I would like to address the issue of the privacy of cryptocurrency transactions, and the role of cryptocurrency tracing companies in helping the world of crypto become safer, more widespread, and more legitimate, while still preserving the privacy of individuals.…
Technology Recap: Bitcoin: We are now 26 days away from the block reward halving. The MIT Bitcoin Club has posted all videos from this year's MIT Bitcoin Expo, which took place in early March. BitcoinCash: Bitcoin ABC v0.21.4 has been released. This release focuses…
Technology Recap: Bitcoin: BitMEX Research released Mining Incentives (Part 4): The Impact of The Halvening. We are now only 34 days away! BitcoinCash: At block height 630,000 the BCH halving occurred, dropping the block reward from 12.5 BCH to 6.25 BCH. Ethereum: Sigma…
Technology Recap: Bitcoin: We are less than 50 days away from the next block halving event! On May 13, 2020 at 18:28:20 UTC the block reward will decrease from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC. Ethereum: A GitCoin grant has been opened for the deliverable…
Technology Recap: Bitcoin: Development on Taproot is progressing. This week a PR opened up on simplifying the code used for VerifyWitnessProgram. The 32-byte witness program will be used for taproot outputs and the full script validation rules. Independent of compiler and architecture, libsecp256k1 now has tests for detecting…
Technology Recap: Bitcoin: A pull-request (PR) that was originally issued in September of 2019 for Bitcoin Core, aimed at improving the per-opcode verification cost of scripts, has been merged into master. This update improves the logic for determining whether a particular opcode is to be executed significantly. BitcoinCash: …
CipherTrace has previously reported on North Korea using cybercrime to avert economic sanctions and raise hard cash to fund its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) development. For example, in August 2017, we revealed details of a then unreleased UN research…
Technology Recap: Bitcoin: Bitcoin Core v0.19.1 has been released. Bitcoin developer Bryan Bishop released python-bitcoinlib v0.11.0, now with segwit examples. Developers gathered in Boston last weekend for MIT’s Bitcoin Expo 2020. Until all videos are released, here is Andrew Poelstra’s talk on Taproot and how to contribute to Bitcoin development. …
Technology Recap: Bitcoin: Bitcoin hash rate is currently at an all-time high. Full metrics here. Ethereum: This past weekend and week, developers gathered in London for ETHLondon and in Paris for ETHCC. Both events entailed a major focus on scalability, privacy, and the move towards ETH2.0. …
Technology Recap: Bitcoin: The bitcoin-dev mailing list heated up this week with posts regarding how a Bitcoin transaction can leak protocol usage. Full message here. Developers are starting to weigh in on Taproot versus alternatives for enabling a Merklized Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST)…