Bob McElrath Profile Banner
Bob McElrath Profile
Bob McElrath

@BobMcElrath

Followers
13,149
Following
2,464
Media
218
Statuses
23,428

Reverse-engineering the universe and remaking money. Ph.D. Theoretical Physics; Bitcoin hacker

VirgoSupercluster/MilkyWay/Sol
Joined March 2014
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
Pinned Tweet
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 months
I'm a physicist. I agree with every word of this. Sabine had it harder in being a woman. I didn't have that disadvantage but I saw it around me. I still haven't had children and still want to. Have you seen Idiocracy?
4
3
21
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
Reminder: the Bitcoin culture is not a monoculture of vaccine deniers. There are lots of us that are vaccinated and don't consider it a political issue. It's a health issue. Bitcoin is the currency of enemies. Don't let your health become someone else's political tool.
197
104
1K
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Satoshi, if you're still alive, I admire your restraint in staying out of the drama and letting the consequences of your invention play out. It's been said before, but the best thing you ever did was to leave. We respect and admire you for that.
32
173
1K
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
Unpopular Opinion: KYC is an ineffective means to catch money laundering and crime, and creates a moral hazard of all the data of innocent people caught in the dragnet. That data will be stolen and used against innocent people. The paradigm creates more crime than it stops.
47
153
777
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
The circular logic of PoS: 1. The list of valid transactions determines who has coin. 2. People with coin decide which transactions are valid. 3. GOTO 1 This should be enough for anyone to abandon the idea.
@TO
trevor.btc
3 years
Proof-of-Stake is a big mistake 👇👇👇
19
36
210
69
175
733
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
Unpopular opinion: the El Salvador Bitcoin move is brilliant, not because of Bitcoin, but because it will bring an economically relevant amount of tourism, investment, and business. Other countries will follow suit because they see economic development happening, not Bitcoin.
70
51
680
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
11 months
Until you've tried to do an international wire transfer, you won't fully understand Bitcoin.
59
125
696
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
4 years
@BjornLomborg R^2 in this paper are 0.17 - 0.24. This is embarrassing and if a student submitted this in my class I'd fail them.
9
32
518
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Fingerprints are unique to about 1 in 64 billion. That's 36 bits of entropy, the same as a 6-digit alphanumeric password, which a modern GPU can brute-force in seconds. With 8b people on Earth, about 5.6% or 448M people have a fingerprint indistinguishable from another person.
15
191
459
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
There's only one asset in the universe: energy. We figured out how to convert it into money. Trust me, I'm a physicist.
@maxkeiser
Max Keiser
6 years
Saying you’ve discovered ‘the next #Bitcoin ’ is like saying you’ve discovered the next Gold. Utterly pointless. Gold will never be surpassed as a SOV in the physical world, and Bitcoin will remain triumphant as a SOV in the digital world.
33
102
444
35
102
439
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
4 years
In my experience, financial patterns repeat at most twice. The third time, everyone knows it's coming and the pattern is arbitraged away.
@100trillionUSD
PlanB
4 years
#Bitcoin halving 2 months to go .. 2 more blue dots, then RED🚀 For new followers: - Original S2F model article (22/3/2019): - S2F model and EMH article (17/1/2020):
Tweet media one
85
482
2K
69
44
405
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
I'm tired of password forms telling me I have to increase the base of the logarithm with capitals, numbers, and symbols instead of increasing the exponent with length. Y can't u math brogrammer?
17
95
418
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
First, download Gemini app. Second send all your coins to Gemini. This is not paying with bitcoin. It's getting the merchant and customer to use the same custodial "bank" and doing an internal ledger transfer. Lightning is coming for you.
