Was #Bitcoin created by the NSA?
Did they create SHA-256?
Who is Tatsuaki Okamoto? 🤔
#asknostr
Discussion
Fast search:
The patent (US6829355B2) for the SHA-256 algorithm was filed by the NSA on March 5th, 2001, listing Glenn M Lilly as the inventor.
Would that mean the NSA would have the ability to circumvent SHA-256 encryption? Would they have a "backdoor" to actually trace #Bitcoin transactions?
A curve the nsa came up with they could have an advantage in cracking, bitcoins curve is particularly special in being (relatively) easy to validate as secure, though I dont understamd the math.
I would say that we dont know until someone cracks the code/algo. After that we can better say how likely it was intentionally made to be circumventable.
Im not sure what do you mean with second question. I dont think sha has nothing to do with tracing transactions. Transactions are public and tracable all the way from end to start.
Just to be clear blocks contains hashes of previous blocks and transaction hashes, but i dont see how cracking sha256 would help to trace transactions. But im just hobbyist so i can be absolutely wrong 🤷♂️😂
I quess problem would be someone having advantage of generating blocks or figuring out private keys.
Maybe Bitcoin was invented as a way to incentivize a decentralized attempt on cracking SHA-2 and is going to be used to break into government secret archives and whatnot