Articles

When he can't compress a complex concept into a few tweets, Jameson writes lengthy technical (and sometimes philosophical) articles to communicate information and opinions he has gathered while building crypto asset infrastructure.


If you wish to receive an email when I publish an article, you can subscribe here.

If you use an RSS reader, you can add my personal blog's RSS feed.



21 Tips for Securing Your Bitcoin

So you got some Bitcoin. Now what? Some simple tips for HODLing.

29 February 2024 | Casa Blog

When do Bitcoin Node Operators Upgrade?

Analysis of a decade of historical node counts to examine how node operator behavior has changed over time.

4 February 2024 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin 2023 Annual Review

Comprehensive coverage of metrics across a number of different verticals in the Bitcoin ecosystem to gauge performance in 2023.

6 January 2024 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

2023 Bitcoin Node Performance Tests

A sync performance comparison of 7 Bitcoin implementations.

24 December 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Economically Unspendable Bitcoin UTXOs

UTXO management guidance for avoiding a little-known footgun that can cause problems during times of high transaction fees.

16 December 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Supply chain attacks: What you need to know to protect your assets

A recap of an attack against a widely used Ledger wallet library and explanation of how Casa is designed to withstand such attacks.

14 December 2023 | Casa Blog

The Myth of Bad Cholesterol

Lessons learned from my journey down the cholesterol rabbit hole.

2 December 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Exit X to Social Network Sovereignty

A guide for migrating from X (Twitter) to a self hosted nostr setup.

18 November 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Hal Finney was not Satoshi Nakamoto

A compilation of evidence that Hal could not have been the creator of Bitcoin.

21 October 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Hunting the Real Bitcoin Network Hashrate

An exploration of hashrate estimate algorithms with the goal of finding a more accurate estimate.

1 October 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Introduction to Spiderchain

A review of the latest layer 2 protocol proposed for creating a 2-way permissionless pegged sidechain.

18 September 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Prime Trust and Fortress Trust Recap

What went wrong with these custodians? How can you avoid similar situations?

13 September 2023 | Casa Blog

Sovereignty vs Society

An exploration of the paradoxical relationship between liberty and the individual's reliance upon society at large.

9 September 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

What We Need Is Digital Sovereignty

The ability to control your own data should be considered a fundamental human right. Instead, technocrats are building digital fiefdoms in which they act with impunity.

7 August 2023 | CoinDesk

Revisiting Bitcoin Network Bandwidth Issues

A deep dive into bandwidth bottlenecks and potential solutions for improving node syncing performance.

5 August 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin Doesn't Need to Change, But There's Room for Improvement

The idea that there is only one path forward is simply too restrictive of a view for something as important as Bitcoin.

27 July 2023 | Blockworks

Traditional Securities vs. Self-custody

Assessing the danger of bitcoin ETFs, stocks, and trusts.

27 July 2023 | Casa Blog

How to Securely Generate a Bitcoin Seed Phrase

A user-friendly guide for how to generate seed phrases from your own entropy.

17 July 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Bury a Bitcoin Seed Phrase Backup

Lessons learned from a multi-year experiment burying a metal seed phrase backup.

15 July 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Softwar Thesis Review

An critique of Jason Lowery's ~400 page thesis on proof of work systems and "Softwar / Bitpower."

3 June 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

A Critique of Softwar Concepts

An analysis of concepts and claims made by Jason Lowery during various interviews and presentations.

27 May 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

A Critique of Twitter's Changes

Twitter has made many changes over the past 6 months, but does the good outweigh the bad?

29 April 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

What is the Bitcoin Network's Real Hashrate?

Bitcoin mining exhibits a lot of randomness, which makes it hard to measure an accurate hashrate. What can we do to improve our estimates?

15 April 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Pax GPT

A dystopian short story of a world in which AI chatbot adoption spirals out of control.

2 April 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

A History of Bitcoin Maximalism

Bitcoin Maximalism isn’t what most people think it is, but there is a logical explanation for how it transformed into what we see today.

