What is your take on Bitmain's near monopoly on ASIC production given their history of deception (ASIC Boost)?

They congregate on r/buttcoin Josh is more articulate than most there. His arguments at least have some basis in Austrian economics. He could position himself as the Buttcoin Overlord.

Yes. A single S19 would take 5.3 years to crack 74 bits of entropy: 17 char hex salt = 68 bits + 6 bits for the spin. It would take a couple of million S19s to crack this under a minute, so it passes the sniff test as "provably fair".

No. The concept is sound. If the roll is hashed, and the hash is revealed before the spin ends, then the roll is provably fair, because it cannot be changed without changing the hash.

However, It is trivial to create SHA256 hash collisions against a 7 character string. It is impossibly difficult to create collisions with the full 64 character hex string.

The authors know this - they base their entire thesis on this principle. Which is why it smells. They try to give the impression of being provably fair, while limiting the hash to just 7 characters is provably not fair. They have been advertising heavily here, unless this is addressed asap - show me the hash, @SN should reject their advertising sats and tell them to look for suckers elsewhere.

It's still not ok. Limiting visibility of the hash to the first 7 characters is "provably fair theatre". Very easy to create collisions at only 7 chars. Waiting for them to show the full hash.

Honestly, I find it highly suspect that you only print the first 7 characters of the hash. I wrote a script that finds collisions within 8 seconds on a normal desktop. Given a minute between spins, this gives you plenty of opportunity to pick a number that favors the house. To immediately address this, and if you are concerned about the full hash taking up too much "real estate", use a tooltip so that when we hover, we see the full hash. Then, and only then, will this be "provably fair". Because right now, this is "provably fair theatre".

Hey @supertestnet. It would be a huge loss for SN if you left. You are one of the few people I follow here. Your contributions and energy that you bring to the wider development effort is not to be understated. My account has accumulated both CCs (somehow) and sats, and I am not clear if I have a choice which to zap, so in this case, I supported you directly and I would like to continue participating (real time or not) in your workshops. I know value when I see it, let me know where you land, and I will be there.

This is very helpful! I really enjoy these OP code puzzles that solve established use cases. Cheers!

Thanks for the reference. WIll take a look.

You are right. Thank you. Keys don't move. Sometimes exchanges allow you to move their bitcoin, the ones you paid for, to an address for which you alone have the private keys. Only at that point does the Bitcoin become truly yours.

Thanks for sharing the thought provoking summary of the world's largest man made networks. One possible inclusion would be the SWIFT network which includes 11,000 financial institutions. source

Thanks for sharing this thought provoking post along with the Mandarin idioms. The vast majority of people, the wage earners and blue collar working class, have little hope of saving their way to a higher standard of living. After years of saving fiat, they see that the house or flat they want is rising faster than their ability to save. At a certain point, saving becomes pointless and in a greater context, life becomes hopeless. This conclusion justifies immediate gratification, gambling, lottery prayers, alcohol and drug abuse, and other short term gratifications because there is no point thinking long term any longer. That being said, we should cherish the present moment, but not at the expense of the future. Sound money changes all this. Now the working class can save for that house or flat. Bitcoin brings back hope and purpose and something to look forward to. Saving essentially gives your energy and work today to society with the expectation that you we will be able store that work-energy and redeem the same value in the future. That is the purpose of money. What fiat destroys, Bitcoin restores.

Part of the problem is that people think that their physical hardware wallet contains their bitcoin. People talk about moving their bitcoin off of exchanges. Which wallet should I store my bitcoin, etc. Bitcoin is always on the blockchain and never moves off it, Bitcoin is never in a "wallet". More precisely, UTXOs are on the blockchain. Your keys are encrypted and stored securely in a hardware wallet. The keys are what needs to be moved off exchanges and protected. Not so much the hardware wallet itself. People mistakenly think that if they protect their physical hardware wallet, then they have it all covered because they think their bitcoin are in the wallet itself. I encourage we communicate these terms accurately to help newbies build a better mental model of how Bitcoin works. Knowledge is the key.

Storing your single seed phrase on a piece of paper with tape a 3-hour train ride away is frankly not the best advice. Stamping your 2 of 4 multi-sig seed phrases on steel and storing each of them in four separate secure locations is a better plan. You want your high value HODL wallet that you plan to save for years to be difficult to reach but extremely secure to everyone including yourself. You can secure the 4 seeds in different cities, different countries, even different continents.

Thanks for sharing. Looks amazing. I see Homer's Odyssey theme here. A man stripped of everything seeking his way home with 12 major tests including seduction and danger along the way.

Same era. Missile Command. Yes, I remember. Maybe there is a black hole that asteroids enter if you they are on the path. As the count builds up and gets critical, you have to enter it which brings you to a new gameplay mode that shows you the asteroids raining down on the planet that you defend much closer to home (missile command). So the story line is, intercept the asteroids in deep space, but if they get too close, defend the planet as the last resort. Clear the asteroids and re-enter the portal to go back into deep space to defend from further away.

Brought back memories. Well done.

Thank you for the detailed etymology. You are a modern day cunning linguist.

Bitcoin hit 100. Why do I feel...nothing.