When Newsweek published its cover story last week claiming to have identified the creator of Bitcoin, I tweeted that I was reserving judgment on their claim, pending more evidence. At this point it looks like they don’t have more evidence to show us—and that Newsweek is probably wrong.
Are User Identification Networks the Future of Commercial Bitcoin Transactions?
February 13, 2014 by
With 12.3 million bitcoins mined to date, the total value of bitcoins has reached $9.975 billion US dollars. While this may pale in comparison to the $1.23 trillion US dollars in circulation, the use of bitcoins in commerce is gaining traction. With this traction the potential exists to link users’ identities with their public bitcoin […]
Understanding Bitcoin's transaction malleability problem
February 12, 2014 by
In recent days, several Bitcoin exchanges have suspended certain kinds of payments due to “transaction malleability” issues. There has been a lot of talk about why this happened, and some finger-pointing. In this post, I will try to unpack what “transaction malleability” is and why it has proven to be a problem for some companies.
Bitcoin Research in Princeton CS
November 29, 2013 by
Continuing our post series on ongoing research in computer security and privacy here at Princeton, today I’d like to survey some of our research on Bitcoin. Bitcoin is hot right now because of the recent run-up in its value. At the same time, Bitcoin is a fascinating example of how technology, economics, and social interactions […]
Game Theory and Bitcoin
November 11, 2013 by
In light of the back-and-forth about the recent Eyal and Sirer (“ES”) paper about Bitcoin mining, I want to take a step back and talk about what a careful analysis of Bitcoin mining dynamics would look like. (Here are some previous posts if you need backstory: 1 2 3 4 5.) The key to a […]
