hard is it for your friends and families to actually get onboarded to Bitcoin SV? Which onboarding process is being used most, and what could or should improve?
Ramon: Hard question! It is hard to do onboarding. I think we have to improve the education process, more quality information to kill all those myths about Bitcoin! We need to have a good narrative and success in BSV, and small projects are very important for onboarding.
We designed a roadmap to show to the Bitcoin Association, we hope someday we could make it real:
Jaime: For now, onboarding is as easy as to show apps running on top of Bitcoin or using micropayments. We show apps like Twetch and HandCash, we put some money inside, Money Button also, and show how to create your own profile, people learn to do things with Bitcoin SV.
We are not explaining what blockchain is, what a Bitcoin address is, but we explain easy to understand things. Just use it and see how fast it is. The difficult part is explaining when they ask about BTC, you need to be careful using words to explain what a software implementation is and why you can have different implementations.
Let us talk about what both of you actually do to help spreading Bitcoin SV in Spain and Latin America. Kindly tell us about the meetups you have done so far!
Ramon: Basically we use social network to inform about our meetups, then give freedom to people to express themselves and give them the best information we have. We do not give financial advice, we give them everything to learn by themselves, then we show them our social network in which we have the discussion, like the Telegram chat: https://t.me/Bitcoin_S_V
We talk clearly and we show the BSV roadmap, and the difference with other blockchains, there is no secrecy, but work every day!
Jaime: Currently we launched this website for Spanish and Latin American people: https://Bsvespanol.org
In some way to catch people that are searching about BSV in Spanish, to do a listing about local communities groups here: https://bsvespanol.org/comunidades/
And redirect to our official forum—https://foro.bsvespanol.org—where we are putting on as much information as we can: Craig Wright articles and reflections, myths and false narrative problems, developer tools etc.
The idea is to put all the information in form of threads, to start with a good knowledge base. For now we are trying to do it this way, filtering in all the people trying to guide these people to the truth, saving time and accelerating the learning curve as easy and as fast as possible. If you are reading this and want to form a part of the forum, you can contact us at our official Spanish telegram group or in the contact form on the website.
Of course we would want to do this with the Bitcoin Association in collaboration, working as a part of the Bitcoin Association or collaborator, but we think heroes or leaders are missing and you don’t have to ask permission to build something. Latin America has a huge community that is missing in the game, as well as Spain.
What is planned for the future? Are you going for even bigger events?
Ramon: Yes, sure! Thanks to the Bitcoin Association, we have done some events, and we hope to continue our activities. We have already announced the 16th BSV Meetup.
We have done one meetup each month so far, I think we are the only community with 16 meetups, but we rather prefer recurring activities (like a mini Hackathon, every 3 or 6 months, for example, than isolated big events), we are thinking in the long run, and we want a strong community!
Jaime: This is the beginning. Currently we are running the first Spanish meetup about BSV in Valencia, Spain. We did 14 official meetups so far, first with BCH and later with BSV.
We did the first in person mini hackathon for Spanish people in Barcelona last summer:
And now we want to launch the second in person hackathon in Valencia this summer.
We also think it is important to start talking with universities to collaborate in boot camps or meetups to show the tech to students with all the possibilities of Bitcoin in the next academic year.
From the meetups you organized and your involvement in the Latin American and Spanish “BSV society”, is there anything specific that people from Latin America and Spain expect from Bitcoin SV’s development/apps?
Ramon: Well, for most of the veteran people in the space, we expect to see BitCoin as it always was intended to be—money for the entire world, BitCoin as a medium of exchange, low fees, fast transactions, micropayment as a new business model, and also new business model using our data, and a lot of new business models we cannot even imagine yet.
We think for people from countries like in Latin America, Bitcoin is not an expensive toy, it rather is a desired tool to improve their lives, and we have to show them that Bitcoin is back, and the promise to make a better world is still alive, today more than ever before.
Jaime: I think people don’t realize the potential of the real Bitcoin as a form of protocol to build everything on top of. They are waiting real micropayments and standard payments in merchant and retail shops locally but in general people don’t see all the power yet.
In Latin America, they want to use Bitcoin for everything as a normal currency, we need to spread people that Bitcoin is a tool to improve the form of the classic fiat money, but not a currency per se, that is the original idea we are learning now.
How can we get in touch with your community and be up to date on the progress? Are there any “must follow” Twetch or Twitter users from Spain and Latin America to have an eye on? Is there a specific website you recommend? Maybe a Streamanity or Youtube channel?
Jaime: Our contacts in Twetch and Twitter are Ramon Quesada and Jaimexbt. Yes, I know, sorry, I’ve been using the ticker XBT as a part of my alias since 2013.
It is useful to follow HandCash’s Alex Agut, our friend and ambassador, but he is always posting in English. The rest of our friends are working hard locally in their Latin American communities like Cuba, Colombia or Venezuela, but they are still small communities, there is a lot of work to do!
Thank you very much Michael, and thanks also to the CoinGeek staff and all people that give us the opportunity to express ourselves in this interview.
Standardize SPV and Tokens for Five Billion Daily Active Users
Introduction
In order to get to five billion daily active users of Bitcoin it is important to implement and standardize Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) wallets with support for tokenized digital assets including major world fiat currencies like the US Dollar.
We can summarize these initiatives as follows:
Implement and standardize SPV wallets. SPV wallets, described in the original white paperbut never fully implemented, enable users to possess and transact in digital cash. Although the user will not know how it works, what is going on is that their device is automatically sending and receiving transactions from other people and entities and verifying the user’s own transactions. Not only does this enable every non-custodial use-case, such as small cash transactions, it is also important for the security of Bitcoin as a whole that the block headers are widely distributed in end-user SPV wallets. The wide distribution of block headers is what prevents nodes from committing fraud and is the central distinguishing feature of a public blockchain versus a private database. Not only do we need to implement SPV, but we need to do so in a way that is standardized and interoperable through the ecosystem.
Implement and standardize tokenized digital assets on Bitcoin. Most people will not consciously send and receive Bitcoin. Instead, they will send and receive their local fiat currency or other digital assets such as stocks and bonds. Under the hood, Bitcoin is being used to pay nodes to stamp their transaction to the blockchain. But the costs are so small as to be negligible to most users. In order to get tokens going on Bitcoin, we need both the technical protocols to do so as well as the businesses (and maybe governments) to back the assets. It is important that these protocols are standardized so that they can be widely implemented and used throughout the ecosystem.
This is not a complete list of tasks that we must finish to get to five billion daily active users. We need to learn, build, test, iterate, rebuild, educate, market, sell, and over again just like any other industry. In this article we are going to concentrate only on the technical standards portion of the initiative. Our goal is to standardize everything necessary to get to five billion daily active users.
The Technical Standards Committee
The Bitcoin Association recently announced the Technical Standards Committee (TSC). The goal of the TSC is to establish and maintain a process for creating technical standards that use Bitcoin as the base protocol. The TSC will not actually create standards but will make sure that anyone who wants to create a standard has a clear process to follow that will result in real standards that are widely used.