25 March 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Should We Be Worried About Bitcoin Ossification?

As network protocols grow in adoption, it becomes harder to change them. Is Bitcoin at an inflection point?

18 March 2023 | Forbes

Why Nostr Matters

Nostr is a new protocol for censorship resistant speece and social sharing. It has great potential but also has plenty of challenges to overcome.

4 March 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How Many Bitcoin Confirmations Are Enough?

A deep dive into quantifying double spend risks for on-chain transactions.

18 February 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Satoshi Roundtable IX Recap

A review of selected topics covered at the 2023 unconference including Bitcoin Layers, Bitcoin Ossification, Funding the Bitcoin Commons, Scaling Bitcoin, Multi-Institutional Custody, Hardware Attack Vectors, DCG, Islamic Finance, Carbon Credits, Longevity, and Interoperability.

11 February 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

DIY Gigabit VPN Guide

A step by step guide for how to automatically protect all the devices on your home network with a high speed self-hosted VPN.

4 February 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Why Bitcoin Needs Covenants

Bitcoin covenants are a powerful and promising potential feature that could be added to the protocol. In this article I cover their lengthy history, complexities and trade-offs, and why it's worth continuing to discuss proposals for enabling them.

24 January 2023 | Casa Blog

Open Source Transcription Software Comparisons

A comparison of several AI based transcription engines with regard to accuracy and performance.

14 January 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin 2022 Annual Review

Comprehensive coverage of metrics across a number of different verticals in the Bitcoin ecosystem to guage performance in 2022.

1 January 2023 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

2022 Bitcoin Node Performance Tests

A comparison of 9 Bitcoin implementations.

16 December 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How Casa's Ethereum Wallet Works

A high level overview of how Casa's multisig ETH wallet is architected.

15 December 2022 | Casa Blog

How to Archive & Transcribe YouTube Videos in Bulk

A step-by-step guide for how to efficiently archive and transcribe your YouTube videos.

10 December 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Electrum Server Performance Report (2022)

A quantitative comparison of ElectrumX, Esplora, and Fulcrum electrum server performance.

19 November 2022 | Casa Blog

Securing Bitcoin's Scarcity

Fake bitcoin has a dangerous effect on the real bitcoin market. This is a guide to how the supply of bitcoin is being manipulated and what we can do to fight back.

16 November 2022 | Casa Blog

The Death of Decentralized Email

A historical review of the multi-decade centralization and capture of the email protocol.

4 November 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

San Francisco 2033: You Will Own Nothing and be Happy

A dystopian cyberpunk future short story.

28 October 2022 | Bitcoin Magazine

OpenAI Whisper Transcription Testing

Accuracy and performance testing of OpenAI's transcription software.

30 September 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Was Satoshi a Greedy Miner?

Technical analysis of mining behavior exhibited by an entity that is plausibly Satoshi Nakamoto.

16 September 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Metal Bitcoin Seed Storage Stress Tests (Round VI)

22 new devices stress tested and reviewed.

27 August 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

A Treatise on Bitcoin Seed Backup Device Design

Lessons learned from stress testing dozens of seed phrase backup devices.

13 August 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Crypto's Kryptonite: Complexity

Thoughts on navigating the wider crypto ecosystem and evaluating risks of new projects.

3 August 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Manage Bitcoin Like a Whale

Approaching your bitcoin investment with a long-term view.

11 July 2022 | Casa Blog

Bitcoin is Dead (to Tourists)

Are Bitcoin's days numbered, or are the tales of its demise greatly exaggerated?

27 June 2022 | Casa Blog

Has Bitcoin Ever Hard Forked?

Numerous changes have been made to Bitcoin over the years; should any of them be considered hard forks?

11 June 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Ensuring Your Second Life With Bitcoin

Bitcoin and cryonics are both revolutionary technologies - but are the also complementary? Can you "take your bitcoin with you?"

18 May 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Why Twitter is a Musk-Have

A techno-optimist's speculation on how Twitter fits into Elon Musk's portfolio of companies.

28 April 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

The Hunt for the Best Gigabit Home VPN

VPN technology is improving, but how hard is it to actually implement?