18
53
413
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
"Participants can be anonymous." - Satoshi Nakamoto "Anonymity is a curse." - Craig Wright
19
55
395
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
"Wasteful" but necessary security investments: 1. Door locks 2. Bank vaults 3. Security cameras/personnel 4. Police/Military 5. Regulatory agencies 6. Trade reconciliation 7. Cold storage rooms 8. Bitcoin's PoW Before you dismiss the last one, convince me you can dismiss the rest
26
82
398
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
2 years
When buying ETH is KYC'd, only those the state blesses can become stakers, and they will kowtow to the state. Anyone can be a Bitcoin miner. ETH cannot claim to be censorship resistant when you have to go through KYC to become a staker. ETH is political. Bitcoin is freedom.
68
53
387
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
Reminder: Bitcoin has no competitors. There are dozens of Ethereum competitors making various centralization compromises.
@fintechfrank
Frank Chaparro
3 years
Solana is raising as much as $450 million in bid to take on Ethereum: report
56
105
774
32
36
379
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Negative or zero cost electricity is where Bitcoin mining is going.
21
109
370
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
2 years
@Excellion Ethereum is not using the same hash function. The energy cost of performing one Ethereum hash is far higher than performing one sha256d on Bitcoin. Comparing number of hashes performed is nothing less than fraud. That you tweeted this is deeply embarrassing. Delete this tweet.
7
12
382
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
1 month
You all are about to understand why securities regulation exists, and why reporting requirements are a thing, because Consensys is about to sell their 70% premine on ETH.
57
30
386
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
2 years
We're going to get a lot more Bitcoin-only companies out of this FTX dumpster fire.
31
18
367
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
1 year
Ethereum left BTC as the only major cryptocurrency still using PoW. PoS is for value capture of founders, not for users, where stakers get paid on the back of deflating non-stakers. PoW is part of the Bitcoin thesis. You understand it or you don't, I don't have time to explain.
@techreview
MIT Technology Review
1 year
Ethereum's switch to proof of stake reduced its direct energy consumption by 99%. There's no technical obstacle preventing Bitcoin from doing the same thing—just a social one.
563
29
110
20
50
365
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
There is only one asset in the universe: energy. We figured out how to turn it into money.
@farbood
farbood — e/acc
5 years
The cryptography in Bitcoin is a beautiful example of how energy and information are one.
14
31
246
20
68
340
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
If you remove all the blockchain mumbo jumbo and asked "what is bitcoin" from an asset perspective, it's a way to monetize un-sellable energy. It's a way to monetize usage of electrical resistors. There's more to it than that of course, but that's its economic/cost basis.
13
72
343
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
4 years
Investors are risk-takers. Investors who get "bailed out" have done poor risk management and are transferring the risk to the public. They do not deserve to profit from their failure. Airlines which go into bankruptcy get reformed as a new airline. Spot on
4
96
340
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
1 year
Never forget that the most Jews were killed by Nazis in the Netherlands, because the Dutch had very good records. Tracking humans is fraught with peril and WILL be used against you by a future government.
@jbrukh
Jake Brukhman
1 year
A lot of very smart people I know are reconsidering their position on @worldcoin . That’s because it solves one of the most core problems of decentralization technology.
226
12
227
33
52
327
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Addendum: all biometrics are "usernames" not passwords. They are not secret information.
@hrdwrknvrstps
Eric Olszewski 🇺🇸
6 years
Fingerprints are usernames, not passwords. Would you leave your password all over the gym while lifting?
Tweet media one
21
192
650
11
114
313
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
This BCH hashrate drama is validating the thesis that soft-forks are the only way to go. If you tolerate hard forks, eventually there will be enough disagreements that each fork re-centralizes around just one entity. It's a sign of maturity and stability to never hard fork.
17
56
304
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
10 months
KYC/AML is a failed post-9/11 fear driven policy that doesn't work and ropes everyone involved in commerce into pre-crime enforcement. It's counter to the 1st and 4th amendments and should be abolished. That's the path forward.
