Short version: Decentralized group of oracles publish PGP public keys, followed after a delay by the corresponding private keys. Bitcoiners can get some physical security by time locking keys needed to spend utxos by encrypting the spend keys to a PGP public key published by the oracle. In order to…

Recent public comments about hardware wallet supply chain attacks have me re-thinking my setup. Here are precautions I follow when using ColdCard in a single-sig setup. Only buy ColdCard from the manufacturer, and verify the bag serial number with the device serial number. Do not trust ColdCard to derive the…

(For more on this topic, check out www.reddit.com/r/postvasectomypain for hundreds of stories written by men dealing with chronic pain caused by their vasectomy.) Your doctor will probably admit that chronic pain is a possible complication resulting from vasectomy, but most will say that it happens rarely, or even very rarely. …

This is a rough draft in progress… The Security Problem In the future, block subsidy goes down. The hope is that fees will be high enough to make a 51% attack impractical and very expensive, but what if this does not happen? What if fees cannot buy enough security? Bitcoin’s Credibility Currently relying on inflation…

Two serious threats posed by miner centralization are censorship and selfish mining. Censorship diminishes the basic value proposition of Bitcoin as a way to control your own wealth. Selfish mining confers a competitive advantage to large miners, resulting in an undesired feedback loop of more pressure to centralize. …

When miners create two Bitcoin blocks at the same height, what determines which sub-chain will come to dominate the other? Which sub-chain will be more economically important, used by more people, and have a higher price? Usually the answer is Hashrate Usually, the sub-chain that accumulates work fastest will become…

The Idea Use Proof of Stake to influence which Bitcoin chain gets extended by Proof of Work in the following way. After each Proof of Work block, create a Proof of Stake block that commits to the Proof of Work block. The next Proof of Work block must satisfy a…

Description: — Sealed Wallet is a hardware device that enables transferring control of Bitcoin by exchanging a physical object. It is a USB device that can do the following: 1. Generate a private key on the device 2. Sign transactions using the private key 3. Refuse to double-spend outputs 4. Prevent the private key from…

Bitcoin should have voting A successful protocol needs a strong network effect, which requires as large a number of economically relevant actors to participate as possible. People will be more likely to join Bitcoin if it has the features they want. …