Update 2021–05–03: Added a subsection about credible neutrality to the “General comments” section. Update 2021–04–26: Thank you everyone who provided feedback (here and here, mostly). I have updated the post with a new, clearer example of how an ETH presale insider could have manipulated the presale to their advantage. To make…

In 2020 I started researching the existing solutions for creating a two-way bitcoin peg. I have been eagerly awaiting the advent of trust-minimized bitcoin sidechains and, after years of effort, I wanted to check in on the progress. …

On today’s 12th anniversary of the bitcoin genesis block, at a time when bitcoin is reaching new all-time-high prices on a nearly daily basis, I find myself thinking about what bitcoin is good for. Not because I don’t know, but because there are still so many other people who apparently…

Recently the cryptocurrency community was alarmed by news that a hacked marketing database from the hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger was made available for download for free on a public online discussion forum. The database is now available to virtually anyone who wants it. …

In the bitcoin network, full nodes are the enforcers of consensus rules. A full node (short for “fully-validating bitcoin node”) is a computer running bitcoin software that validates all transactions and blocks that are sent through the network, ensuring that only valid transactions and blocks get added to the full…

The first problem Bitcoiners face after figuring out how to first acquire coins is figuring out how to secure them. I’ve written about this topic before and even made concrete recommendations for people just starting the journey of preserving and growing their wealth with bitcoin. …

Prominent investor and entrepreneur Ray Dalio recently posted on Twitter about his reasons for being skeptical of bitcoin as a currency. His objections are understandable given bitcoin’s novelty. I also don’t entirely disagree with some of his points! …

One of bitcoin’s critical challenges to overcome on the way to “mainstream adoption” is scalability. Debates over how to scale bitcoin came to a head in 2017, with the Segwit2x proposal and later the BCH hard fork occurring just months before the historical peak of bitcoin’s transaction fee market. In…

There is a story that I have noticed some Bitcoiners have begun to tell in an effort to try and FUD themselves and others into avoiding altcoins as if their lives depended on it. That story goes something like, “If bitcoin is flippened by an altcoin, then the world’s confidence…