@CryptoTea_
Crypto Tea
10 months
ok i'll say it the two founders of Tornado Cash have been arrested and charged with money laundry they are accused of not implementing know your customer and anti-money laundering programs as required by law let's think this through: does bitcoins lightning network help
Tweet media one
64
36
267
16
71
316
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
Unpopular Opinion: Bitcoin is simple. I could have written it, but I didn't because I was looking in the wrong place. A lot of people could have written it, and source material was public (cryptography mailing list). The author of bitcoin is just like the rest of us. Not a genius
187
31
307
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
Bitcoin reduces carbon emissions by capturing and burning methane (which is 30x more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas), and consuming overproduced and stranded energy from renewable sources, keeping them profitable while ensuring an energy glut is there for the bad times.
10
74
295
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
4 years
This is what happens when a market has more speculators than producers or consumers. Oil speculators cannot take physical delivery, so have to unload their contract before expiration. Speculators in such markets do not absorb risk, they create it.
20
98
296
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
If you have a blockchain project, start by consisely explaining: 1. Sybil control 2. Censorship resistance 3. Scalability 4. Access control 5. Privacy 6. Auditability No one does this and that's why I think they're jokes. Instead they bikeshed on coin emission, block time, etc.
11
69
303
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
Reasons I hate NYC: 1. HONKING 2. Taxis don't turn their lights off when they have a fare 3. Garbage on the side of the road 4. Angry people everywhere 5. Everything shakes 6. HONKING 7. Tourists 8. Crowds 9. People telling you where to go and stand 10. HONKING
80
14
293
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
1 year
This is what happens when you decouple from being an energy commodity and become a purely speculative asset.
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
1 year
Tweet media one
3
2
64
48
24
291
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Reminder: Lightning is going to eat the mobile payments market worldwide, through open standards, vendor agnosticism, an international currency unit, and instant settlement. BUIDLing is in progress.
13
58
288
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
The notion that an algorithmic stablecoin will work with an amount of collateral in the underlying less than the full market cap of the pegged currency is categorically false.
24
102
284
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
Coinbase sets it's own bed on fire. Dumb moves: 1. Asking permission 2. Tweets like this Instead: 1. Seek forgiveness 2. STFU and don't call your local regulator "sketchy". It doesn't help you.
@brian_armstrong
Brian Armstrong
3 years
1/ Some really sketchy behavior coming out of the SEC recently. Story time…
3K
9K
33K
39
19
286
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
2 years
In case you haven't been paying attention, it's time for devs to double down on privacy tech. The future of the world is at stake. It's time to create pseudonyms, gpg keys, VPNs, and Tor nodes, and put your effort where it's going to matter in the long term.
21
54
273
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
Sunk cost applications like heating are the future of Bitcoin mining. Do you know of anyone commercializing this?
16
55
287
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Excellent (and long!) analysis of EOS. TL;DR EOS cannot achieve more than about 25 TPS (similar to Ethereum) and it's not Byzantine Fault Tolerant. Recommendation: back to the drawing board.
17
83
282
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
4 years
For all those that thought you were holding Iota. You aren't. Only Iota is holding Iota.
@iota
IOTA
4 years
Currently, #IOTA is working with law enforcement and cybersecurity experts to investigate a coordinated attack, resulting in stolen funds. To protect users, we have paused the Coordinator and advise users not to open Trinity until further notice. Updates:
270
364
1K
11
34
268
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
4 years
Bitcoin never tells you: "transaction declined".
12
39
253
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
If cryptocurrencies were operating systems: Bitcoin : Linux Litecoin : FreeBSD Monero : OpenBSD Ethereum : NeXTSTEP JPcoin : OpenSolaris GlobalCoin : OS/2 Ripple : OpenVMS Bitcoin Cash : SCO Unix Bitcoin SV : DragonFly BSD ZCash : BeOS Dash : AmigaOS EOS : z/OS Tether : ReactOS
60
38
247
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
I love bear markets. They separates the valuable contributors from the charlatans chasing a quick buck. 2015-2017 in the doldrums of $200 I was BUIDLing and I don't regret any of it for a second. I'm BUIDLing now. Digital gold doesn't get born overnight, or in the first decade.