24 April 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Back Up a Seed Phrase

There are a million ways to back up a seed phrase. Nearly all of them have flaws.

2 April 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Running Bitcoin Core v0.7 and Earlier

An exploration into eccentricities of trying to sync extremely old versions of Bitcoin Core.

19 March 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Lose All Your Bitcoin

You already know how to secure and protect your crypto investments. Now, it's time to talk about how to lose them all.

19 March 2022 | Cointelegraph

Building Bitcoin Core v0.7 and Earlier

A guide for how to compile binaries for very old Bitcoin Core versions that are no longer available to download.

16 March 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

On BSV Scalability

BSV's blockchain is now over 3 terabytes - have they finally solved on-chain scaling challenges?

12 March 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Prepare for Hyperinflation

Inflation is at all-time highs after central banks have printed $2 trillion over the past 2 years. How can you prepare for the worst?

6 March 2022 | Forbes

Bitcoin Core Performance Evolution

A historical analysis of full validation node sync performance across 9 years of releases.

5 March 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Satoshi Roundtable VIII Recap

A review of selected topics covered at the 2022 unconference including Bitcoin Development, Crypto Family Offices, Dubai, El Salvador, Free Private Cities, DAOs, GameFi, Web3, and more.

21 February 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin’s Last Security Challenge: Simplicity

Bitcoin's "Mayflower Generation" has evolved into a revolutionary army. But, how has the threat landscape changed — and how can they keep their coins safe?

12 February 2022 | Cointelegraph

Is the Bitcoin Network Slowing Down?

An investigation into the root cause of node syncing performance drops seen during annual testing.

22 January 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How is the 21 Million Bitcoin Cap Defined and Enforced?

A deep dive into the code that keeps bitcoin's inflation rate on a predictable schedule.

12 January 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin 2021 Annual Review

Comprehensive coverage of metrics across a number of different verticals in the Bitcoin ecosystem to gauge performance in 2021.

3 January 2022 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Quantum Resistance

Considerations regarding one aspect of the future of Bitcoin security.

3 January 2022 | Bitcoin Magazine

5 Things You Need To Know About Donating Bitcoin To Charity

Tips & tricks for maximizing your charitable contributions.

12 December 2021 | Forbes

2021 Bitcoin Node Performance Tests

Testing full validation sync performance of seven Bitcoin node implementations.

4 December 2021 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Lopp's Threat Index

An analysis of the top 5 security threats that bitcoin holders should worry about.

14 November 2021 | Forbes

To Swat a Swatter

The conclusion to a 4 year long investigation in pursuit of the person who swatted & extorted me.

13 November 2021 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Metal Bitcoin Seed Storage Stress Test (Round V)

Jameson stress tests another dozen seed backup devices.

7 November 2021 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Congressional Bitcoin Believers

Plenty of politicians have opined upon Bitcoin and the crypto industry over the years, but how many of them have skin in the game?

19 September 2021 | BTC Times

Lopp's Links for Learning Bitcoin

A guide to exploring the Bitcoin ecosystem and understanding its many facets.

18 September 2021 | Forbes

Satoshi Roundtable VII Recap

A review of selected topics covered at the 2021 unconference including Lightning Network, Bitcoin UX, DeFi, Smart Contracts, Astrology, and Identity.

22 August 2021 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Lightning Liquidity Management Guide

Lessons learned from running a routing node on the Lightning Network.

7 August 2021 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

2021 Altcoin Node Sync Tests

Testing full validation sync performance of 16 altcoin node implementations.

1 August 2021 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Protect Contact Forms from Spam with Proof of Work

An argument and guide for using hashcash puzzles to protect contact forms from spammers instead of captchas.

18 July 2021 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Casa Client Case Study: The Tinder Trap

Postmortem analysis of a physical attack perpetrated against a Casa client and tips for staying safe on the dating scene.

8 July 2021 | Casa Blog

Bitcoin: Redefining F-You Money

Those with traditional F-you money are beholden to no one. Bitcoin changes the game by enabling any user to attain a new level of financial freedom at a low cost.