Paymail (see also Money Button documentation) is an example of a standard we have already created, but that has not been formally standardized yet. We will create a formal standard for paymail and all other standards that we need to result in SPV and tokens across the ecosystem. Because tokens are so critical for use-cases for Bitcoin, and because token protocols are highly linked to many possible standards related to SPV, we include the token roadmap alongside the SPV roadmap.
Money Button and other companies are going to follow the process outlined by the TSC to start standardizing the future of wallets, including most especially SPV and tokens. This article motivates the standardization process so as to increase collaboration across the ecosystem, since standards require wide agreement by their nature.
The Definition of SPV and Tokens
There are no SPV wallets right now. This is a bit surprising considering SPV was described in the original white paper. Why haven’t any wallets actually implemented SPV?
Essentially, SPV has been overlooked because Bitcoin has been widely misunderstood and mis-implemented. Many people who got involved in Bitcoin were motivated to do something other than create the plumbing of the world economy. Their vision did not require scale, security, user-experience, or legality, so they never implemented SPV.
For those of us who want world adoption and who believe that the original vision for Bitcoin will get us there, we need to take care of the basics now. It is our responsibility to make SPV and tokens happen.
Non-custodial wallets currently exist, but do not go far enough for real SPV. The properties of an SPV wallet are as follows:
Transactions must be sent peer-to-peer. There is no reason for a payer to rely on a transaction to be relayed through nodes when they could hand over the transaction peer-to-peer directly to the recipient. This allows for instant transactions and is far more scaleable as it does not require that the recipient scan the blockchain or subscribe to a service to find their payment.
Transactions must include inputs and Merkle proofs. In order for the recipient to validate their transaction while offline, it is important that they can see the input transactions and inclusion proofs (Merkle proofs) for the inputs. The input transactions are necessary in order to validate the transaction and the Merkle proofs are necessary to know the coins originally came from the blockchain. Although many people will be online when receiving a transaction, it is important that our protocols do not exclude realistic use-cases, and internet connections are not 100% reliable. The offline use-case is also important for future extensibility to support payment channels which aren’t sent to nodes.
Wallets must track the block headers from the nodes. The end-user wallet can track the latest block headers from the nodes using a standardized form of Miner ID and the Merchant API. If it is ever the case that a node commits fraud such as by changing the block headers, it is important that the block headers are widely distributed to prevent this. This does not require that end-user wallets do anything expensive (SPV is cheap) but it does require that wallet developers are conscious to do SPV properly to make sure this security mechanism exists.
Tokens need the following properties:
Standardized token protocol, or at least a wrapper protocol. We do not currently have a standardized token protocol, but there are several in development. If possible, it is desirable to have only one standard so that there is less for businesses to implement. However, some token protocols may be more appropriate for some use-cases than others. To allow for this, it may be better to standardize a token wrapper that allow us to use tokens in an interoperable way across services without worrying about the details inside each protocol. This will allow a market of many different protocols to exist while still limiting the amount of work businesses have to do to implement new protocols.
Real world businesses or governments that back assets. Tokens are not useful if they do not have value. It is important that we have real-world stocks, bonds, and fiat currencies. Each of these asset classes have many different types of assets issued by governments or corporations all over the world. There can be many parallel initiatives in places that solve different pieces of this puzzle. The token protocols must be developed in collaboration with these businesses to make sure the protocols will actually be used.
SPV and tokens, by their nature, require interoperable standards. A wallet that implements SPV and tokens in a proprietary way does not have any advantages over systems that already exist like centralized payment and data management. In order to get the benefits of Bitcoin, these things must be standardized to enable a competitive market.
Why SPV and Tokens Matter for Five Billion Daily Active Users
SPV and Tokens are prerequisites for five billion daily active users for the following reasons:
SPV is necessary to scale Bitcoin. As the volume of transactions increases on the network, the cost of running the node software increases. It is already cost-prohibitive for normal users to run the node software and it will only get more expensive. It has always been the intention that end-users run SPV, which requires computational power low enough that even feature phones can do it. Widely deployed SPV is the only way we get to five billion daily active users.
SPV is necessary for the security of Bitcoin. Oddly overlooked, it is necessary that the block headers are widely distributed for Bitcoin to be secure. If everyone has the block headers, then no one can unwind the blockchain. Some people have promoted the idea that everyone should run the node software, which would result in everyone having the block headers, but this will not work because it is cost prohibitive. However, SPV is extremely cheap and scaleable, so it is a way to distribute the block headers widely, almost for free.
SPV is necessary for private Bitcoin. Bitcoin enables users to really own their data and their money. For many transactions, users desire privacy. Digital cash in SPV wallets enables genuinely private transactions. Only the user and the recipient of the funds know who are the participants of the transaction. As the scale of Bitcoin increases, the privacy increases because finding a transaction is like finding a needle in a haystack that keeps getting bigger. Users do not get these benefits if they must rely on trusted third-parties to transact on their behalf, because then the trusted third-party knows everything.
SPV is necessary for usable Bitcoin. Bitcoin enables a better user-experience than the traditional payment system for many use-cases, especially small cash transactions and micropayments. Small cash transactions do not require Know-Your-Customer (KYC) compliance, meaning that users do not need to scan their passport to use the service. Thus, it is easy to create and destroy SPV wallets without any action from the user. Using SPV as contrasted with a custodial wallet enables this use-case.
Tokens are necessary for usable Bitcoin. Tokens are key because most users will not care about Bitcoin (BSV) the digital asset. Instead, they will use a wallet that manages digital assets they actually care about, such as their local fiat currency for cash transactions or their investment portfolio including stocks and bonds. In most cases, users will not know they are using Bitcoin, in the same way that most users do now know they are using the internet.
SPV and tokens are necessary (but not sufficient) for five billion daily active users.
A Standardization Roadmap
The intention of this article is not to argue in favor of any particular standards (except existing standards, like paymail), but to argue that we need to have a standardization roadmap with small, modular standards that build up from the most basic standards to complex standards. Each modular standard will have some businesses interested and designing and implementing it. The fact that they fit together like puzzle pieces in a standardization roadmap will encourage more businesses to get onboard as they will see the end-game is something we all want.
As such, the following is a hypothetical standardization roadmap that will get us to five billion daily active users with SPV and tokens. Our hope is that businesses will provide feedback to this roadmap and that the standards we actually design and implement will solve the same set of issues, but may look different in detail to the particulars outlined here.
Paymail
Paymail as it was originally launched solves two important problems: A way to have names that are human-readable and machine-readable simultaneously, and a way to have an endpoint so that users can communicate (or their device can communicate on their behalf) with the other person or entity. We also had the ability to deliver addresses and public keys in the original paymail protocol, but these should be regarded as MVPs of paymail. The real value of paymail is that it is an extensible protocol for naming and queries and we can use it to solve many of the other issues for SPV and tokens. Most of the value of paymail will be delivered over time as it is extended to solve countless issues that rely on naming and queries.
Signatures, encryption, and Diffie-Hellman (DH) key exchange
Many protocols we want to use on top of Bitcoin will require data that is signed and/or encrypted. Money Button has already implemented on-chain and off-chain signatures and encryption and it is widely used around the ecosystem. We need to standardize signatures and encryption both for their own sake, but also to with the intention to be re-used inside other higher-level protocols discussed below, such as invoices and KYC.