2
42
253
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
4 years
Unpopular Opinion: Smart Contracts aren't. The only thing a blockchain should have is proofs, and these can be generically reduced to signatures. Any logic should be evaluated off-chain by relevant counterparties only, not weirdos running nodes who aren't party to my transaction
36
36
245
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
The real reason Tesla has been fickle and schizophrenic on bitcoin:
@Fxhedgers
FXHedge
3 years
TESLA FILES TO BECOME AN ELECTRICITY PROVIDER IN TEXAS -CNBC
0
221
2K
6
17
245
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
4 years
In just 6119571771801335266271976855633722793487692664978004175224832 years they'll be able to find your key.
11
22
250
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
1 year
The entire SWIFT compliance regime is predicted on the idea that criminals will incriminate themselves in the memo field, and harassing legitimate businesses over their memos is productive.
@ViktoriaMullova
Viktoria Mullova
1 year
This is what my Bank wrote to me this morning. And here is my reply
Tweet media one
997
5K
31K
5
50
253
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
Bitcoiners fundamentally accept that it's unscaleable, and that's the price for decentralization and censorship resistance.
@el33th4xor
Emin Gün Sirer🔺
5 years
Indeed, Bitcoin maximalism stems from deep-seated insecurities about the underlying, unscalable tech. Adults can calmly respond to criticisms. Maximalists' signature move is to freak out, brigade, and try to shout down all perceived naysayers, which betrays their insecurity.
59
55
285
27
24
245
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
4 years
PSA: NOTHING has "intrinsic value", because the word "value" is human sentiment, and changes with time and circumstance. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.
21
30
231
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
The most amazing thing about the crypto wars is that no one has died. Control of economies and issuance of currency has traditionally been accompanied by a lot of bloodshed.
18
44
220
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
There is only one asset in the universe: Energy. Trust me, I'm a physicist. Any provable measurement of energy consumption is itself, another asset. Cryptography and PoW are a unique and fascinating way to prove energy consumption, with strong ties to real world assets.
6
36
231
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
Repeat after me: blockchains are about verification (proof of correct computation) not doing the computation itself. This is why Ethereum has worse scaling woes than Bitcoin. You lose nothing by removing the "world computer" aspect, and gain privacy and lower complexity.
@hugomofn
Hugo
6 years
Absolute 🔥🔥🔥 from @TuurDemeester . A comprehensive summary of why Ethereum is such a ludicrous idea. At the core Ethereum represents the inability to recognize that blockchain is about verification _not_ computation. Ethereum == engineering-by-hopium.
9
24
174
16
47
221
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
After centuries of institutional investors getting in early and dumping on retail, Bitcoin is the first time in history that retail investors got in early and are now dumping on institutions (and governments). It's kind of beautiful but it was a level playing field all along.
11
26
224
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
If you want power AT ALL TIMES including during crazy winter storms, power must be overprovisioned -- that is, more power production must be available than is needed, at all times How does an "overprovisioned" energy supplier make money? He needs a guaranteed buyer, like bitcoin
7
35
225
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
I was on the internet before most of you. It was toxic from day one. There's something about the inhumanity of a text interface that causes people to behave badly. It's a thing. It has nothing to do with bitcoin. You can still learn from these people.
10
20
213
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
The Schnorr signature algorithm was developed by cryptographers who work on Bitcoin, not BCH, and copy pasted into BCH. Copy paste is an inappropriate dev mechanism for any coin. If you don't have competent devs you'll create security vulnerabilities and hard forks.
@checksum0
checksum0
5 years
First Schnorr transaction has been broadcasted thanks to @MarkLundeberg
9
22
84
23
20
203
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 months
You all know that we don't need 12 Bitcoin ETFs right? The winners in this game are the custodians. It's BitGo (HashDex), Coinbase (the rest), Fidelity (Fidelity), or Gemini (VanEck) 11 of them will quickly have zero volume. Only one company here has the chops to custody Bitcoin.