4 July 2021 | Forbes

Empty Blocks, Full Mempool

An analysis of empty blocks mined even when there were transactions waiting to be confirmed.

29 May 2021 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Tor-only Bitcoin & Lightning Guide

A guide for how Lightning users can improve their financial privacy.

6 May 2021 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

What is the Taproot Bitcoin Upgrade?

What does Taproot mean for Bitcoin and how does it affect your wallet?

4 May 2021 | Casa Blog

Custodial Bitcoin Interest Service Reviews

Jameson tests onboarding to a dozen interest generating bitcoin custody services in a hunt for red flags.

25 April 2021 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

From Fat to Fit in Four Months

Lessons learned from my experiment in maximizing weight loss with the least amount of effort.

10 April 2021 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Announcing Casa Centurion

The lowest time preference vaulting solution.

1 April 2021 | Casa Blog

A History of Bitcoin Transaction Dust & Spam Storms

A historical analysis of spam attacks conducted on the Bitcoin network.

13 March 2021 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Announcing Specter Desktop Compatibility

How Casa clients can reduce their reliance upon Casa.

3 March 2021 | Casa Blog

Bitcoin Block Time Variance: Theory vs Reality

How well does the historical distribution of timestamps on bitcoin blocks match the expected distribution?

20 February 2021 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin 2020 Annual Review

Comprehensive coverage of metrics across a number of different verticals in the Bitcoin ecosystem to gauge performance in 2020.

1 January 2021 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Lightning Wallet Recovery Lessons Learned

Recovering funds from a crashed Lightning wallet can be technically challenging - here's what I have learned from performing dozens of recoveries.

20 December 2020 | Casa Blog

The Rise of Bitcoin Corporate Key Management

Maintaining a corporate bitcoin treasury can reap major rewards, but there are significant risks that must be mitigated first.

3 December 2020 | Casa Blog

2020 Bitcoin Node Performance Tests

Annual tests of full validation syncing performance of seven Bitcoin node implementations.

12 November 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

The Custodian Menace

A small number of custodians hold the private keys to a large amount of bitcoin. This is not good for Bitcoin.

24 October 2020 | Casa Blog

Mind the Bitcoin Address Gap

A guide to preventing and resolving Bitcoin address gap limit edge cases.

11 October 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin Multisig Hardware Signing Performance

Jameson tests the performance of popular Bitcoin security hardware devices in various multisig wallet configurations.

12 September 2020 | Casa Blog

On Shitcoins and STOs

A breakdown of different types of cryptographic tokens and the controversies generated by their proponents.

30 August 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Are Chinese Miners a Threat to Bitcoin?

Is the concentration of hashpower within the borders of China a cause for concern about a nation state attack against the network?

9 August 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Metal Bitcoin Seed Storage Stress Tests (Round IV)

Jameson stress tests new metal devices for storing seed phrase backups.

2 August 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Law Enforcement Logs of a Privileged White Male

Reflections upon a variety of encounters I've had with law enforcement throughout my life.

12 July 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Electrum Server Performance Report

Casa engineers compare and contrast the performance of 3 popular Electrum server implementations.

3 July 2020 | Casa Blog

The Dos and Don'ts of Bitcoin Key Management

The Internet is a dangerous place, especially when you're protecting bitcoin. Jameson covers what you need to know to stay safe in this perilous environment.

6 June 2020 | Casa Blog

Casa's Seedless Security Model

Seed phrases are the keys to your bitcoin kingdom; Jameson makes the case for why bitcoin users should not need to manually manage their seed phrase backups.

18 May 2020 | Casa Blog

The Annals of Bitcoin Twitter

Bitcoin has been discussed on Twitter since the first week of the network's operation. The following is my attempt to cover major points in Bitcoin history as told by tweets.

2 May 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

The Memes Make the Bitcoin

Thoughts on memetic theory and the significance of popular Bitcoin memes.

26 April 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Protect Your Bitcoin from $5 Wrench Attacks

If you're going to be your own bank, you're going to want bank-grade security. Thankfully we can now achieve that at an affordable cost!

