Bitcoin education that doesn't suck. Learn Bitcoin: The Journey, Rabbit Holes, Glossary. Free. Ad-free. No Tracking. Open source. Bitcoin only. No bullshit.
Joined October 2023
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An AI math shortcut is Nic's gamma-ray burst: no odds, nothing to do. Fair. Quantum is a known algorithm waiting on hardware, and there hygiene matters. Shor needs a public key. A coin behind an unspent hash shows none until it moves. 7.1M BTC (35%) do.
chainquery.com/reports/quant…
“Bitcoin would be thrown into total disarray...”
@nic_carter shares his take on the possibility of AI breaking public key encryption vs quantum risk. This is his honest read.
Share your thoughts below.
The two attacks, what "exposed" means, and why a hash shields a coin until it moves: learnbitcoin.com/rabbit-hole…
Bitcoin Core 32.1, 31.2 and 30.4 are out this week, plus a final 29.5. 29.x is now end of life. In two weeks Core publishes details of 3 medium/high severity bugs that were fixed in 30.0. If your node is on 29 or older, upgrade before then. bitcoincore.org/en/download/
If you use Electrum: update to 4.8.3.
A malicious server could hide a payment you just sent, show a fake one in its place, and wait for you to hit “bump fee”. The replacement your wallet then signs pays the attacker. At least two users lost funds.
Two lessons: check the address in the fee-bump dialog, and if you can, point your wallet at your own node’s Electrum server.
New on LearnBitcoin: the bitcoin-dev mailing list, readable.
Fifteen years of the list where Bitcoin's rules get argued over, one page per thread, searchable, updated daily. 24,699 messages, 3,292 threads, 1,419 people, June 2011 to this week.
learnbitcoin.com/archive
ALT Bar chart of messages per year on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, 2011 to 2026. The peak is 2015 with 5,110 messages; 2011 has 1,014; 2026 has 699 through 24 October. Footer: 24,699 messages, 3,292 threads, 1,419 people, June 2011 to today, learnbitcoin.com/archive.
Thanks to Bryan Bishop, who keeps the public-inbox archive the list depends on and asked people to mirror it, and to 0xB10C for the second mirror this one is cloned from.
Thread pages link to the originals. Cite whichever you like; ours will keep working.
Start with the loudest year, the biggest debates, or the person you disagree with most.
learnbitcoin.com/archive
Corrections, wrong name merges, anything off: tell us and it is fixed the same day.
Bitcoin Core 32.0 was tagged final yesterday.
What changes for regular node runners:
- fee estimates now also read the live mempool, and can only come out lower, so less overpaying on quiet days
- blocks validate faster (inputs fetched in parallel)
room for 200 peers, up from 125
- two security fixes, including an IP leak in private broadcast
No consensus changes, no soft fork. Waiting for the binaries and a .1.
New chapter: Which Coins Does Your Wallet Spend?
Your wallet has no balance. It has a bag of coins, and every payment starts by picking which to spend. What the pick costs now and later, what it tells a chain analyst, and how Bitcoin Core decides.
learnbitcoin.com/rabbit-hole…
What the score can't see: a reused address is linked the moment it is paid, before any selection runs. Core's avoid_reuse flag filters one command.
The wallet's own authors, in the CoinGrinder PR: it still lacks metrics "on basis of their privacy and wallet health impact".
Full chapter, sourced (53 sources), free, no ads, no wallet recommendations:
learnbitcoin.com/rabbit-hole…
Spot a wrong number or quote? Reply here and it gets fixed, with credit.