21
25
209
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
4 years
Bitcoin's hashrate hit an all-time high. A better measure of network security is "proof of work equivalent days": the time required to rewrite the entire blockchain with 100% of the hashrate. This is at an all-time high. Security is high and miners are betting on a price increase
Tweet media one
9
60
203
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Unpopular opinion: Linking sound money and diet fads is just weird
17
10
202
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Bitmain has miners and firmware which use the ASICBoost algorithm. They never gave it to customers and only used it for themselves. Segwit nullifies ASICBoost, and now that the network is > 50% segwit, they've turned ASICBoost back on, which is why they're mining empty blocks.
11
55
195
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
Ethereum flips itself. Mining-based front-running attacks become profitable. Ethereum becomes insecure for it's own primary use case. FTFY
13
42
185
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
Your KYC method requiring someone to hold up their papers in a video or photograph is deeply flawed and will very soon be exploited. Start transitioning away from it now.
10
54
203
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Intellectual Laziness: the refusal to study or understand pre-existing literature on the same topic. Instead, practitioners invent new terminology so as to obfuscate comparison and analysis, often for the purpose of selling non-experts on their invention while confusing experts.
11
42
192
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
There's a strange kind of dystopia on cryptotwitter: that the only reason anyone does anything is because they have a financial incentive. (Bag holders, etc) I have another incentive: reputation. One can recognize good work and be honest and balanced without a financial incentive
18
9
192
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Electric devices are nearly 100% efficient at converting electricity to heat. It doesn't matter whether the source of resistance is an ASIC bitcoin miner or nichrome wire. The future of Bitcoin mining is in heating devices and overcapacity power like solar on a sunny day.
14
80
189
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
There's a window of time between the activation of ETH2 and sunsetting of ETH1 where ETH miners will be thrown under the bus. All their investment in hardware is destroyed and they WILL look for ways to recoup losses, including MEV maximization in unusual ways, and reorg bounties
17
19
195
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
PSA: Bitcoin makes low grade heat ~60C at best. It is not efficient or practical to generate power with It. A better use of the waste heat is to heat homes, offices, and greenhouses. The replies here describing power generation are pure Hopium but prove me wrong @BrianRoemmele
@BrianRoemmele
Brian Roemmele
3 years
By submerging Bitcoin Miners in liquid, heat and noise is reduced by 95% and we can recapture up to 40% of the heat and convert this to power. Bitcoin will be 100% green by 2024. No other system will be more green.
Tweet media one
547
2K
13K
26
19
197
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
To maximize your profit with PoW, you must sell some of your coins and reinvest in new hardware. To maximize your profit with PoS you should hoard your coins and never sell them. PoW coins will have wider distribution, deeper liquidity, and are better "money". H/T @CryptoPhD
14
36
192
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
The Federal Reserve of Ethereum has carefully examined the jobs numbers, consumer price index, and inflation, and determined that their pre-sale coins needed more leverage.
@CoinDesk
CoinDesk
6 years
BREAKING: Developers agreed Friday to support code that would reduce the amount of new cryptocurrency introduced on ethereum to 2 ETH per block.
33
197
380
6
36
187
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
Exxon mining bitcoin instead of flaring and venting? Wise choice.
Utter disbelief ht @GAMdotAI
6
11
153
6
19
179
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
If you think you can sell $5.7b with of SHIB and get $5.7b then you don't understand how markets work.
@MorningBrew
Morning Brew ☕️
3 years
This wallet bought roughly $8,000 of $SHIB last August. It's now worth $5.7 billion. From $8,000 to $5.7 billion in roughly 400 days. We may actually be looking at the greatest individual trade of all time.
Tweet media one
2K
9K
46K
20
8
184
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
How could bitcoin mining have 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱𝘦𝘥 the current ERCOT situation and Texas outages? 1. It provides a buyer when energy is abundant 2. It keeps renewable sources profitable (which are intermittent and away from city centers) 3. It can turn off during emergencies/price spikes
6
39
186
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Pet peeve: graphs which have an axis that doesn't start at zero. A scientist would never do this. You can make any tiny price movement look like a disaster that way.