21 April 2020 | Casa Blog

How the SEC Nearly Destroyed my Retirement Account

Not your keys, not your coins. Not your certificates, not your stocks.

18 April 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin Multisig Time Locking Challenges

Securing your bitcoin with time locks are great in theory, but difficult in practice.

9 April 2020 | Casa Blog

Bitcoin Testnet Block Storms

A deep dive into how 10 lines of code resulted in far-reaching unintended consequences for the Bitcoin test network.

4 April 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Announcing Casa Titanium

The best bitcoin security that money can't buy.

1 April 2020 | Casa Blog

How to Create a Bitcoin/Lightning Email Paywall with BTCPay

A step-by-step guide to building your own bitcoin-powered priority inbox.

22 March 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Build Your Own Casa Node

A step by step guide for users to assemble their own Casa Node for Bitcoin & Lightning.

19 March 2020 | Casa Blog

Virtual Reality Challenges & Opportunities

Thoughts on the social challenges, solutions, and new possibilities we can expect to face as virtual reality adoption continues.

15 March 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin Core Contributor Challenges

A look into the history of accepted and rejected pull requests to Bitcoin Core.

14 March 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Satoshi Roundtable VI Recap

A review of selected topics covered such as philanthropy, onboarding, web of trust, identity, BTMs, and PSBT.

17 February 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

A Home Defense Primer

A comprehensive post covering considerations to take when designing a multilayered home defense system.

12 February 2020 | Casa Blog

Firearms for Home Defense

Considerations to take regarding firearm selection, training, and storage for home defense.

12 February 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

2020 Altcoin Node Sync Tests

Testing sync performance of Ethereum, Monero, and Zcash nodes.

7 February 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Securely Back up Data to Cloud Storage

Jameson researches user-friendly solutions for backing up sensitive data to cloud providers while keeping it safe from third party snooping.

21 January 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

What Are the Key Properties of Bitcoin?

Fundamental principles of Bitcoin that must be preserved to maintain the system's utility.

3 January 2020 | Nakamoto

Bitcoin 2019 Annual Review

50+ metrics across a variety of vertical to gauge ecosystem performance in 2019.

2 January 2020 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Deleting "Crypto Deleted Tweets"

The real story behind the suspension of the "Crypto Deleted Tweets" bot.

18 December 2019 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Griefing "Crypto Deleted Tweets"

A few thoughts on the "Crypto Deleted Tweets" bot and how to improve its signal/noise ratio.

8 December 2019 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Metal Bitcoin Seed Storage Stress Test (Round III)

Stress testing a dozen new metal seed phrase backup devices.

7 December 2019 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

2019 Bitcoin Node Performance Tests

Testing full validation syncing performance of seven Bitcoin node implementations.

10 November 2019 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Security Issues with Browser-Based Bitcoin Wallets

There's more to wallet security than just keeping private keys safe; Jameson covers some often overlooked issues with web browsers.

7 November 2019 | Casa Blog

GrapheneOS: Phone Privacy Protection

Jameson details his experience setting up a Pixel 3 phone with the privacy enhanced Graphene operating system.

2 November 2019 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Shamir's Secret Sharing Shortcomings

Jameson explains why Casa prefers multisig over SSS for securing private keys.

17 October 2019 | Casa Blog

Craig Wright's Copyright Claim

Craig Wright registered a copyright claim on the Bitcoin whitepaper. Does this claim hold any weight?

26 September 2019 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Thoughts on Libra "Blockchain"

An interpretation of the 26 page technical document describing the protocol to be used as a platform for the Libra coin and more.

18 June 2019 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Metal Bitcoin Seed Storage Stress Test (part II)

The results of extreme stress tests on 13 metal seed storage devices.

18 May 2019 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How Many Wrongs Make A Wright?

A presentation of evidence with regard to Craig Wright's claim of being Satoshi Nakamoto.

9 May 2019 | Bitcoin Magazine

Casa Keymaster Security: Mobile Key Overview

A technical explanation of how Casa securely backs up mobile device keys.