Signatures and encryption often only make sense in the context of a shared secret and derivation of new keys, and as such as should include DH key exchange in these standards, along with any other cryptographic primitives that we plan to re-use in higher level protocols.
Dependencies:
Paymail. While not all signatures or encryption need to be attached to a paymail, many do. The public key in the original paymail protocol can be used for signatures, encryption, and DH key exchange.
KYC
Know-Your-Customer (KYC) regulations play an important role throughout the ecosystem. Any time a user needs to scan their passport of government ID, it is probably because of KYC regulations. Exchanges and wallets need to follow KYC regulations.
KYC can be irritating for the end-user if they have to scan their passport over and over. But a related concept is that the user likes to know what is the true identity of the party on the other side of the transaction, such as when making a purchase at a store or with another individual the user is trading with. This is good for end-users. A good solution to KYC can solve both issues, bringing both the user-experience benefits and eliminating the need to scan one’s passport over and over.
Essentially, the way to solve KYC is to allow third-party identity businesses like Jumio, or wallets or exchanges acting on their behalf, to sign a user’s paymail. This in combination with a standardized paymail authentication system will allow users to log into services and provide access to KYC information without first scanning their passport for the Nth time.
The same technology can be used to allow businesses to prove their identity to the end-user or to other businesses.
Dependencies:
Paymail. The proposed solution to KYC requires an extension to paymail that allows third-party KYC providers to sign the user’s paymail.
Signatures, encryption and DH key exchange. The paymail is signed, and private data will need to be encrypted.
Invoices
Users need to be able to send and receive invoices in a standardized way where a user with one wallet can send an invoice to another wallet. The notion of invoices will almost certainly replace the casual use of sending money to an address or a paymail. Invoices can be signed, authenticated, and tracked in a manner that makes accounting much better than without them. Invoices are standard in business and we should being them to Bitcoin.
BIP 270 is a proposed standard but is not yet widely implemented. We can use BIP 270, but we should be sure to also solve the problems that aren’t solved by BIP 270, including most especially signing the invoices, which will require KYC and related standards first.
Dependencies:
Paymail. This is who the invoice is to and from and how we do KYC.
Signatures, encryption, and DH key exchange. Either used on its own to sign/encrypt invoices or used in combination with KYC.
KYC. The ability to sign an invoice with your real name or company name.
NAT traversal
In order to send messages peer-to-peer over the internet, which is necessary for sending transactions and Merkle proofs, we need to worry about a highly technical issue with respect to how the ipv4-based internet works. This issue is Network Address Translation (NAT) which means the the router in between the user and the internet will automatically change their IP address and makes it quite difficult to get a message directly to them from the outside unless they have first established a connection. There are a variety of techniques for solving this issue. We will not propose any particular solutions here, other than to point out that the solutions involve a bit of cryptography, and as such any solution will likely require signatures and encryption.
Dependencies:
Signatures, encryption, and DH key exchange. Most likely will be used to authenticate the communicating party.
Peer-to-peer messaging
SPV requires that we send transactions peer-to-peer. Additionally, input transactions and Merkle proofs are also sent along with the payment. It is possible that a peer-to-peer messaging protocol could be used for other things besides transactions (such as user-to-user chat), but transactions will be the primary use-case.
Note that in this example I am assuming invoices are implemented first, but it would also be possible to build an invoice system on top of the peer-to-peer messaging infrastructure.
Dependencies:
Paymail. The name and endpoint of the person or entity the user is messaging.
Signatures, encryption, and DH key exchange. Cryptography is used for all messages for privacy and authenticity.
NAT traversal. The only way to get a message to an end-user is with some resolution to NAT traversal.
On-chain audit trail
Many protocols become more secure if events are logged on-chain, including the delivery of the receiving address in paymail. A standardized way to do on-chain logging would be useful.
Dependencies:
Paymail. Most likely the logs are tagged with a paymail.
Signatures, encryption, and DH key exchange. Most likely the logs are signed and encrypted with a paymail.
Peer-to-peer transactions, Merkle proofs, and input transactions
SPV requires that transactions themselves are sent directly to the recipient along with input and transactions and Merkle proofs so that the recipient can validate the transaction before sending it to a node.
Paymail. Where to send the transaction and where it comes from.
Signatures, encryption, and DH key exchange. Cryptography is used for all messages for privacy and authenticity.
NAT traversal. The only way to get a message to an end-user is with some resolution to NAT traversal.
Peer-to-peer messaging. Most likely this protocol is built directly on top of the peer-to-peer messaging protocol.
Tokens or token wrapper protocol
To make implementation easier, it is desirable that we have exactly one token protocol standard. However, given the history of our industry and the proliferation of projects creating token protocols, we may never have a situation where there is one dominant token protocol. Thus, we should consider standardizing a simple and flexible wrapper protocol for tokens that will enable token protocol developers to innovate inside of a standard wrapper so that.
ERC 20 tokens are the token wrapper protocol for Ethereum.
Tokens most likely do not depend on any of the other standards on this list, but may be used inside of them. For instance, the invoice protocol may not start out support tokens, but may need to be extended to do so.
Names and avatars for paymail
It would be useful to see names and faces next to the paymails in your contact list.
Dependencies:
Paymail. Who the name and avatar is for.
Signatures, encryption, and DH key exchange. For signing the names and avatars.
FATF compliance
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) creates recommendations for national governments to regulate their financial industry. The recommendations are widely followed globally and we need to comply with them. New FATF recommendations require that businesses communicate KYC information for digital currency transactions. A protocol has already been created to solve this issue: InterVASP. We will have the option of using InterVASP or rolling our own or some of both.
Dependencies:
Paymail. Almost certainly our solution should be built on top of paymail to make sending and receiving transactions simple and compatible with our existing systems.
KYC. We also have the option of using our own KYC technology in the protocol.
Paymail authentication or “sign in with paymail”
Because Money Button adopted basic cryptographic operations including signatures, businesses have started to implement informal “sign in with paymail” by swiping Money Button. This is both a great solution to the user-experience issue of logging into a website without using yet another new username and password, and also a way to provide permissioned access to the user’s wallet. This makes countless applications possible and can be combined with other protocols like KYC to enable single sign-on into financial institutions without having to scan one’s passport yet again. This idea is probably best extended to become a protocol. We can call this paymail authentication or “sign in with paymail”.
Not only should this protocol allow one to sign in, but it should also include protocols for granting permission to the user’s wallet. For instance, the user can grant access to spend small amounts of money automatically or sign or encrypt or decrypt data automatically. These extensions could be added after the basic protocol for signing in is created first.
Dependencies:
Paymail. The name you use to log in is your paymail and we re-use the https endpoints for other properties of the protocol such as granting permission.
Signatures, encryption, and DH key exchange. These will be necessary for authentication and privacy.
Conclusion
We have argued that SPV and tokens are necessary to achieve five billion daily active users for Bitcoin. Five billion comes from the number of adult economic agents on the planet. If we can achieve this number, we can confidently say we have achieved global adoption for Bitcoin.
