Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain
Page 16
Notes
[←1]
Satoshi Nakamoto. “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. Bitcoin.org, 31 October 2008.
[←2]
This is public key cryptography, where the address is the “public key” (that everyone knows) and the key is the “private key” (that only you know), which are a matched pair: a message encrypted with one key can be decrypted with the other.
[←3]
Technically a Merkle tree is only the tree of hashes within a block, but cryptocurrency routinely uses the term to describe a chain of hashes as well.
[←4]
Though you only hear about it these days in regard to cryptocurrency, Proof of Work was first mooted in 1992 to deal with email spam: Cynthia Dwork, Moni Daor. “Pricing via Processing or Combatting Junk Mail”. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Cryptology Conference on Advances in Cryptology (CRYPTO ’92), Ernest F. Brickell (Ed.). Springer-Verlag, London, UK, 139-147.
[←5]
More properly, “XBT” (a currency without an official symbol should be named starting with an X), though most people use “BTC” anyway.
[←6]
For all the technical detail, see: “Developer Guide”. Bitcoin.org.
[←7]
Bitcoin power consumption was estimated at between 0.1 and 10 GW average by June 2014; Ireland consumed around 3 GW by this time. O’Dwyer and Malone. “Bitcoin Mining and its Energy Footprint”. Presented at ISSC 2014 / CIICT 2014, Limerick, June 26–27 2014. (archive) The most detailed estimate I’ve seen for 2017 puts it at about half a 2017 Ireland: “Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index”. Digiconomist (blog). Archive as of 20 May 2017.
[←8]
Alan Feuer. “The Bitcoin Ideology”. New York Times, 14 December 2013.
[←9]
This section draws from The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism by David Golumbia (University of Minnesota Press, 2016).
[←10]
Eric M. Jackson. The PayPal Wars: Battles With eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth. World Ahead Publishing, 2004. Chapter 1.
[←11]
Charlie McCombie. “Bitcoin Predecessor – Liberty Reserve Founder Receives 20-Year Prison Sentence”. CoinTelegraph, 10 May 2016. (archive)
[←12]
David Chaum. “Blind signatures for untraceable payments”. Advances in Cryptology: Proceedings of Crypto. 82 (3) 1982, pp. 199–203.
[←13]
David Chaum. “Security without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete”. Communications of the ACM, 28 (10) 1985, pp. 1030–1044.
[←14]
Tim May. “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto”. Written 1988, posted 22 November 1992. (archive)
[←15]
Satoshi Nakamoto. Comment on “Transactions and Scripts: DUP HASH160 … EQUALVERIFY CHECKSIG”. Bitcointalk.org Bitcoin Forum > Bitcoin > Development & Technical Discussion, 18 June 2010. (archive)
[←16]
Satoshi Nakamoto. Comment on “They want to delete the Wikipedia article”. Bitcointalk.org Bitcoin Forum > Bitcoin > Bitcoin Discussion, 20 July 2010. (archive)
[←17]
Gwern Branwen. “Dai/Nakamoto emails”. Gwern.net. Version of 8 March 2017.
[←18]
The conspiracy theory is most famously set out in Robert Welch. “The Truth In Time”. American Opinion, November 1966.
[←19]
David Ferguson. “Ron Paul slams stability of U.S. dollar and Bitcoin in pro-gold rant”. Raw Story, 23 April 2013.
[←20]
Satoshi Nakamoto. “Bitcoin open source implementation of P2P currency”. P2P Foundation forums, 11 February 2009. (archive)
[←21]
Jonathan Thornburg. “Bitcoin v0.1 released”. Cryptography and Cryptography Policy mailing list, 17 January 2009. (archive)
[←22]
Ludwig von Mises. Human Action. Part One: Human Action. Chapter II. The Epistemological Problems of the Sciences of Human Action. 1. Praxeology and History, p32.
[←23]
Heterodox: a crank with a job. Austrian economics is funded by rich people who want theoretical backing for being selfish.
[←24]
Philip Sandifer. Neoreaction a Basilisk. Eruditorum Press, 2017. (Previews.)
