Controversy Around Profitability of AltCoin Investment

There is a considerable controversy around whether investing in a balanced basket of cryptocoins is a good idea. Two serious sources show that this sort of investment enjoys steady growth without a lot of downturns, cf. DLT10 Index and a recent detailed study which concentrates on a shorter period with excellent returns since Jan 2016 (cf. also …

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Bitcoin Block Reward Halving

In a few minutes, cf. countdown, the amount of bitcoins attributed to each block mined will be divided by 2 in one single step. A rare event which happens once approximately every 4 years. This is an artificial shock which is tolerated by the bitcoin community in the name of misplaced ideology that whatever was decided …

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DAO – Record Breaking Theft Worth 5OM$

Some 50 millions of dollars have been stolen from DAO token holders (including myself). The DAO is by the way, claimed to be closing [Tual]. Closing or not, it remains a smart contract which should allow DAO holders to get some of their initial ethers back. Now can the thief spend his Ethers without being caught (for now locked until 14 …

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Researchers in Cryptography vs. Big Brother

For decades the dominant paradigm in crypto and security research would be: to claim that security vulnerabilities occur accidentally, ignoring major questions such as why there are so many of them and why the “bad scenarios” repeat so many times, concentrate security research on topics of secondary importance, or those which have no importance whatsoever and …

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A Short Human-Verifiable Proof that Craig Wright has Cheated the Press

Hours after his TV interview and his coming out in The Economist and elsewhere, I can confirm beyond reasonable doubt that Craig Wright (CW) has cheated us about his ability to sign messages with Satoshi’s private key. Here is a short executive summary of facts guaranteed to be 100% exact.This is also a short and …

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On Forces of Self-Destruction in Bitcoin

I have worked for several years in bitcoin community. In May 2014 I have published a paper in which I formulated the theory of programmed self-destruction of crypto currency.   Few points about this My conclusion was that many crypto currencies were genetically programmed or bound to self-destruct. This is absolutely certain. Not because they were …

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Criminals Exploit Lack Of Knowledge of How Bitcoin Works

A so called Bitcoin Generator Tool v.2.9 have been released today (Sat 3 Oct 2015) and already 260 downloads within a few hours! It is a ZIP file which claims that it performs full access on the Bitcoin central SQL database and allows one to add bitcoins to his account. Needless to say there is no such …

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What’s New in Bitcoin Mining?

20 million dollars have just been invested in BitFury (July 2015), totaling 60 million which this company has raised (source: coindesk). There was nothing like this for at least 5 months.       On Mining Profitability I find it very surprising that people invest in bitcoin mining. Why? My [private] conjecture is as follows: mining …

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Controversy Around Bitcoin Elliptic Curve

So many times we have learned about cryptography and security the hard way. One of the key problems is ignoring the advice and warnings, which are plainly written in the current crypto literature. This without the slightest ambiguity, so that there is very little doubt about what a reasonable and professional security practice is. The Story …

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How to Lose Your Bitcoins with Bitcoin Core Client

The answer is: just accept to receive a regular payment with bitcoin core client v0.9.2.1. All your bitcoins may be lost!  Here are the facts. Today we have done  the following experience. I had my client synchronized and running on my laptop, then suddenly it hanged and I had to reboot it. Just few minutes before …

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