In order to have SPV and tokens, it is not just a matter of having one business implement them. SPV and tokens are by their nature protocols that need to be widely adopted if they are to be meaningful. They need to be standards.
The Technical Standards Committee (TSC) has been created to facilitate the creation of standards. The next step is a roadmap where businesses design and implement standards useful to them in a particular order that allows standards to be re-used inside of each other with smart dependencies. We start with the most basic standards first and build upwards.
What we have outlined in this article is a hypothetical roadmap for creating modular standards that will result in widely implemented SPV and tokens. The roadmap here does not propose any concrete standards other than the ones that already exist (particularly paymail). Instead, the roadmap is intended to provoke discussion and be referenced by companies already working on these standards. The intention is that the actual standards roadmap will be similar to this list, but most likely will include more, better solutions, after relevant discussions have taken place.
Ryan X. Charles is the founder of Money Button and a member of the Technical Standards Committee.
In 2015, Craig Wright explained the Turing Completeness of Bitcoin to Nick Szabo on a panel. Nick Szabo dismissed him, misunderstood, and missed his chance to learn.
Craig Wright’s claims of being Satoshi Nakamoto has been widely rejected by a lot of prominent people in the cryptocurrency space. However, Wright has been relentless in his quest to prove that he is the creator of Bitcoin, enough to even file “harassment and libel” lawsuits that claim he is Satoshi Nakamoto.
This debate was recently reignited by Ryan Charles, a prominent voice in the crypto community. Charles, the CEO of Money Button, uploaded a video on his YouTube channel to back up a recent
Craig Wright has 17 degrees and he’s getting two more PhDs right now, simultaneously, while working a full-time job. He is the most serious life-long learner and scientist I have ever heard of in my life. Inspiring.
“Craig Wright has 17 degrees and he’s getting two more PhDs right now, simultaneously, while working a full-time job.
Craig Wright’s claims of being Satoshi Nakamoto has been widely rejected by a lot of prominent people in the cryptocurrency space. However, Wright has been relentless in his quest to prove that he is the creator of Bitcoin, enough to even file “harassment and libel” lawsuits that claim he is Satoshi Nakamoto.
This debate was recently reignited by Ryan Charles, a prominent voice in the crypto community. Charles, the CEO of Money Button, uploaded a video on his YouTube channel to back up a recent
Craig Wright has 17 degrees and he’s getting two more PhDs right now, simultaneously, while working a full-time job. He is the most serious life-long learner and scientist I have ever heard of in my life. Inspiring.
He is the most serious life-long learner and scientist I have ever heard of in my life. Inspiring.”Charles’ latest YouTube video was a response to the negative comments to his aforementioned tweet, primarily to “clear out the misinformation” about Craig Wright. In the video, Charles said that he validated eight of Wright’s 17 degrees and also presented his method of finding (Googling) one of Wright’s PhD thesis.
He also said that he believed Wright to be “the real Satoshi Nakamoto” based on the proofs available online and his personal interaction with Wright. Charles supported this claim based on Wright’s knowledge of Bitcoin. He said,
“He has explained many things that no one had any explanation for. I’m very convinced that he (Wright) is Satoshi Nakamoto.”
While the self-recorded video’s central premise was supporting Wright’s Satoshi claims, Charles also took a jibe at ongoing token scams, while questioning Binance’s legality in the US. He asked the viewers,
“How come Binance is not doing KYC/AML stuff that the regulated exchanges in the U.S. do? They are breaking the law!”
Additionally, he labeled the people that refuse Wright’s claims as “liars”.
Following further discussion about how the Internet fueled the hate for the controversial self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator, Charles’ video ended by warning ‘haters’ about Wright’s intent to sue for defamation. While the video caught the attention of the crypto-enthusiasts, no official comment has been made by any prominent players by press time.
This information is currently in the public domain, what happens is that you have to search the internet a lot to find it:
This document is a post written by Lisa, Craig Wright’s sister, on her Tumblr blog, describing some things, which we already knew from the statements of Craig’s uncle, Don Lynam, despite Craig and his family They have tried to keep all this information as private as possible, finally and especially as a result of the trial that is being held in Florida USA, Ira Kleiman Vs Craig Wright is coming to light and I think that it will finally become an open secret, now you are possibly one of the first to read this text.
I’ve been researching my family history… To find out why I do things the way I do and why certain people in my family are the way they are…
This is a picture of my ‘Pop’, my Grand Dad, Captain R. A. Lynam
Every ANZAC Day (25th April) and Remembrance Day (11th November) that passes I often wonder what secrets he took to his grave. This year Ancestry.com.au offered free access to War Records so I decided to have a look after hearing an advertisement on the radio. My Pop served in World War 2. This is what I discovered in the documents… The below image was taken when he was just 22 years old. My Nana didn’t want him to join the army, he had a successful Radio Repair business in rural Queensland, but he still did, he felt he had something to offer the world. Back then there was a greater emphasis on serving your country..
His enlistment to the Australia Army was in 1939, by the time he was discharged in 1946 he had gained the rank of Captain. After joining his first post in the Australian Army was in the Allied Translator & Interpretor Section, Signal Corp – Brisbane and my Nana tells me he was to be promoted to Major, but decided the Army was no longer for him.
During his time in the armed forces, he served in the Philippines with General MacArthur’s Staff Group “Intelligence, Interrogation, and Code Breaking” Think of movies like the ‘Imitation Game’ for the type of work he would have done.
After leaving the Australian Army, my Pop was part of British/USA/Australian Intelligence Organization and was embedded in the US ARMY, where he was one of the Cryptography and Code Breaking Experts.
He was awarded medals but from the paperwork I have received he did not receive these until 1970. Nana tells me he didn’t want them and did not think he deserved them, it wasn’t until my Uncle asked for them that he wrote to the government seeking them.
My Pop died a few years ago now, survived by my Nana who turned 95 this year. When I was growing up we (my brother, Craig Wright and younger sister, Danielle and I) would walk home from school to Nana & Pops, and as a small child, I didn’t really understand what Pop did and why he travelled. He also had a room, no one was allowed to enter, (well my brother occasionally so Pop could help him with his inventions and weird and wonderful ideas.) This is where he would tinker away. I now believe that room was filled with some of the 20th Century’s earliest forms of communication. My Mum tells a story how they were one of the very first people to own a TV, no one even knew what it was or had heard of it, let alone owned one. The more I discover, the more I understand… Why the people in my family are, who they are.
Watch the entire documentary here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bitcoin Rare Interview with Visionary Bernhard von Nothaus. The Monetary Architect of the Liberty Dollar was charged and found guilty of federal crimes for “making, possessing, and selling his own currency”. 5 tons of gold and silver were seized by the FBI. Bernhard speaks passionately about central banking, money monopolies, and inflation.
01/09/2014 Craig Wright interview -12:51 Dale Dickins “During the making of this documentary Dale interviewed Craig Wright, his content *was* going to be narrative for the final episode. The world Craig describes gives a taste of why this technology exists, its peer to peer nature enables people to opt for the differences in their unique lifestyles. When Wired and Gizmodo announced him as Satoshi Nakamoto, plans changed and we decided on releasing his full interview to let people decide for themselves”.
