Listen To This Episode: AppleSpotifyGoogleLibsynOvercast In this week’s episode of the “Bitcoin Magazine Podcast,” host CK sat down with Edan Yago of the Sovryn project to discuss this initiative and how it is building decentralized infrastructure for Bitcoin. Sovryn is like a company, except that it runs completely on bitcoin and it is not incorporated into any centralized organization. In other words, it is a fully remote, novel type of company that is fluid, distributed and powered by Bitcoin. Sovryn has developed an exchange and programmatic USD coin system leveraging the RSK Bitcoin sidechain and it is actively looking at other BTC Layer 2 technology to scale its services. Sovryn likes RSK’s technology because it is based on the existing Ethereum technology stack, making it interoperable… [Read More...]
Interview: Securing Bitcoin With Anchorage’s Diogo Monica
Listen To This Episode: AppleSpotifyGoogleLibsynOvercast On this episode of the “Bitcoin Magazine Podcast,” host CK sat down with the cofounder and president of Anchorage, Diogo Monica, to talk about the innovative ways that Anchorage is creating better cold storage conditions for institutional bitcoin and crypto asset storage. Anchorage has become a complete turnkey platform for institutions to leverage in order to build out their bitcoin and other cryptocurrency strategies. Monica has a deep history in securing private keys and mission-critical private information. He led up security at Square and then at Docker. On this episode, CK and Diogo discussed the following topics: Anchorage as a qualified custodian OCC clarity for commercial banks Who is using Anchorage? Anchorage filed for a national banking charter How… [Read More...]
The Lightning Network Basics
Listen To This Episode: AppleSpotifyGoogleLibsynOvercast In this episode of “The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado,” hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss the basics of the Lightning Network, Bitcoin’s Layer 2 protocol for cheaper, faster and potentially more private transactions. Starting at the beginning, van Wirdum and Provoost explained that the Lightning Network works as a scaling layer because it lets users make off-chain transactions through bi-directional payment channels: two users can pay one another an arbitrary number of times without these transactions being recorded on the blockchain. They went on to explain how, in the Lightning protocol, these off-chain transactions are secure, that is, how each of the participants is at any point guaranteed to claim their respective funds from the payment channel… [Read More...]
Exploring Drivechain, A Miner-Secured Bitcoin Sidechain
Listen To This Episode: AppleSpotifyGoogleLibsynOvercast In this episode of “The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado,” hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost are once again joined by Ruben Somsen. The trio discussed Drivechain, a sidechain project spearheaded by Paul Sztorc. Sidechains are alternative blockchains, on which coins are pegged to bitcoin. This should make the sidechain coins interchangeable with bitcoin and therefore carry an equal value. In a way, sidechains let users “move” bitcoin across blockchains, where they are subject to different protocol rules, allowing for greater transaction capacity, more privacy and other benefits. Van Wirdum, Provoost and Somsen explained that Drivechain consists of two main innovations. The first is blind-merged mining, which lets bitcoin miners secure Drivechain with their existing hash power, but without necessarily needing… [Read More...]
The Hardest Trade: BitcoinTina On Bitcoin
Listen To This Episode: AppleSpotifyLibsynOvercast In the fifth installment of the “BitcoinTina On Bitcoin” series, CK and BitcoinTina discussed the potential bull market scenarios for bitcoin. In this podcast, they covered three different bitcoin price scenarios which are all very bullish but difficult and distinct to trade. #bitcoin has 3 potential price paths IMO.1. Parabolic up in 2021 then crash. Typical view of bitcoiners. Deep consensus.2. up 2-5X each year 2021,2022,2023, with 20-40% corrections. Then front run 2024.3. Massive repricing up $500K to $1 million 2021/22. Then sideways.— BitcoinTina- "TINA" #bitcoin (@BitcoinTina) December 24, 2020 The cornerstone of BitcoinTina’s argument is that Bitcoin has a new class of buyer. Before the bitcoin market was run by the youth and the technologically advance. Now, we are seeing Baby Boomers, institutions… [Read More...]
Interview: The Fight For Freedom Money With Randy Brito
Listen To This Episode: AppleSpotifyGoogleLibsyn On this episode of the “Bitcoin Magazine Podcast,” host Christian Keroles sat down with Randy Brito, the cofounder and CEO of the Locha Mesh project. Brito is a diehard Bitcoiner who has escaped persecution in Venezuela and is working every day with the mission to make Bitcoin more and more censorship resistant. Brito sees the current internet infrastructure as being a huge attack vector that must be addressed immediately. Locha Mesh is an open-source mesh networking project and protocol that is designed to be capable of supporting a global decentralized internet. Keroles and Brito discussed why Westerners have been lulled into complacence with their stable yet centralized infrastructure and how the majority of the world desperately needs free, open… [Read More...]
Why Open Source Matters for Bitcoin
Listen To This Episode: AppleSpotifyGoogleLibsynOvercast In this episode of “The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado,” hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discussed why it matters that Bitcoin software is open source and why even open-source software doesn’t necessarily solve all software-specific trust issues. In theory, the fact that most Bitcoin nodes, wallets and applications are open source should ensure that developers can’t include malicious code in the programs: anyone can inspect the source code for malware. In practice, however, the number of people with enough expertise to do this is limited, while the reliance of some Bitcoin projects on external code libraries (“dependencies”) makes it even harder. Furthermore, even if the open-source code is sound, this doesn’t guarantee that the binaries (computer… [Read More...]