9 April 2019 | Casa Blog

Bitcoin Timestamp Security

A deep technical dive into the assurances around the accuracy of timestamps in Bitcoin block headers.

3 March 2019 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Satoshi Roundtable V Recap

Discussions on Lightning Network, Privacy, Sidechains, Secure Hardware, Mnemonic Seed Phrases, Security Tokens, and Grin.

9 February 2019 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Open Sourcing the Casa Node

Improving security through transparency.

31 January 2019 | Casa Blog

Bitcoin by the Numbers - 2018 Recap

An overview of the diverse set of trends observed in the Bitcoin ecosystem during 2018.

1 January 2019 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Who Controls Bitcoin Core?

A deep dive into the security practices and power distribution of the Bitcoin Core project.

15 December 2018 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin Full Validation Sync Performance

Jameson tests and compares the initial sync performance of popular Bitcoin implementations.

1 December 2018 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin Seed Security Analysis

Jameson demonstrates the dangers of manually manipulating seed phrases by showing how easy it is to reduce their computational security.

24 November 2018 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

A Modest Privacy Protection Proposal

A comprehensive guide to reclaiming your privacy in the surveillance age.

29 September 2018 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Reflections upon a SWATting

Jameson tells the full story of being targeted for SWATting.

28 July 2018 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Switch

Thoughts on end of life planning for crypto asset owners.

21 July 2018 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin Seed Storage Stress Test

Jameson tests the limits of various metal key storage devices.

14 July 2018 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Casa’s Privacy Model

Describing what types of privacy Casa customers can expect to have.

25 June 2018 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Satoshi Roundtable IV Recap

Covering our discussions about tribalism, developer education, operational security, drivechains, and Tether.

10 February 2018 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

What the Data Tells Us About Bitcoin in 2017

Statistics show bitcoin is at the forefront of an increasingly complex ecosystem that continues to grow in a variety of ways.

13 January 2018 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

The Challenges of Building Ethereum Infrastructure

Lopp covers a number of issues encountered while building a multisig smart contract wallet.

8 January 2018 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Securing Your Financial Sovereignty

An explanation of why fully validating nodes matter and how to make use of them.

22 October 2017 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Can SPV Support a Billion Bitcoin Users?

Lopp takes a deep dive into claims that it's safe to remove bitcoin's block size limit and instead rely on existing SPV methods.

30 July 2017 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin and the Benefits of Coopetition

Lopp makes an impassioned argument for the need for more cooperation between the players in the bitcoin space.

14 July 2017 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

The Challenges of Bitcoin Transaction Fee Estimation

Bitcoin transaction fee estimation is a goldilocks problem wrapped in a future prediction enigma shrouded in mystery.

10 May 2017 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Announcing the Bitcoin Core Config Generator

Bitcoin Core is a complex piece of software. Because one of the primary goals of Bitcoin is to enable users to be self sovereign and...

30 March 2017 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Moderation Methods vs Censorship Claims

One of the major points of contention in the Bitcoin community these days revolves around claims of censorship...

13 February 2017 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Nobody Understands Bitcoin (And That's OK)

When I first became interested in bitcoin, I found myself spending countless hours absorbing as much information about it as possible, trying to put all of the pieces together...

13 March 2017 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Statoshi’s Satoshi Roundtable Review

I was fortunate to attend the 2017 Satoshi Roundtable on behalf of BitGo. It was truly a pleasure to meet many...

30 January 2017 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Ledger Blue Review

Ledger's new hardware wallet is the most costly on the market. Does it have the features to justify the expense?

28 January 2017 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

SegWit: The Swiftest Safe Path Forward

I and many of my colleagues at BitGo and across the Bitcoin ecosystem are eager to see...

19 January 2017 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin: 2016 in Review

In addition to my day job as a BitGo engineer, I run Statoshi.info, a site I created in 2014 to track Bitcoin metrics from the perspective...

9 January 2017 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin's Security Model: A Deep Dive

When discussing consensus mechanisms for different cryptocurrencies, one issue that often causes arguments is a lack...

