In a February 8, 2011 post on Bitcointalk, Finney said that reading a book titled “Guide to Elliptic Curve Cryptography” by Hankerson, Menezes, and Vanstone, gave him an idea of how to speed up signature verification by 25%. In the following post from the same day, Finney announced that he had already written “test code” and uploaded it to the Github repository. However, there was a problem with Finney’s proposal — his method had already been patented by someone else. “Method for Accelerating Cryptographic Operation on Elliptic Curves” (also known as GLV or Four-Dimensional Gallant–Lambert–Vanstone Scalar Multiplication) received a patent …

It is a question that many in the crypto community must have asked themselves at least once. The news of Wladimir van der Laan taking a temporary hiatus, prompted us to explore what some might consider to be an improbable, yet highly impactful situation. A Bitcoin Core developer that is also a maintainer of the project's GitHub account (i.e., someone who can “merge code into the master branch”) is a rare commodity. To put this in perspective, if a Bitcoin Core developer is a black belt, then someone like van der Laan is a third-degree black belt. To set the …

On September 7, Bitcoin Core developer Wladimir van der Laan tweeted that he may be "done with coins" all together. He later confirmed to Cointelegraph that he was indeed taking a break from his duties as a Core developer and one of the custodians of the project’s Github repository. One of the factors that led him to this decision was a Twitter storm that lasted for days and was caused by the renaming of a variable that specifies a list of characters that cannot appear in filenames due to operating system restrictions. Source: Bitcoin Github repository. How could something this …

Bitcoin Core developer Pieter Wuille has migrated from Blockstream to Chaincode Labs. Wuille has been with Blockstream from the beginning, having co-founded the company in 2014. When asked about Wuille's departure, Blocksteam’s CEO Adam Back said: “Pieter’s doing what he always has — working on Bitcoin — and he’s still a Blockstream advisor and continues to collaborate with our research team Andrew Poelstra, Jonas Nick and Tim Ruffing on muSig along with independent researchers and contributors. So I think that means Blockstream contributors on MuSig research roughly going from 4/5th to 3/5th of the people actively working on muSig cryptor.” …

There are still 14 victims of the massive Twitter hack that could still get their Bitcoin back. These victims sent some Bitcoin to a hacker address, but their transactions are still unconfirmed on the Bitcoin network. They are currently hanging in limbo, or Bitcoin mempool. These transactions seem to be unconfirmed after many hours because the senders designated a very low transaction fee that’s unattractive to miners. Bitcoin Core developer Wladimir van der Laan confirmed this to Cointelegraph. “Miners pick the highest fee-rate transactions, but also might have some minimum fee below which they won't mine transactions at all,” he …

According to crypto advocate Roger Ver, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is the only “recent” coin to be widely used on the dark web. “The only other coins being used on the darknet markets are the coins that have been around for a long time like Bitcoin, of course, then Monero,” Ver said. Coinelegraph’s investigation showed that although BCH does reach the Dark Web, it's far from being a leading cryptocurrency there. This is surprising: while privacy-focused cryptocurrencies like Monero commonly protect the identities of darknet buyers and sellers alike, Bitcoin Cash has some technical features that can bring its level of …

Scientists in China were able to exchange an encryption key at a distance of 1,120 kilometers, this exceeds the previous best attempt by 1,000 kilometers. Crypto experts discuss whether this could have practical implications for the industry. Hackerproof cryptography? Quantum computers are scarecrows for the crypto industry for years, with some speculating that the advances in this technology will make all existing cryptography obsolete. This time quantum entanglement was used to exchange a secret key that could be used to encrypt and decrypt messages. One could imagine if this technology becomes a commodity it could make crypto hacking obsolete as …

Peter Todd, a former Bitcoin Core developer, has settled a defamation lawsuit against cryptographer Isis Lovecruft who accused Todd of being a rapist in a tweet posted in February 2019. The terms of the settlement will see the suit dropped without monetary compensation in exchange for Lovecruft issuing a statement “clarifying that they do not assert (as they have never asserted) that Todd raped or sexually assaulted them personally.” Lovecruft uses the pronouns ‘they/them’ and their name is a pseudonym. Sexual assault allegations from Jane Doe In February 2019, Lovecruft posted a tweet calling Peter Todd and two other cryptographers …

Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles insists that the 80,000 Bitcoin (BTC) that Craig Wright lays claim to was stolen from the exchange in March 2011. Cryptocurrency experts side with Karpeles. Bitcoins were stolen Karpeles confirmed to Cointelegraph that the Bitcoin residing at 1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF was stolen from Mt. Gox: “I confirm, this was confirmed in 2011 and records are also part of court documents available publicly.” Also, speculating about Wright’s motivation in this turn of events in the Tulip Trust saga, Karpeles opined that nChain’s chief scientist is just trying to put forward some “evidence” of his status: “To be …

After Roger Ver posted a video of a Hong Kong vending machine accepting Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and not Bitcoin (BTC), trader and YouTuber Tone Vays claimed Ver paid for the vending machine to avoid accepting BTC. Ver denied such claims. Ver demoed a Honk Kong vending machine accepting BCH Ver, an outspoken proponent of BCH, posted a May 29 video on Twitter of a Hong Kong vending machine accepting BCH, Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Coin (BNB) — but not BTC. "There's no Bitcoin accepted at all," Ver said in the video, noting the coin's high fees and network …

The research arm of cryptocurrency exchange, BitMEX, shed some light on who is funding the development of the open source software behind Bitcoin (BTC). According to a BitMEX Research report published on March 28, blockchain firms Blockstream and Lightning Labs are the largest contributors to Bitcoin development. On the other hand, Bitcoin research firm, Chaincode Labs, is the largest financial supporter of Bitcoin Core software development. The researchers note: “We conclude that the situation is more healthy than it has been in the past, with respect to the availability of finance, transparency, and the degree of distribution among financial backers.” …

Bitcoin (BTC) node synchronization would be impossible if it were not for the improvements that have been made to the software, according to the research arm of crypto exchange BitMex. BitMex Research measured the Initial Block Download (IBD) times of Bitcoin Core software releases from 2012 to 2019 needed to download the blockchain and verify it and shared their conclusions in a blog post published on Nov. 29. The research team claims that the older version of the Bitcoin Core software may be impossible to synchronize now and that the scalability improvements made to the software are essential to the …