The 21 Most Influential Bitcoin Projects And Companies Of 2020
Bitcoin Magazine has compiled this list to highlight the 21 companies and projects that we think did the most for Bitcoin in 2020. We admit that this grouping is far from perfect, but our team did its best to objectively curate those that made the biggest impact on the BTC ecosystem this year. Of course, this was a very difficult process and we decided to leave off some projects that may have had a massive impact on Bitcoin the past, but whose influence this year in particular did not rise to make the cut. 2020 may have been an incredibly trying year collectively for humans on planet earth, but it was also a historically productive year in the Bitcoin ecosystem. As the world continues to experience turmoil and tribulation, it’s … [Read More...]
Multisig Coordination Software Nunchuk Releases Its Code
Recently-launched Bitcoin wallet Nunchuk announced today that it is making its application library, libnunchuk, open source and available to the public. Nunchuk describes its mission as “the proliferation of multisig” and attempts to make multisig wallet security easier to achieve by offering a product that integrates some of the latest developments around partially-signed bitcoin transactions (PSBTs) and descriptor language. “In the early days of Bitcoin, wallet vendors were often incompatible with one another, which complicated multisig setups,” according to an article from Nunchuk’s Hugo Nguyen. “Nunchuk treats descriptors and PSBTs as first-class citizens. The consequence is that you can use Nunchuk with many different hardware vendors, or easily recover a multisig wallet created by Nunchuk on other wallet software such as core.” … [Read More...]
Bitcoin 2020 Is Moving to 2021 in Los Angeles!
The Bitcoin 2020 conference is officially moving to April 30–May 1 in sunny Los Angeles, California, with Nick Szabo and Tony Hawk headlining! Bitcoin 2020 ticket holders are eligible to either transfer their tickets directly to 2021 or request a full refund. More details are available at the bottom of this article. Our Bitcoin 2020 event scheduled for March was on track to be the largest Bitcoin conference in history. By mid-February, over 2,000 people had registered and we were on pace to host nearly 4,000 people at SVN West in San Francisco. 100+ speakers, 50+ media outlets and 75+ of the best companies in the space were set to celebrate with us. We had lined up a ton of exciting activations and unique experiences for attendees, including a bitcoin-enabled rooftop beer … [Read More...]
Infographic: An Overview of Compromised Bitcoin Exchange Events – Winter 2020
This article was originally published in Bitcoin Magazine‘s 2019 print issue. It is periodically updated as exchange compromises occur. This infographic visualizes some of the most significant bitcoin exchange compromises (occurring through hacks, mismanagement, etc.) as if they all happened with a standard bitcoin price, to provide a better understanding of their relative magnitude. The x-axis plots the price of bitcoin at the time of each compromise, while the y-axis plots the amount of BTC lost in each compromise. The size of each compromise circle also represents the amount of BTC lost without adjusting for the specific price at the time. Below, we’ve included brief summaries of each compromise event pictured. Mt. Gox Date: June 2011 (then continuously until February 2014) Amount Lost: 790,000+ BTC … [Read More...]
Infographic: Who Has Funded Bitcoin Core Development?
Monetarily, free and open-source software (FOSS) has always been at a disadvantage to proprietary software. It’s easier to solicit funding for a centralized project than for a decentralized one, not least of all because companies necessitate business models. Conversely, funding (and the agendas that often come with it) seems almost anathema to FOSS projects. At the very least, it is elusive. And Bitcoin is no exception. When creating Bitcoin, Satoshi asked for no compensation of any kind (it was, after all, still an open-source project). Satoshi also never tapped the trove of bitcoin he had horded as a result of his mining activity on the network. By some combination of need for funding, following Satoshi’s example and sheer passion for the project, Bitcoin developers would … [Read More...]
Infographic: The Pineapple Fund’s Unparalleled Impact
Bitcoiners have a giving streak. It’s true. No matter what narrative the mainstream media may hammer home about drugs, greed or wanton hedonism, Bitcoin’s community has a long-standing tradition of charitable action. Perhaps the earliest example of this is the Bitcoin100 charity drive. Bootstrapped in 2011 on the Bitcointalk forum, the organization raised at least 1,600 bitcoin before it went inactive. It originally intended to dole these donations out in lumps of 100 bitcoin, but as bitcoin’s price bucked upward from 2011 to 2013, the organizers decided to make donations in $1,000 sums. But Bitcoin100 had more bitcoin to donate than causes that could accept it. In 2011, Bitcoin was either too arcane or tainted by association with the dark web for people to not feel sketched out by the fund’s promise. … [Read More...]
Infographic: An Overview of Compromised Bitcoin Exchange Events
The purpose of this infographic is to visualize the size of large cryptocurrency hacks that have occurred in the past as if they all happened today. The hacks included in this infographic extend beyond exchanges, as there were other large entities that experienced cryptocurrency hacks, such as marketplaces like Silk Road 2.0. All hacks in this infographic are displayed as if the price of bitcoin was the same when they occurred, in order to visualize their magnitudes in relation to one another.The x-axis shows the price of bitcoin at the time of the hack. The y-axis shows the amount lost in the hack (converted to BTC for altcoin hacks). The size of each hack circle was determined by the value of BTC lost using a… [Read More...]