13 November 2016 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Run Bitcoin as a Tor Hidden Service on Ubuntu

Why should you run a Bitcoin hidden service on your node? * It increases the privacy of other Bitcoin users...

19 August 2016 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin: The Trust Anchor in a Sea of Blockchains

Bitcoin has a number of properties that give it utility (and thus value)  such as  trustlessness, permissionlessness...

23 July 2016 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Building a Better Bitcoin Fee Market

Over the past year we have seen the fee market for bitcoin transactions evolve at a rapid pace. As transaction volume continues to increase, so does the demand for block space, which remains...

8 May 2016 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin and the Rise of the Cypherpunks

From bitcoin to blockchain to distributed ledgers, the cryptocurrency space is fast evolving, to the...

9 April 2016 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Avoiding Stuck Transactions With BitGo

A lot happens under the hood when sending a Bitcoin transaction - I covered some of the details in a previous...

29 February 2016 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Lightning’s Balancing Act: Challenges Face Bitcoin’s Scalability Savior

The bitcoin community has been discussing the concept of the...

28 February 2016 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Save Bitcoin's Node Network from Centralization

Decentralization is, I would argue, the most important property of the bitcoin network. Without it, many...

30 January 2016 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Statoshi Developer’s Guide

Statoshi is a fork of Bitcoin Core with several hundred additional lines of code for emitting metrics to a StatsD instance. You can view the...

24 December 2015 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

The Future of Bitcoin Mining

Bitcoin mining has evolved rapidly over the last 7 years, with three distinct generations of miners in terms of power efficiency: 1.CPUs (2009–2010) 2. GPUs & FPGAs (2010–2013) 3. ASICs (2013-present)...

19 December 2015 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Scaling Bitcoin: Hong Kong Recap

While many were dubious that it would be successful, I attended the second Scaling Bitcoin workshop with...

8 December 2015 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Case Wallet Review

When I first heard about Case Wallet, I was intrigued. The fact that it used a 2-of-3 multi-sig setup like we do at BitGo made me interested to see if this product would be able...

21 November 2015 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Malevolent Malleability

Transaction malleability is a longstanding issue in the Bitcoin technical community. Bitcoin businesses and developers should be aware of it so that they take action to protect themselves against it.

5 November 2015 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin Legislation in North Carolina

I’ve lived in North Carolina my entire life. It’s a great place to live and has a thriving tech scene...

2 October 2015 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

To Node or Not to Node?

Over a year ago I wondered: how many Bitcoin nodes is enough? It turns out that there are several different perspectives...

26 September 2015 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Solo Mine on Bitcoin’s Testnet

I'm a Bitcoin engineer, so I often need to test new code but I don’t want to risk losing valuable bitcoins in case there is a bug. Thankfully...

14 September 2015 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Statoshi.info Account Creation Guide

Now you can create, save, and share your own custom dashboards on statoshi.info! It only takes a couple minutes...

24 June 2015 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

The Challenges of Block Chain Indexing

Over the past several months I’ve had the pleasure of enhancing BitGo's block chain indexing service — a core...

1 June 2015 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

(De)centralized Block Chain Scaling

Lately there has been a great deal of debate around increasing the maximum block size allowed by the Bitcoin protocol because we're approaching the current 1 MB limit. While this...

17 May 2015 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Create a BitGo Wallet with a Mycelium Entropy Generated Offline Key

BitGo provides a secure non-custodial Bitcoin wallet using our P2SH multisignature technology...

7 April 2015 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

The Challenges of Optimizing Unspent Output Selection

When we talk about bitcoins being stored on the block chain, most people speak in terms of “address balances" which makes sense from an accounting perspective, but this is not...

23 February 2015 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Fix Amazon Instant Video Streaming in Ubuntu

If you’re an Ubuntu user who is trying to play Amazon Instant Videos but you’re encountering an error that looks like this: Player Update: An error occurred and your player could not...

20 December 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Graphite & Grafana Performance Tips

If you’re using Graphite to monitor your systems, your dashboards are probably only accessible to a few people in your organization and page load performance...