A table of Australian Federal and National police attended this conference, which caused a few people to shift awkwardly in their seats as Craig Wright talked about transporting items of significant value through airports.
Tristan Winters ice3x.com, Craig Wright aka Satoshi Nakamoto, Johnathon Levin of chainalysis.com a representative for CoinPip speak about the Chinese bitcoin market, tracing bitcoins and how (some) Chinese companies think for bypassing strong regulation.
This conference was particularly interesting, people employed by Australia’s police force attended to find out more how cryptocurrencies work. Their presence made for an interesting space given the topic of conversation, unfortunately all the police people approached declined my invitation to be interviewed.
This section is from day 1 of the 2 day conference held in Sydney July 2014, the CoinPip representative (apologies didn’t grab your name) came a little late to the panel to join Tristan, Craig and Johnathan.
01/ 12/2017 Dr. Craig Wright – Why Patenting Creates Value – 3 min. nChain nChain Chief Scientist Dr. Craig Wright discusses the value of patents – including for blockchain technology. As he explains, protecting the value of our thoughts and ideas is the heart of capitalism and helps make a stronger society.
In our first formal interview for Bitcoin Will Come, we sit down with Craig S. Wright, Chief Scientist for nChain, lifetime learner and academic, and a well-known supporter of Bitcoin Cash.
“Just days away from the BCH fork we talk with Dr. Craig S Wright about his thoughts on the fork and what he plans to do to maintain control. Craig also shares his thoughts on Bitcoin core, Lightning Networks and the origins of Bitcoin. Daniel Krawisz co-founder of Nakamoto Institute also sit’s in for commentary and his take on the POSM algorithm coined by Dr. Wright”.
0:40 Background 2:41 Ending the manipulation of the financial system 4:35 Bucketshops (aka Exchanges) 6:40 Illegal Market Manipulation 10:30 Why did Craig create bitcoin? 14:05 Wikileaks 14:49 Patent discussion 17:35 3m Tx/second 19:45Block orphans 23:20 How to join as a miner? 26:33 A misnomer about bitcoins double hash and mining specialization 29:50 Thoughts behind designing bitcoin40:49David Rees (mathematician) 44:30 How Hal Finney & Ray Dillinger helped 51:35 Was Satoshi Nakamoto a group? 52:48 Craig “driven into the limelight” 58:32 Andrew O’Hagan (“The Satoshi Affair”) 1:01:30 Julian Assange 1:02:17 Silk Road 1:04:20 The Singularity 1:05:30 Dread Pirate Roberts (Key Ownership) 1:08:55 Lawsuits (binance etc and money laundering) 1:13:33 Craigs involvement in Churches and being a Pastor 1:16:20Bitcoin Whitepaper creation 1:17:56Phil Wilson1:20:28 “How do you stay so grounded?” and Craigs advice on money 1:25:10 Private law agreements and what blockchain is 1:29:15 “What does bitcoin need to do to become a medium of exchange?” 1:33:49 “What’s the one thing you wish people understood differently about you?” 1:35:40 Craig on the value of bitcoin
“Great chat with Dr. Craig S. Wright, chief scientist at nChain and… inventor of Bitcoin. Hear about his plans for all that BTC & BCH, how Bitcoin will work with government and business, and how the future will only be good if we build it that way”. Bitcoin SV Train / MetanetTV Livestream https://youtu.be/i1rD00scM1s
“Join the biggest names in the BitcoinSV community as Craig Wright (aka Satoshi Nakamoto), Jimmy Nguyen, Steve Shadders and more deliver fascinating insight into the goings-on in the world of BSV.”
17/10/2019 The Bitcoin Vision by Dr. Craig Wright” In his presentation, nChain Chief Scientist Dr. Craig Wright shared with the members of the Metanet Society of University of Cambridge his motivations and debunked some myths related to Bitcoin. The presentation was made at the University of Cambridge in UK last October 17, 2019.
“SATOSHI’S VISION: HOW BITCOIN’S ORIGINAL DESIGN CREATES HONEST COMMERCE
Scalability and financial stability go hand in hand with Satoshi’s vision. Craig Wright – Chief Scientist at nChain, Director – Tokenized, shares his thoughts on how bitcoin’s original design, creates honest commerce.”
17/11/2019 Craig Wright tells Richard Heart he is Satoshi, wrote the Bitcoin whitepaper
20/05/2020 VIDEO1º- REIMAGINE 2020 – Craig S. Wright, with Patrick McLain “so all of that’s going to come out, that I won’t say any of it yet, not too many weeks more!!!”
21/05/2020 VIDEO Life’s Tough but Crypto shouldn’t be – with Craig Wright (part 2)
2. Networks – Theory of Bitcoin
– Dr. Craig S. Wright & Ryan X. Charles Bitcoin is a biologically inspired network. Similar to a Mandala network, the center are miners
30 jun. 2020
3. Introduction to Law
– Theory of Bitcoin – Dr. Craig S. Wright & Ryan X. Charles
7 jul. 2020
The rule of law. Individual responsibility. The law should be mostly fixed, but must change slowly in response to circumstances. This is key to economic growth. https://t.co/4EBboRaAnG
4. Legal Aspects of Bitcoin
– Theory of Bitcoin – Dr. Craig S. Wright & Ryan X. Charles
14 jul. 2020
Minute: 1:39:14 / 2:05:45″I am the Antichrist for the cypherpunks”
Minute: 1h06 Craig explica el asunto de la propiedad intelectual con respecto a los datos que se utilizan con un programa open source, como es el caso de los datos de la blockchain de Bitcoin.
The innovation of Bitcoin is to bring law to digital assets. Monetary law, property law, contract law, and all other aspects of law apply unchanged to Bitcoin. Furthermore, the power of law can now be used for digital assets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJYUAK3GgP4&t=5422s
5. Script, Computation, & Turing Completeness
– Theory of Bitcoin – Craig Wright & Ryan X. Charles
21 jul. 2020
6. Economics, Information, Religion, Work, and Goggins
– Theory of Bitcoin – CSW & RXC
Time 1:51:28 – Minuto 1h31 bad infancy
28 jul. 2020
Everything is economic. Subjects include Lenin, communism, Christianity, Protestantism vs. Catholicism, information in the economy, education, liberal democracy, Fukuyama and Huntington, Dostoyevsky, the United States, David Goggins, and a discussion of this interview series itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4wTBvZ3aDU&feature=youtu.be
7. Computer Security, Game Theory, and Personal Responsibility
– Theory of Bitcoin – CSW & RXC
4 ago. 2020
This week’s book: “On Bullshit” by Frankfurt. Continuing last week’s books: “The Last Lion” by Manchester and Reid, “The Glory and the Dream” by Manchester. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXHzuY4brUY&t=412s
8. The History of Bitcoin
– Theory of Bitcoin – Dr. Craig S. Wright & Ryan X. Charles
11 ago. 2020 David Chaum, Digicash, Mark Twain Bank, why Craig Wright used the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” when he launched Bitcoin, and why there is so much misinformation about Bitcoin.