@crypto
Bloomberg Crypto
6 years
Bitcoin is 📉
Tweet media one
27
106
217
11
17
184
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Anyone who thinks they can print money out of thin air is a scammer or a government.
@VitalikButerin
vitalik.eth
6 years
@hasufl @RyanSAdams @pierre_rochard @MustStopMurad > Vitalik isn't actually so dumb to think PoW is wasteful Yeah sorry I am 😊
27
8
115
15
21
160
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
The final nail in the coffin of BCH - the desperate sale of bitcoin dot com after they tried to take over Bitcoin. Bitcoin has no website. It belongs to all of us.
@lopp
Jameson Lopp
3 years
WELL WELL WELL WHAT HAVE WE HERE
Tweet media one
359
325
3K
9
15
170
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
High cost creates strong hands. When creating new currency, the highest cost will win. All Bitcoin competitors try to make "money" cheaper, for the benefit of the creators. This is a losing proposition and makes weak hands. This is energy backed money, there is no competition.
7
27
173
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
There is no such thing as "ASIC resistance". There are only barriers to entry by making the ASIC extremely costly to develop, which is a serious centralization risk. Choose simple algorithms like sha256 and sha3 that can be easily ASIC'd.
11
53
167
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Futures based ETFs rejected. They only makes sense when the underlying is extremely difficult to transact (gold, oil, comodities). Bitcoin is the most easily transactable asset ever created. Futures-based ETFs don't make any sense and an ETF should be based on the underlying.
5
37
163
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Unpopular opinion: "The perfect is the enemy of the good" is weaponized laziness.
40
18
161
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Bitcoin's energy consumption is its *value* *proposition*. It's how real world value gets pushed into the system. Without this all you have is a fancy distributed database and no one should pay anything for an individual row in a database.
@el33th4xor
Emin Gün Sirer🔺
6 years
The amount of energy that goes into mining is staggering. New study quantifies bitcoin’s ludicrous energy consumption
26
46
100
22
33
172
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
ASIC "resistance" is opening yourself to attack by the combined hashrate of Nicehash + Ethereum + Monero + Grin + Zcash. The 51% security must be evaluated over all hardware *capable* of performing the attack but not currently deployed in mining. Bite the bullet, build an ASIC.
10
32
158
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
The physical law you claim to be able to break is the speed of light:Latency and validation generate orphans. Too many orphans prevent the chain from making forward progress. BSV had a 6-block reorg after a 128MB block, and a GB block is foolish. Bitcoin wisely rejected this fate
@PeterRizun
Peter R. Rizun
5 years
Remember comments like this when gigabyte blocks are no more impossible than streaming video is today. There are no laws of physics that prevent BCH from scaling to global adoption. In fact, no technological breakthroughs are required—just continued state-of-the-art engineering.
23
5
112
10
18
165
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
4 years
Staking is a wet dream for centralized providers, thieves, and governments. Fewer assets in personal custody, more assets on "staking platforms" where they can be monitored, stolen, and regulated. Coinbase is coming and the rest will follow, to their own long-term detriment.
@cryptopunk7213
7213 | Ejaaz
4 years
Excited to announce that I'm joining the crypto team @coinbase where I'll be focusing on product initiatives leveraging staking, DeFi and much more! Looking forward to helping build a better, more accessible financial future together 👊
79
18
674
12
25
158
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
ABC officially abandons proof of work. Devs decide the correct chain. Also it's now easy to forcibly hard fork the network by causing a 10-deep reorg. Next up, Bitcoin ABCD!
@Bitcoin_ABC
Bitcoin ABC
6 years
Bitcoin ABC 0.18.5 has been released! This release adds deep reorg protection to ensure that transactions are immutable after 10 confirmations. This safeguard helps users, businesses, and exchanges stay secure and free from disruption.
