Mr. Beast from a #Bitcoin industry

Something what I watched from the beginning till the end. Wow! That is a rare gem to find 👌

It is fancy indeed...

Naive example of homomorphic encryption:

Alice has a number 5, she multiplies it by a large number, and sends that to Bob.

Bob adds the number 3 to the large number, and sends back to Alice.

Alice now divides by her original large number, and receives 8. Bob just computed something for Alice, but Bob doesn't know the result of the computation.

Not yet. Nostr login on webapp has had very little development. Soon!

In the early days of ecash a common narrative was that it provides "theoretically perfect anonymity", but there's more nuance to this.

It's correct that when the client presents an unblinded signed message, the mint cannot link this to any specific blinded cyphertext that it signed previously.

However, there is still three pieces of critical metadata that the client does reveal:

1. The number of inputs and outputs of the ecash transaction. Transactions with many inputs reveal that the same user got paid many times in the past. Transactions with many outputs reveal that one user is making many payments.

2. The value of each input and output. The mint uses a different key for each denomination value of the tokens. Thus a token worth 5 units is easily differentiated from a token worth 10 units. The anonymity set of a token depends on the number of tokens generated, so if a user is the only one with that specific denomination he has no privacy.

3. The IP address that connects to the mint to send the transaction api request. If the same IP address makes multiple payments, it's likely the same user, and his geolocation is also revealed.

Problems 1 and 2 can be mitigated on client side, but this adds substantial complexity in utxo management and transaction structure. If these mitigation are not specified and different clients have slightly different solutions, this opens up additional client fingerprinting attacks.

WabiSabi is designed to solve problems 1 and 2 on a protocol level. A WabiSabi transaction is required to have exactly two inputs and two outputs, and homomorphic value commitments hide the amounts of each input and output. The tradeoff is that the mint has to issue 0 value credentials, a user needs to make more transactions to prepare his desired amounts, and the proof size and creation time is larger.

Problem 3 is addressed by a client side networking anonymity layer. A VPN at least hides the actual users IP address, but if only one client uses this VPN to talk to this mint, it's still one IP per user. Tor is incredibly useful here, as it allows the creation of anonymous onion routes through the network with different exit IP addresses. A client can get a new IP for each api request! This does however increase bandwidth and latency cost.

We should assume "everyone knows what the mint knows", and so we need to be hardcore about privacy protections best baked into the protocol. If the protocol doesn't ensure the security of the user, client devs have to do an exponentially larger amount of research and development to fix the issues client side.

Solid work.

I’m not on YouTube anymore so can’t see how it goes. Would zap a bit if you decide to release to the rest of us 🫂

27m 37s gjennomsnittleg blokktid? 🤔

Bert & Ernie. One of my favorite things is calves who are born close together and become best friends. These two can always be found side by side.

If #Bitcoin had a soundtrack, what would it be? 🎧

#music #tunestr

You pay in sats?

My own. Have made it myself.

My own. Have made it myself.

Whenever I see statists like the ECB get upset about Bitcoin, or when I see more brazen regimes try and actually implement an all-out ban or crazy tax scheme, I turn to my favorite bit of writing anywhere on Bitcoin and remind myself that a ban is the Berlin Wall and that “fragments of any ban will one day become souvenirs of the folly”

Bitcoin is Ariadne by nostr:npub1sfhflz2msx45rfzjyf5tyj0x35pv4qtq3hh4v2jf8nhrtl79cavsl2ymqt

“Bitcoin is often framed as “competing” with fiat currency. This is true in a sense but I fear there is a rhetorical danger of invoking the wrong kind of “competition”. It is not a fight, for example. There is no conflict. Bitcoin is not trying to damage or sabotage its opponents, because it isn’t trying anything and it knows no opponents. It has no awareness whatsoever of who might oppose it or why. It is simply an alternative; an exit valve; an opt-out. It is competing only insofar as it is proving to be a far superior alternative. It is not a sword for Theseus to fight the Minotaur, but a thread to follow to exit the labyrinth. Bitcoin is Ariadne.

There will be tremendous value in normalizing this rhetoric amidst the likely growing chorus of opposition desperate to smear Bitcoin as inherently nefarious, or hostile, even. Opponents must be forced to explain what is wrong with people interacting freely, and why true goodness can only follow from coercion, in their understanding. Should those who have found a way out of the unbearable labyrinth of capital strip mining not take it? What do they owe the Minotaur?

Does anybody really believe that, having fully understood the choice they face, any individual would choose to save in a self-referentially mispriced toxic loan rather than a provably sound digital bearer asset? Or, more simply still, that they will think it makes less sense to hold money that is a pure asset than money that is literally defined as a liability? Why not opt into a financial system that is built on trustless verifiability rather than unverifiable trust?

… It is worth working through the optics of any decision to engage with Bitcoin in a truly hostile manner, because it is certainly coming. McNeill reminds us that, even some seven-hundred-or-so years ago, “the breakdown of established patterns of conduct always appears deplorable to a majority of those who witness it.” By no means do I have a utopian outlook on this subject — rather, it is something of an intellectual rite of passage to accept the nonzero utility of dystopian paranoia. Bitcoin will be banned, many times, in many places. But a ban is an open admission of practical and moral failure and is arguably the best advertisement of all. A ban is the Berlin Wall; fragments of any ban will one day become souvenirs of the folly and cruelty of repression. Bitcoin doesn’t force anybody to stay. They come, and then they stay, because they want to — because it is both practically and morally superior.”