Books: * Continuing “The Last Lion” by William Manchester and Paul Reid * Continuing “The Glory and the Dream” by William Manchester * “Theory of Moral Sentiments” by Adam Smith * “A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived” by Adam Ruhterford https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=SD6xVUoCKks
What Bitcoin will look like in 30 years, what will happen to altcoins, the importance of specialization, SPV, payment channels, fiat currencies, Google/Facebook, and what’s good about Marx.
Books:
* Continuing “The Last Lion” by William Manchester and Paul Reid
* Continuing “The Glory and the Dream” by William Manchester
Craig Wright: Bitcoin as a security system
10 jun. 2020
CoinGeek
In a wide-ranging interview in front of an audience of developers and entrepreneurs at the Cambrian SV event in Lisbon in February, nChain Chief Scientist Dr. Craig Wright, talked about the fundamentals of Bitcoin – his creation as Satoshi Nakamoto, back in 2009. He was in conversation with Ryan X. Charles, the founder of Money Button, who wanted to learn more about Dr Wright’s thinking when he created Bitcoin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmVMdeI6TL8
The inventor of Bitcoin is an Australian-British polymath genius who obsessively studied and got degrees in every subject matter related to digital cash for more than ten years leading up to the genesis of Bitcoin and for more than ten years after its genesis leading to more patent applications, and soon-to-be more patents, than anyone in history, including Thomas Edison. His name is Dr. Craig S. Wright. I call him Craig, like most people who know him personally.
When I discovered Bitcoin on May 13, 2011, it seemed like it had the potential to be the foundation of a new industry, like the internet in the 1990s, and I thought I had a chance to get in on the ground floor and create success for myself. So I began an initiative to study Bitcoin and create businesses on top of it. My initiatives would result in what is today Money Button, a simple payment system based on Bitcoin.
I met Craig for the first time in early 2017 when my former cofounder, Clemens Ley, independently discovered the Turing completeness of Bitcoin and cold emailed Craig’s company, nChain, with his proof. It was common knowledge at the time, albeit wrongly, that Bitcoin was not Turing complete. But it is. Craig was the first to say so publicly in this panel with Nick Szabo, although no one believed him. Two years after that panel, nChain was intrigued by Clemens’ work, so we arranged a meeting with Craig in London.
After more than a day talking with Craig, it was clear that he was an exceptionally knowledgeable person. He talks at a very high level. Most people find it difficult to follow what he says. It is as though he speaks at the level of a university lecture during everyday discourse. But more than that, he speaks at a university level across five or more disciplines simultaneously, so it is actually higher information density than most university lectures. Even well-educated people usually can’t follow most of what he says.
A lot of dramatic events occurred in the industry from then until now, but I will spare you the details. What matters is that a selection process occurred whereby nearly the entire industry demonstrated a disinterest in the original idea of Bitcoin. Worse, as best I can tell, almost no one even understands it at all. Few people even seem to realize how interdisciplinary the theory of Bitcoin is, much less attempt to master the material. Most people who think they understand it seem to understand at best a hundredth or so, and at worst they willfully misunderstand it. As such, we have started to refer to the “cryptocurrency industry” as distinct from the Bitcoin industry. Their industry has essentially nothing to do with the original idea for Bitcoin.
It has become obvious to some of us involved that we need to substantially ramp up the knowledge and understanding of Bitcoin. I’m not even sure if anyone else besides Craig actually has a complete understanding of it. Certainly I don’t. Craig reached out to me earlier this year and wanted to know if I would like to learn “the other 99% of Bitcoin.” This seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from what must surely be one of the most knowledgeable people in the world, so I said yes.
I inquired whether Craig would like to turn our discussions into a public video series. This would be a way to hit two birds with one stone — I could learn directly from Craig, and also help Craig reach a larger audience of students who can also learn from the same material. Craig agreed. So we created the Theory of Bitcoin interview series, a twenty hour-long discussion where I asked Craig questions that span the sixteen or so different disciplines that one must know about to master Bitcoin. The reason why we made it twenty hours is because that is about the length of an audio book, and as such it should have as much information as a book or so, while still being short enough to be something any full-time individual involved in the industry out to be able to watch all the way through.
The series is divided into an introduction, six interviews on theoretical subject matter, one on the history of Bitcoin, one on the future of Bitcoin, and a conclusion. In this essay I summarize the interviews.
2. Networks
Craig created Bitcoin because digital cash needed to exist to solve the security problem of the internet. The security problem of the internet is in essence that it was not designed with security in mind at the start, and instead the security was added post-facto and was done in a way that has multiple central points of failure. This is worse than a single point of failure. It actually has multiple different points such that if any one were compromised, it ruins the security of everything on the internet not just now, but for all history, present, and future, and it would be a giant catastrophe. In fact, this actually happened already. See the Diginotar hack. The internet is not secure.
The internet is a mesh network. Part of the solution of Bitcoin is to create a different type of network. The logo of this series demonstrates what an 8-node small world network looks like. That is essentially what the nodes of Bitcoin look like. There are a small number of them and they are incentivized to connect to all the other ones so that when they find a block, all the other nodes get it right away.
Bitcoin has multiple networks. The nodes (“miners”) are the central core of a series of overlay networks layered on top of one another like an onion. The simplest way to understand the layer on top are SPV nodes (Simplified Payment Verification, as defined in the original whitepaper) that send and receive transactions to each other but who do not send and receive transactions that do not belong to them.
We should distinguish between theory and reality. In theory, the miner nodes are a complete graph (every node connects to every other node), and the SPV nodes are a mesh network on top. In practice, the miner nodes do not necessarily all connect to each other, but approximately so. Thus, we say the miner nodes form a “near-complete graph.” And SPV nodes do not even really exist yet — long story. My company is collaborating with a number of others to create standardized SPV wallets that satisfy the definition in the whitepaper, which is necessary for the security of Bitcoin (the block headers must be public and widely distributed, which is the security service of SPV nodes).
The most important theory behind the Bitcoin network was established by Watts and Strogatz in 1998. The internet was a remarkable invention for the 1960s and 1970s, but these new advances in networking theory, as well as advances in hardware (fast and ubiquitous fiber connections), makes better networks feasible. Bitcoin is the next generation of networks. It can be cleaved to the internet to improve security and could ultimately replace the TCP layer of the internet as a more secure alternative.
3. Introduction to Law
Craig studied many different subjects to invent Bitcoin, including a degree in law, which he finished in 2008, shortly before the whitepaper was published. He was driven both by the pursuit of knowledge itself as well as to learn all relevant subject matter around Bitcoin to make sure he properly solved the problem of digital cash. He has more than seventeen university degrees and he continues to pursue more degrees to this day.
Digital cash has failed many times. Craig was involved with Mark Twain Bank in the 1990s, which attempted to use DigiCash, the company created by David Chaum, the pioneer of digital cash. David Chaum created the first description of digital cash in this paper from 1982, and he pursued the project obsessively for decades before ultimately failing. A problem with David Chaum’s approach and nearly all other approaches to digital cash is an interest in creating purely anonymous money. The problem with this is somewhat obvious in that it facilitates crime, and becomes impossible to comply with the law. Thus, a proper solution to digital cash needs to be legal and it needs to be possible for banks or other companies that use it to comply with all regulations. Craig knew the law was central, so he studied it specifically to make sure this would not be an issue for Bitcoin.