109
73
220
10
36
154
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
2 months
@brucefenton @_jonasschnelli_ This is a peaceful form of protest, and you suggest violence against peaceful protest? Seriously?!?!
2
1
167
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
4 years
If this election has taught anyone anything, it's that the government is full of jokers that should not be in control of our financial future. Vote bitcoin. Separate finance and politics, and make governments beg us for money for armies and welfare.
3
16
155
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
4 years
2021 - Year of infrastructure (clearing houses, loans, banks) 2022 - Year of Lightning payments 2023 - Year of crypto equity offerings 2024 - Year of CBDCs 2025 - Year of international bitcoin settlement 2026 - Year of fiat hyperinflation 2027 - Year of gov attacks on bitcoin
@danheld
Dan Held
4 years
Crypto narratives: 2014 - Year of the alt coin 2015 - Year of the smart contract platform 2017 - Year of the ICO 2018 - Year of the stable coin 2019 - Year of the bank coin 2020 - Year of DeFi Trends come and go, ₿itcoin doesn't.
96
180
932
6
34
149
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
The proposal for a new decentralized Bitcoin mining pool is up! Please read, comment, and contribute! I think this is the single most important thing we can do to improve Bitcoin and can enable hashrate derivatives, which are desperately needed.
@braidpool
braidpool
3 years
Braidpool blog: Development repo: Proposal:
5
13
58
10
26
152
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
Decreasing block time: LTC, FTC (feathercoin) Increasing block size: BCH, BSV These experiments were tried and are ultimately failures. 2013 called and wants its shitcoin narrative back.
@elonmusk
Elon Musk
3 years
@TeslaGong @mishaboar @DogecoinFdn Not recently. What matters imo is lowering fees, decreasing block time & increasing block size. A single layer network with exchanges as de facto layer 2 seems like the simplest solution for a medium of exchange.
748
536
3K
16
10
157
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
Could Bitcoin be a better "saving for retirement" plan? 1. The government forces citizens to plow money into the stock market for retirement, despite no one being good stick pickers 2. High speed trading removes all advantage of stock picking 3. Everyone invests in index funds
26
27
147
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
BTC is an energy sink, not "storage". BTC is a resistor, not a battery or capacitor. You can't design any non-trivial electric circuit without resistors. Since you need sinks anyway, and renewable energy is intermittent and not scarce, why not use those sinks to secure finance?
@_prestwich
James Prestwich
3 years
btc is energy storage in the same way shit is food storage
61
46
665
13
21
161
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
If you're writing your whitepaper and doing an ICO, so that you can write the code, you're doing it wrong and probably won't be able. "I had to write all the code before I could convince myself that I could solve every problem, then I wrote the paper." - Satoshi Nakamoto
4
20
151
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
3 years
@PeterMcCormack MEV is front running. Ethereum is so broken that miners can extract far more value by front running and performing other tricks that are counter to the game theory that keeps the system working, and in other markets would be illegal. You can't make broken contracts go away.
11
14
150
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
HODLers aren't interested in selling their bitcoin, ever. A market is opening up for Bitcoin loans. It's necessary for a healthy market including shorting, but it needs to be cryptographically guaranteed. No risk, no fractional reserve.
12
19
150
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
Fingerprints are neither usernames (which must be unique) nor passwords (which must be secret). At best they're cattle branding and evidence, not an element of a security protocol.
4
51
153
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
5 years
Does the IRS know that there are more than a thousand forks of Bitcoin? Do they know that some of the wallet software around them was specifically designed to steal your Bitcoin keys? It's a full time job for more than one tax year just to identify all the forks and claim them.
24
13
149
@BobMcElrath
Bob McElrath
6 years
You don't need a smart contract. You need an off-chain protocol. More private, more scalable, and less likely to have catastrophic bugs, though harder to develop and reason about. Base blockchain layers should be minimalist. Don't be lazy.
12
36
146