[←25]
I’d never encountered American-style ideological libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism before the Internet. When I first heard about it, I honestly thought it was a wacky Swiftian political satire that nobody could actually believe.
[←26]
Austrian economists really hate the example of the Capitol Hill Babysitting Co-op.
[←27]
Ben Best. “Bitcoin and Austrian Economics”. Bitcoin Magazine, 27 August 2014. (archive)
[←28]
“Myths”. Bitcoin Wiki. Accessed 20 September 2016.
[←29]
“The Story Of When Buttcoin.org Sold Out And How Butterfly Labs Turned It (And Other Sites) Into A Product Marketing Machine”. Buttcoin Foundation, 14 November 2014. (archive)
[←30]
Peter Yeh. “FTC Shuts Down Bogus Bitcoin Op Butterfly Labs, Says ‘Buttcoin’”. Animal, 25 September 2014.
[←31]
“Securing your wallet”. Bitcoin Wiki.
[←32]
“About PayPal”, archived 26 December 2014. “almost 10 million payments for our customers per day.”
[←33]
“Visa Inc. at a Glance”. Visa, June 2015.
[←34]
Western Union. “Notice of 2014 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, Proxy Statement and 2013 Annual Report.” p2.
[←35]
Christopher Malmo. “A Single Bitcoin Transaction Takes Thousands of Times More Energy Than a Credit Card Swipe”. Motherboard, 7 March 2017.
[←36]
Godfreee. “If I was looking to sell big (or relatively big) amounts of BTC on the OTC market, what would be my best option?”. Reddit /r/bitcoinmarkets, 15 February 2015.
[←37]
Zhoutong. “Bitcoin Wealth Distribution (Bitcoinica data)”. Bitcointalk.org Bitcoin Forum > Bitcoin > Bitcoin Discussion, 6 November 2011. (archive)
[←38]
Steven Englander, Citigroup, quoted in Joe Wiesenthal. “How Bitcoin Is Like North Korea”. Business Insider, 12 January 2014.
[←39]
Dorit Ron, Adi Shamir. “Quantitative Analysis of the Full Bitcoin Transaction Graph”. Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2012/584, 25 October 2012.
[←40]
Hal Finney. “Bitcoin 0.1 released”. Cryptography and Cryptography Policy mailing list, 10 January 2009.
[←41]
Jim Epstein. “The Secret, Dangerous World of Venezuelan Bitcoin Mining: How cryptocurrency is turning socialism against itself”. Reason, January 2017.
[←42]
Kamilia Lahrichi. “Growing number of Venezuelans trade bolivars for bitcoins to buy necessities”. The Guardian, 16 December 2016.
[←43]
Kamilia Lahrichi. “Argentina’s Bitcoin Scene Booms”. International Finance Magazine, July-September 2015.
[←44]
Mariana Zuñiga. “Bitcoin ‘mining’ is big business in Venezuela, but the government wants to shut it down”. Washington Post, March 10 2017.
[←45]
Nathaniel Popper. “S.E.C. Rejects Winklevoss Brothers’ Bid to Create Bitcoin E.T.F.” Dealbook, New York Times, 10 March 2017.
[←46]
Leisha Chi. “Bitcoin digital currency hits three-year high of $1,000”. BBC News, 3 January 2017.
[←47]
“LocalBitcoins Volume (Venezuela)”. Coin Dance.
[←48]
“The silver to Bitcoin’s gold”… oh, never mind.
[←49]
Nick Szabo. “The Greek financial mess; and some ways Bitcoin might help”. Unenumerated (blog), 3 July 2015.
[←50]
ZhouTonge
d. “Cyprus Anthem (Swedish House Mafia – Don’t You Worry Child)”. YouTube, 5 May 2013.
[←51]
Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Full text in various formats on Project Gutenberg.
[←52]
Jean-Paul Rodrigue. “Stages in a Bubble”. The Geography of Transport Systems, 2008.
[←53]
Martti Malmi. Twitter, 15 January 2014.
[←54]
Laszlo. “Pizza for bitcoins?” Bitcointalk.org Bitcoin Forum > Economy > Marketplace, 18 May 2010. (archive)
[←55]
historyofbitcoin.org
[←56]
“A Bit expensive: Bitcoin’s record price looks like a bubble”. Daily Chart, The Economist, 19 March 2013.
