Scalability is a hot topic in the bitcoin world right now. The rising number of btc transactions keeps moving us toward the point in which transaction volume will become a problem for the network. The debate on whether to increase the maximum block size to combat this issue is ongoing -- more on that in Gavin Andresen’s scalability roadmap and Hearn’s commentary , among others. Decentralization is…
When it was first created in 2009, the original bitcoin program had two variants. They are totally compatible, take the same command line arguments, and essentially perform the same functions. The main difference lies in how the user interacts with them - one, commonly known as ‘Bitcoin Core’, formerly known as ‘Bitcoin-QT’, has a graphical user interface (GUI), while the other, ‘bitcoind’, is…
The summer after my junior year of college, I landed an internship at a marine and reef conservation non-profit in LA. I was in school in Pennsylvania at the time, which meant I’d be jetting off to a city on the opposite side of the country where I knew exactly one person. I’ve always had a rather laissez-faire approach to travel, so it didn’t occur to me until about two weeks prior to my start…
Maintaining privacy of transactions is a key tenet in building a robust financial network. Despite all the media hype around Silk Road and the like, this is true even if you’re engaging only in perfectly licit behavior. The beauty of the blockchain lies in its decentralized, open nature, but because of those very characteristics, specific actions need be taken to protect bitcoin transactions and…
The Bitcoin protocol is designed using a proof of work mechanism, which determines who is permitted to sign the transactions that need to be verified. A proof of work (PoW) is a piece of data which is computationally difficult to achieve, meaning that it required a lot of either time or hashing power (or both) to find the solution, but it’s easy to verify that this work was actually completed.…
I would say I’m generally a jovial person, but if I woke up and realized I’d lost 7,500 bitcoins, I would encourage the rest of the world to back away slowly without making any sudden movements. Fortunately for the public good this hasn’t happened to me, but it did happen to an unfortunate fellow named Jeremy Howells. He became semi notorious in the bitcoin community for accidentally disposing of…
I don’t usually feel like patting the Federal Reserve on the back, but today just might be an exception. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve come to expect the government to screw up, or just the fact that I am endlessly fascinated with bitcoin’s potential, but I think there’s a great deal to feel good about in how the United States is approaching cryptocurrencies these days. The Federal Elections…
One of my majors in college was international politics, and among the course requirements were a number of classes on game theory. It was one of the most interesting parts of my coursework, but I am sure I wouldn’t have believed it if I’d been told that a few years later I’d be spending an afternoon, of my own volition, writing about using the Bitcoin protocol to create assurance contracts. The…
There have been a lot of rumblings since the IRS ruling on bitcoin earlier this week. For those of you who don’t feel like sloshing through several pages of legal drudgery, a brief summary: Bitcoin and other virtual currencies have been deemed property rather than currency, which means they will be subject to capital gains tax when they are sold. Bitcoin ‘investors’ or holders are treated…
One of the main criticisms of Bitcoin today is that it isn’t user-friendly. It’ll never catch on with the mainstream population, it’s destined to stay confined to a small group of hardcore techie users, and so forth. I disagree. I’ve stated before that the level of bitcoin adoption is closely tied to its usability, and that will change with the growth of an ecosystem of companies around it. Some…