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Dr. Bitcoin, MD 2d ago đź’¬ 2

Bitcoin consensus rules are almost perfect. I think it was an error to permit bitcoins to be spent if public keys were exposed in the blockchain, but I can see why it is slightly hard to enforce this computationally…

I predict someday we will see a new consensus rule that says you can’t leave pubkeys exposed for long and remain spendable…bitcoin isn’t for dead people.

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Brisket 2d ago

Isn't the public key exposed as a Bitcoin receive addresse in most Bitcoin transactions?

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Dr. Bitcoin, MD 2d ago

Nope. Not really. Only exposed upon spending. Which is why address reuse is discouraged.

But in the old days, addresses were keys themselves. So the first few million coins ever created were created unwisely. Some of those have never been spent since creation.