[←57]
Peter Ford. “Why the Chinese can’t get enough of Bitcoin – despite bank ban”. Christian Science Monitor, 6 December 2013.
[←58]
Rick Falkvinge. “The Target Value For Bitcoin Is Not Some $50 Or $100. It Is $100,000 To $1,000,000”. Falkvinge on Liberty (blog), 6 March 2013. (archive)
[←59]
A good short overview: Marie Vasek, Tyler Moore. “There’s No Free Lunch, Even Using Bitcoin: Tracking the Popularity and Profits of Virtual Currency Scams”. International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2015. Blog post.
[←60]
Gwern Branwen. “Bitcoin is Worse is Better: Irreversible transactions: meta-scams”.
[←61]
“Scams: Doubling money”. RuneScape Wikia.
[←62]
“Operators of Bitcoin Mining Operation Butterfly Labs Agree to Settle FTC Charges They Deceived Consumers”. Federal Trade Commission (press release), 18 February 2016.
[←63]
Cyrus Farivar. “Digging for answers: The ‘strong smell’ of fraud from one Bitcoin miner maker”. Ars Technica, 22 April 2014.
[←64]
A good, though technical, explanation: Jon Matonis. “BitZino And The Dawn Of ‘Provably Fair’ Casino Gaming”. Forbes (contributor blog), 31 August 2012. (archive)
[←65]
keepinquiet. “How 999dice.com is stealing your coins, and exactly why you won’t believe me”. Bitcointalk.org Bitcoin Forum > Economy > Trading Discussion > Scam Accusations, 7 February 2015. (archive)
[←66]
Jeffrey Tucker. “A Theory of the Scam”. Beautiful Anarchy (blog), 2 January 2015.
[←67]
Unclescrooge. “[shame thread]The sorry and thank you Pirateat40 thread”. Bitcointalk.org Bitcoin Forum > Economy > Marketplace > Lending > Long-term offers, 17 August 2012. (archive)
[←68]
Mageant. “Bitcoin Killer App: High Yield Investments”. Bitcointalk.org Bitcoin Forum > Bitcoin > Bitcoin Discussion, 22 July 2012. (archive)
[←69]
Vitalik Buterin. “Ponzi schemes: The Danger of High Interest Savings Funds”. Bitcoin Magazine, 31 May 2012. (archive)
[←70]
Adrianne Jeffries. “Suspected multi-million dollar Bitcoin pyramid scheme shuts down, investors revolt”. The Verge, 27 August 2012.
[←71]
yochdog. “The pirate speaks”. Bitcointalk.org Bitcoin Forum > Economy > Marketplace > Lending, 17 September 2012. (archive)
[←72]
Killhamster. “pirateat40: It became Bill Cosby coins”. Buttcoin Foundation, 5 March 2014. (archive)
[←73]
Jason Siebert. “SEC v. SHAVERS”. 21 July 2014. (archive)
[←74]
Securities and Exchange Commission v. Shavers et al, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas, No. 13-00416.
[←75]
Jonathan Stempel. “Judge Awards $40.7 Million in SEC Case Over Bitcoin Ponzi Scheme”. Recode, 19 September 2014.
[←76]
“Manhattan U.S. Attorney And FBI Assistant Director Announce Securities And Wire Fraud Charges Against Texas Man For Running Bitcoin Ponzi Scheme”. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York (press release), 6 November 2014.
[←77]
Nate Raymond. “Texan gets one-and-a-half years in prison for running bitcoin Ponzi scheme”. Reuters, 21 July 2016.
[←78]
Justin O’Connell. “Lawyer Reveals Details About the Man Behind Bitcoin’s $4.5 Million Ponzi Scheme”. Motherboard, 18 December 2015.
[←79]
Wikipedia: Dunning-Kruger effect. From which another name for bitcoins, “Dunning-Krugerrands.”
[←80]
“Risk of Bitcoin Hacks and Losses Is Very Real”. Reuters, 29 August 2016.
[←81]
Kyt Dotson. “Third Largest Bitcoin Exchange Bitomat Lost Their Wallet, Over 17,000 Bitcoins Missing”. SiliconAngle, 1 August 2011.
