Tag Archives: bitcoin

Bitcoin Explained (VIII)

Last time we saw how once you are the “owner” of some bitcoins, that gives you the magical power of being able to specify what conditions the next claimant must meet before they become the “owner” As flexible as it is, there is a problem with this arrangement. Every client has to be taught how… Read More »

Bitcoin Explained (VII)

This series of articles is an extension to my earlier Bitcoin Explained series. It absolutely isn’t necessary for understanding bitcoin, the previous articles are still valid. However, I recently made use of the Brawker website, and wanted to understand their use of P2SH more fully. This new series of articles is the result of me… Read More »

Pushmepullyou: Discount for Cash

I’ve touched on the idea before, but I thought it was time I made it explicit. I want to compare customer-not-present purchases using bitcoins and using credit cards. In particular: security. Consider a modern web site, accepting a credit card. You fill up your basket and press “buy”. You have to supply: Name Address Email… Read More »

Bitcoin Explained (VI)

This is the final part, part VI in my “Bitcoin Explained” series. Details then. Not necessarily relevant for understanding. Bitcoin’s transactions are a little more sophisticated than the paper analogy reveals. Each transaction is itself uniquely identified, and acts as a hub for transferring from any number of arbitrary sources to any number of arbitrary… Read More »

Bitcoin Explained (V)

This is part V in my “Bitcoin Explained” series. At the end of part IV we saw how a signature chain can be used to create an unstealable ownership record; but that a dishonest person in the chain can easily create multiple copies of a valid signature chain. 17283726152 17283726152 I will pay the owner…… Read More »

Bitcoin Explained (IV)

This is part IV in my “Bitcoin Explained” series. At the end of part III we saw that the Bitcoin network’s primary function is to act as a peer to peer timestamping system. That the blocks could, in principle, verify any data its operators wished. The catch of course is that those operators need an… Read More »

Bitcoin Explained (III)

This is part III in my “Bitcoin Explained” series. The problem we left at the end of part II was that while we had a way of constructing a coherent chain of blocks, and of having them verifiably claim an arbitrary level of difficulty of creation; we had no way of deciding how difficult a… Read More »

Bitcoin Explained (II)

This is part II in my “Bitcoin Explained” series. The problem we left at the end of part I was that the construction of a valid chain of payload-storing blocks is trivial (for a computer) to create. For a financial system we want it to not be trivial, we want it to be incredibly hard… Read More »

Bitcoin Explained (I)

Bitcoin’s core technology is a very clever, and yet surprisingly simple, idea. It’s got distinct parallels with the git version control system; and the concept would work for a great deal more situations than just a virtual currency. There are plenty of ill-informed articles by mainstream (and some tech) writers who haven’t really understood how… Read More »

Bitcoin Rising (I)

Another in my tracking of bitcoin acceptance increases articles. This is a product unassociated with bitcoin; and yet look down there at the bottom of the page. We now take BITCOIN! Small steps. Small steps.