Craig helped me understand some basics of law before diving into the specifics of Bitcoin. The most important foundational legal concept is that of the Rule or Law, which is the idea that there is such a thing as a law determined by society that applies equally to everyone. No one is above the law. We are all equal under the law.
4. Legal Aspects of Bitcoin
Bitcoin is a way to bring law to the internet. It enables us to use law both to enforce contracts as well as to identify and prosecute criminals. This is a central and important idea, so I will say it again: Not only is Bitcoin not a way to get rid of governments, it is exactly the opposite. Bitcoin is specifically designed to allow governments to enforce both civil law and criminal law on the internet, opening up the possibility to use law on the internet in ways that are not possible, or very difficult, without it. Bitcoin is a legal innovation.
Let’s consider both cases. To enforce contracts, all relevant contracts can be written and signed and hashed to the blockchain irreversibly, making it possible to take flawless and comprehensive evidence to court when needed. An example of this is the purchase of digital content. The purchase can declare constraints on the digital content that the purchaser must comply with, and if the purchaser commits fraud (such as by improperly relicensing the content), the data on the blockchain can be used to provide what contracts were signed and in what order in a court of law, making it enforceability of contracts much more efficient.
The same is true for criminal law. By using Bitcoin not just for payments but also for contracts (hashed, and thus secure, on-chain), crime can be discovered and proved. In some cases, fraud can be discovered automatically, such as by using Bitcoin to pay taxes, where audits can be performed by using blockchain data, making audits by tax authorities vastly more efficient. Bitcoin will help governments collects taxes, and it will help businesses pay them. Everyone wins by improving efficiency. Even the worst crimes are disincentivized when Bitcoin is used because everything is tracked. Bitcoin encourages honesty through transparency.
Money is central to law and contracts, and as such there is a body of law and regulations where it is important that Bitcoin is both legal and where the businesses and individuals who use it have the ability to comply. An incomplete list of those issues are as follows:
Bitcoin was created legally. There is no law in Australia against the creation of money.
Nodes form a settlement layer and are not money transmitters.
Bitcoin is not a security in the sense of the Howie test, although it is a security in a more broad sense which includes essentially any financial asset.
Bitcoin is fungible in a legal sense, but because each token can be tracked, it is not anonymous and businesses or individuals who do not comply with financial regulations can be liable for returning lost or stolen funds.
The blockchain doesn’t transfer your token — you do.
Because the protocol is fixed, the nodes do not form a partnership. (By contrast, on alternate networks where a central organization does change the rules, and that organization does not have a corporation, the individuals (usually developers) can be held liable on those alternatives.)
Bitcoin transactions can be but are not necessarily legal signatures. If the signer sees the contract in full and then signs, then the transaction can be a signature in the legal sense.
Law is complex and dependent on particular countries, so this list ought to be used only as a reference for the types of law relevant to Bitcoin and is not authoritative in any way.
In conclusion, not only is Bitcoin legal, but because everything is traceable, it makes it possible to use the law in both civil court and criminal court. Bitcoin is key to what makes Bitcoin secure. The law can always be used as a last recourse.
5. Script, Computation, and Turing Completeness
A Bitcoin transaction has multiple inputs and multiple outputs. Each input links to an earlier output. Both the inputs and outputs have a “script” inside, which is really a predicate, or a statement that evaluates true or false. In Bitcoin, the predicate can also evaluate to any value. In other words, the script can return a value so long as that value is not zero (a zero return value invalidates the transaction, so they are never found on the blockchain). The outputs of a Bitcoin transaction output thus not just money (Bitcoin) but also information (the return value of the script). Same with the inputs: they input both money and information.
The predicate language of Bitcoin is simply called Script, and it is based on Forth, a stack-based programming language used for embedded hardware and other highly specific cases such as the F18 fighter jet console. Forth is extremely fast, but cumbersome to use, because it lacks many features of modern programming languages, such as a heap. Nonetheless, the simplicity, speed, and verifiability of Forth make it appropriate for the base-layer language of Bitcoin. Higher-level languages can be compiled down to it.
A computer or programming language is Turing complete if it can compute any number that can be computed. Forth is Turing complete. Script is Turing complete. Bitcoin is Turing complete. This is not difficult to understand, but it was widely missed by nearly everyone involved in the industry until Craig started telling everyone. Entire cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum were invented to make a Turing complete version of Bitcoin, but they are founded on a basic misunderstanding. Bitcoin is already Turing complete and so making a new Turing complete version of it doesn’t actually improve anything.
The notion of “Turing complete” originates ultimately from a paper by Alan Turing in 1936 on computable numbers. Alan Turing was a genius and was sometimes misunderstood. His invention modeled a computer as a machine with a head and a tape of any size. He was very often misunderstood to mean the tape had to be infinite. But of course, as Turing knew, and as any practical person knows, there is no such thing as an infinite tape in reality, and so any such model would necessarily be useless for modeling real computers. Turing’s original paper does not require the tape to be infinite.
Note that because Bitcoin has two stacks, the second stack allows us to map Script to a 2-PDA (2-Stack Push Down Automata), which is known to be Turing complete.
There are three different ways Bitcoin is Turing complete:
Loops can be unrolled in Script using nested conditionals. This makes Bitcoin a “Total Turing Machine” by some definitions and is not strictly Turing complete because the Script can be infinite, but by that definition there is no computer that is Turing complete, so we ignore that useless definition.
Payment channels can be used to loop in a second layer above Bitcoin where the output value is put back into the input, and we are limited only to the maximum size of the sequence number in the number of iterations.
A second layer above Bitcoin can be used to propagate data from on-chain transaction to on-chain transaction.
The halting problem is the idea that some programs running on a Turing Machine can loop forever, and there is no way to know whether a program will loop for ever without running it. Total Turing Machines, such as Bitcoin, are Turing Machines that always halt, and thus cannot have infinite loops, and thus every program can be known to halt, and the halting problem is elegantly avoided. The halting problem is moved to the compiler rather than the computer.
Note that there is no real-world computer that can loop infinitely. It will run out of memory for the iterator. Insofar it is computing a value that anyone cares about, the human operator will eventually hit “control + c” to end execution of the program thus making it halt. There is never and can never be a program that never halts in reality. Thus, Bitcoin has the same type of Turing completeness as any real-world computer. If your script halts too early, unroll the loops to a larger number of iterations and try again.
Another point to consider is that the nodes don’t necessarily run everything. This is a part of the elegant economic design of Bitcoin. The nodes are the core, not everything. Machines in the outer layers can compute things and put the data on chain. The second and third ways in which Bitcoin is Turing complete rely on this mechanism.