13 December 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

A Puzzling Bitcoin Treasure Hunt

After reading about Coin Artist’s epic Dark Wallet puzzle I decided to try my hand at crafting a (slightly less difficult) steganographic bitcoin treasure hunt...

9 December 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Generate a Custom Bitcoin Address with an AMD GPU on Ubuntu

Have you ever wanted a bitcoin address that was more personalized and recognizable than the standard...

8 November 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Seeking Superior Subscriber Segmentation System Scalability

Building a new iteration of our segmentation engine in a never-ending quest for better performance.

28 October 2014 | Bronto Engineering

Thoughts on Secure Storage of Bitcoins and Other Crypto Backed Assets

Depending upon the value of your crypto assets, you’ll need to take different levels of precautions in order to provide sufficient...

5 October 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

The Future of Statoshi

I am a software engineer who has spent the past 7 years scaling my employer's web application from a several server infrastructure capable of sending a hundred thousand emails a day to a several hundred server infrastructure that sends a hundred...

23 August 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

In Search of a Smarter Hbase Client

Diagnosing and preventing performance issues with problematic Hbase schemas.

12 August 2014 | Bronto Engineering

Introducing the Bronto Kegbot

Building advanced alcohol automation in a self-service beer system.

15 July 2014 | Bronto Engineering

Bitcoin Baron Bios: The Who’s Who of the Cryptocurrency Community

I'm not sure if it was YTCracker who coined the term “Bitcoin Baron," but I’ve found it fascinating to observe the Bitcoin early adopters who have played public roles in shaping...

7 June 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

The State of the Bitcoin Network

Friends, followers, fellow Internet denizens: twenty-six years ago, Timothy May predicted that cryptologic methods would fundamentally...

29 May 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Announcing Statoshi.info: A public Statoshi dashboard

A common criticism of Statoshi is that it is too complicated for the average person to configure...

12 May 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Announcing Statoshi: Realtime Bitcoin Node Statistics

I've been on a quest for the past several months since I first asked the question: how many Bitcoin nodes are enough?

7 May 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Peeking Under the Hood of a Running Bitcoin Node

I've been running a Bitcoin full node for over a year now, but the only insight I ever had into what it was doing was how many...

27 April 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Set Up a Bitcoin Full Node

Help support the network at little cost! In a previous post I discussed the functions of full nodes and how the complexity of Bitcoin's network makes it difficult to discern how many nodes are actually needed...

21 April 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

The Multifaceted Nature of Bitcoin

It’s indisputable that Bitcoin is a controversial topic. It results in people to asking questions like "what is money?" and "what is value?" — questions that many people live...

8 April 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to set up an IDE for developing Bitcoin Core on Linux

Recently I decided that browsing the Bitcoin Core source code in a text editor was not sufficient; I wanted to leverage the features...

3 April 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

The Value of Bitcoin’s Infrastructure

Debunking the myth of "intrinsic value". We often hear from naysayers that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value because it’s simply software, a hodgepodge of digital bits and bytes that only exist in the ether of the Internet...

24 March 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Bitcoin Nodes: How Many is Enough?

Should we be worried about the declining number of nodes? It’s fairly straightforward to see the computational strength of the Bitcoin mining infrastructure growing...

19 March 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Zerocoin: Zero Knowledge for Infinite Anonymity

Many people mistakenly describe Bitcoin as an anonymous digital currency. This is not true by a long shot — Bitcoin can be best described...

10 March 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

How to Invest in Bitcoin Within a Tax Advantaged Retirement Account

Note that the following does not constitute investment advice. Investing in cryptocurrency is high risk...

3 March 2014 | Cypherpunk Cogitations

Why We Destroyed a Computer

Ditching Cassandra for Hbase.

26 September 2012 | Bronto Nation

Beers at Bronto: Kegmaster's Corner

Bronto's acquisition of a double kegerator.

24 September 2012 | Bronto Nation

A Bronto Sabbatical Tale

The story of my 5 week sabbatical spanning Europe, Bahamas, and more.

3 August 2012 | Bronto Nation