[←82]
Coinabul. “10 Questions with Zhou Tong”. Bitcoin Magazine, 30 May 2012. (archive)
[←83]
genjix. Comment on “[Emergency ANN] Bitcoinica site is taken offline for security investigation”. Bitcointalk.org Bitcoin Forum > Bitcoin > Bitcoin Discussion, 25 May 2012. “root” is the administrator account for a Unix or Linux server. (archive)
[←84]
Vitalik Buterin. “Bitcoinica Stolen From … Again”. Bitcoin Magazine, 17 July 2012. (archive)
[←85]
Stan Higgins. “BitPay Sues Insurer After Losing $1.8 Million in Phishing Attack”. CoinDesk, 17 September 2015. (archive)
[←86]
P. H. Madore. “AllCrypt Bitcoin Exchange Clears the Air”. CryptoCoinsNews, 26 March 2015. (archive)
[←87]
Duncan Riley. “Bitcoin stolen from lending startup Loanbase in alleged hack”. SiliconAngle, 9 February 2016.
[←88]
Stan Higgins. “Cryptsy CEO Stole Millions From Exchange, Court Receiver Alleges”. CoinDesk, 11 August 2016.
[←89]
Kraken Exchange. “No compromise. CloudFlare issue. Some users may need to update their browsers to support SNI. IE/XP users may need to enable TLS 1.1/1.2”. Twitter, 26 January 2016. (archive)
[←90]
Matthew Prince. “@krakenfx let’s get the facts straight. Credit card provided for payment expired. After 3 warnings you were downgraded to a free account”. Twitter, 27 January 2016. (archive)
[←91]
Roger Ver. “Roger Ver on MTGOX Bitcoin exchange”. YouTube, 17 July 2013.
[←92]
Roger Ver. Comment on “[VIDEO] Roger Ver says he is sorry about MTGOX”. Bitcointalk.org Bitcoin Forum > Economy > Marketplace > Service Discussion, 26 February 2014. (archive)
[←93]
Kdawson. “Bitcoin Releases Version 0.3”. Slashdot, 11 July 2010.
[←94]
This section draws from Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money by Nathaniel Popper. Mark Karpelès has disputed parts of the book’s account of events: “Restoring the truth”. Blog post, 29 May 2015.
[←95]
Disclosure: Mark Karpelès bought me a month of Reddit Gold (value $5) after I posted an early draft of the Bitfinex section of this book to /r/buttcoin, with the note “reddit gold for comedy gold, fair trade I’d say”.
[←96]
Martti Malmi. “I’m Martti Malmi, early bitcoin developer and the original founder of the Bitcointalk.org forums, AMA!” Bitcoin.com forums, 18 November 2015. (archive)
[←97]
“MTG Online Exchange”. Archive as of 25 May 2007.
[←98]
Cyrus Farivar. “Why the head of Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange should be in jail”. Ars Technica, 1 August 2014.
[←99]
Jake Adelstein, Nathalie-Kyoko Stucky. “Behind the Biggest Bitcoin Heist in History: Inside the Implosion of Mt. Gox”. Daily Beast, 19 May 2016.
[←100]
In cryptography, “salting” is used to make it even harder to work out a passwor
d from its hash. Wikipedia: Salt (cryptography).
[←101]
Ryan Selkis. “Leaked Mt. Gox Document Linked to Consulting Firm Mandalah”. CoinDesk, 27 February 2014.
[←102]
A good technical explanation: Ed Felten. “Understanding Bitcoin’s transaction malleability problem”. Freedom to Tinker (blog), 12 February 2014.
[←103]
Nermin Hajdarbegovic. “Price Drops as Mt. Gox Blames Bitcoin Flaw for Withdrawal Delays”. CoinDesk, 10 February 2014.
[←104]
Christian Decker, Roger Wattenhofer. “Bitcoin Transaction Malleability and MtGox”. arXiv:1403.6676v1 [cs.CR], 26 March 2014.
[←105]
Ken Shirriff. “The programming error that cost Mt Gox 2609 bitcoins”. March 2014. (archive)