6. Economics, Information, Religion, Work, and Goggins
Bitcoin is an economic system. One of the themes of Craig’s work going back to his computer security days in the 1990s is the idea that computer security is always economic. The goal of computer security isn’t to make it impossible to compromise a system, but rather to make the cost of compromising a machine higher than the benefit. Many computer criminals are hyper-rational and do not account for morality at all in their actions and care only about profit. If it is not profitable to compromise a system, they will not bother to do so. Bitcoin is a solution to digital cash that can be used to make costs and profits explicit for use in securing computer systems. Furthermore, Bitcoin itself operates on this principle internally. It is more costly than profitable to rewrite history. This is the sense in which Bitcoin is an economic system.
A basic concept in economics is that specialization is good for everyone. If I am good at hashing, and you are good at producing Merkle proofs, it is better than we swap services rather than that we each do both hashing and Merkle proofs. This results in greater total productivity and we each win. Bitcoin is not designed for everyone to do everything. Rather, it is designed for each entity to do what they are best at and trade. This is true to separate large scale services such as nodes and wallets, and also true to separate services inside nodes or other entities.
7. Computer Security, Game Theory, and Personal Responsibility
Bitcoin is secured by economics and law. The digital signatures, hash functions, and Proof-of-Work are not full scope of the security mechanisms of Bitcoin. Cryptographic algorithms make attacks more costly than profitable. Furthermore, in case crime occurs, the traceability of Bitcoin enables the use of law to recover funds. Note that both of these concepts are quite different than what is currently the popular opinion about how Bitcoin is secured, and so they deserve some elaboration.
Bitcoin is not secured by cryptography: First of all, Bitcoin does not use “cryptography” in the sense of encryption. What Bitcoin uses is cryptographic hash functions and the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA). We call these “cryptographic algorithms,” but not “cryptography.” The distinction matters because it is commonly thought that Bitcoin is “encrypted,” but this is not the case. Nothing in Bitcoin is encrypted. Secondly, cryptographic algorithms do not make it impossible to compromise a system. A private key can be cracked with a sufficiently large computer. The exponential growth of computational speed should continue for quite some time. It would be possible to crack keys for an exceptionally large cost today, but it is a near-certainty that they can be cracked for a reasonable cost in a couple of hundred years. It is possible to crack cryptographic algorithms. Furthermore, the transactions are in plaintext and could be altered at will. Thus, clearly cryptography is not the reason why they are secure.
Bitcoin is secured by economics: Cryptographic algorithms are used to tune the cost of attacking the system. Hash functions are costly, but not impossible, to invert. Digital signatures are costly, but not impossible, to invert. Bitcoin is an economic system and the security is always and everywhere adjusted such that the cost of attacking the system is higher than the profit for doing so. Rational agents will not attack Bitcoin. That does not mean that it cannot be compromised in other ways. It is possible for irrational actors to attack Bitcoin, but they will likely run out of money in the process. The plaintext transactions are not simply altered to give money to someone else because the benefits from doing so are lower than the costs.
Proof-of-Work is a deanonymization mechanism, not a security mechanism: Proof-of-work with an adjustable difficulty-adjustment algorithm (DAA) is used to keep the block time approximately ten minutes. While this is the average time, some blocks happen quicker and some blocks happen slower than ten minutes. It is random. It is important for nodes to get their block to the other nodes as quickly as possible so that they build the next block on it. It thus becomes possible to triangulate nodes, because to do anything to anonymize the origin such as distribute the block globally before passing it to other nodes decreases the probably of winning the block. Thus, Proof-of-Work deanonymizes nodes. This encourages nodes to be professional, regulated businesses.
Bitcoin is secured by law: A common misconception about Bitcoin is that it is intended to enable anarchy. This is not the case. The law is critical to be able to recover funds in the event of fraud or theft. Because all Bitcoin can be traced, and all businesses are encouraged to be legal and compliant due to the transparency of the blockchain, the law can be used through criminal courts to recover stolen Bitcoin or other digital assets on Bitcoin. This is very important, so it bears repeating. The law is necessary to recover stolen Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not anti-law. The traceability of Bitcoin is what enables the use of law to recover stolen Bitcoin. Bitcoin is pro-law. Bitcoin is a legal innovation that enables the use of law in the case of digital cash and other digital assets.
8. The History of Bitcoin
David Chaum was the first person to sketch out a plan for digital cash in the early 1980s. I asked Craig if this was the origin of Bitcoin, and his answer was “not really,” due to the difference in philosophy between them. Chaum was more aligned with the cypherpunk movement which desires anonymous cash, but Bitcoin was explicitly designed not to be anonymous. Bitcoin is private in that the identity of the users are not actually put on the blockchain, but because everything is tracked, identity is always provable. In Craig’s opinion, the primary reason DigiCash failed (Chaum’s company) was due to the attachment to anonymity.
Starting around the late 1990s and early 2000s, Craig started working on what would become Bitcoin obsessively. He would ultimately get more than seventeen degrees in subject matter related to Bitcoin. He failed many times before the design of Bitcoin was completed and the software launched. The solution was ultimately something that required satisfying constraints across many disciplines, including most especially computer science, economics, and law.
Roughly speaking, the constraints are explained as follows:
Computer science: Bitcoin needs to technically function, needs to be sufficiently flexible to allow markets to solve as many problems as possible, and it needs to scale globally.
Economics: The incentives of Bitcoin need to be designed to encourage people to maintain and grow the network.
Law: Bitcoin needs to be legal, it needs to have all the technology to enable users and businesses to comply with any relevant laws and regulations, and furthermore, it needs to enable the use of law on the internet for an information market.
This is not a complete list of subject matter, but a high level flavor of the types of problems that had to be solved and how they span many subjects. Craig solved all of the problems by studying the subjects himself.
Bitcoin was finished and launched in January of 2009. From then until now, the story in a nutshell is that many people got involved who misunderstood Bitcoin (many of them willfully) to think that Bitcoin was about anarchy and crime. This was not and is not the case. As Bitcoin popularity increased, Craig rejected the spotlight, to his later chagrin, and allowed the misunderstanding to grow. This brings us to the present time, where Craig, myself, and others are doing what we can to rectify the situation with misunderstanding by educating ourselves and others about the full scope of the theoretical background for Bitcoin.
9. The Future of Bitcoin
The future of Bitcoin is an economy with no more than 2016 nodes (because that is how many nodes can actually find a block in a given DAA interval), and where businesses solve all other problems in specialized ways. In other words, it is an economy that will grow.
It will never be the case that everyone runs a node, or that everyone is equal in any other way. Nodes will be businesses like infrastructure in every other industry. Bitcoin will be plumbing for the world economy. Most people will not know when they are using Bitcoin, but it will be underneath most commercial activity.
Computers will be more secure, transparency in corporations and governments will increase, crime will be easier to prosecute, and many costs will be saved with increased efficiency that spans every industry.
Throughout the series, Craig and I spent a lot of time discussing classical liberalism. Craig’s idea, which I share, is to increase appreciation of classical liberalism through education, and to encourage the development of society over time to enhance individual responsibility.
10. Conclusion
We are improving the educational situation around Bitcoin, and the world at large, by acting responsibly. We pursue lifelong education and entrepreneurship ourselves and show people what we are doing. A growing ecosystem of responsible people help. Together we lift the world.