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A plot of Bitcoin electricity consumption would be very suitable for the section "Energy consumption".
I suggest adding this plot right before the sentence "Bitcoin has been criticized for the amount of electricity consumed by mining.":
Elikrieg ( talk) 22:38, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. I updated the plot to version 3 (
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bitcoin_electricity_consumption.png). The estimate is now clearly highlighted. Maximum/minimum encompass the shaded area (I think we should not entirely exclude upper/lower bound from the official data. This is also the way the researchers display the data at
https://cbeci.org/). The time point of each country's electricity consumption is now indicated in the figure legend. I also increased font sizes and changed the aspect ratio for better legibility.
Elikrieg ( talk) 11:43, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
A user asked me to comment on this issue. I think a graph like this would be relevant, and we have decent peer-reviewed sourcing for the data. May require notes (from sources like CBECI and De Vries' peer-reviewed papers) on calculation methods and the degree to which this sort of thing is a best-effort estimate, which is why CBECI and De Vries' numbers vary. No opinion on including the outliers - David Gerard ( talk) 20:38, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
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change "psuedonymity" to "pseudonymity" in the second paragraph Gduverger ( talk) 18:01, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
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an US company -> a US company Troll Control ( talk) 09:00, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
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Change /info/en/?search=Bitcoin#Analysis to /info/en/?search=Bitcoin#Criticism. "Analysis" is somewhat of a misleading euphemism for what the section contains: criticism. CynicusRex ( talk) 07:02, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
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In the section "Ownership", after the sentence: "The vast number of valid private keys makes it unfeasible that brute force could be used to compromise a private key."
It could be added the following, to help clarify it all:
To see what a private key and a public key look like (which after all are just long numbers with no more than 256 bits, but that can be compressed to less than that using a complicated mathematical mechanism involving numbers, letters and cryptographic hashing), one can safely visit a client-side "bitcoin paper wallet generator" that can be saved as a file, and run on any clean computer that may not even have physical access to the internet. The most popular ones are very trustable and have many levels of security which keep being all the time under strict scrutiny of the whole bitcoin open-source community of developers. More information on this topic is on the section "Paper Wallets", down the page on this article.
(feel free to edit, change it, and adapt it to what you think is finer. My aim is to make it as easy as possible to introduce this specific topic to noobs) Unisight ( talk) 05:36, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
Okay, let's read what it is saying:
"To see what a private key and a public key look like (...)" >> Does that need any reference? I don't thing so, since in the previous paragraph private keys and public keys were being mentioned and this is just telling that there is a way to see how they look like.
Let's continue... "(which after all are just long numbers with no more than 256 bits, but that can be compressed to less than that using a complicated mathematical mechanism involving numbers, letters and cryptographic hashing), (...)" >> Does this need references or clarifications? Well, yes, actually it does, namely if you want to be strictly technically correct. >> Okay, so I will have to agree, in this specific point and taking into consideration the Wikipedia editing rules we will probably need to do some work here. >> Let's see. The first thing pretty much everyone calls the bitcoin address: public key. >> But, as you know, if you want to be strictly technical, which means you will be making more than 99.9% of the world population more confused about it all, and not >> understanding it at all, public keys and bitcoin addresses are not the same thing. >> The reason I used the words "no more than 256 bits" was firstly because private keys go from: >> 0x1 to 0xFFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFE BAAE DCE6 AF48 A03B BFD2 5E8C D036 4140 >> and not from 0x1 to 0xFFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF. >> Indeed, that doesn't mean the private key can be less than 256 bits, but it is still true that as was said "is no more than 256 bits" >> And makes that subtle details more salient for the more strictly technically and precising oriented. >> The second reason for using the words "no more than 256 bits" was that though both private key and public key are 256 bits, >> when you look at them in a bitcoin paper wallet generator they don't look at all like long numbers (of 256-bits). >> The private key will probably be shown in the "Wallet Import Format (WIF)" [1] >> which makes it look much more compact than a 32 bytes number in hexadecimal. >> Technically, it is still 256 bits, otherwise we would be losing information. And technically you are not compressing it, you are just encoding it into >> a different format that is more handy for people to scan with their mobiles. Also note that once you import your coins you should consider the >> bitcoin paper wallet discarded and you should not think that you can spend coins in your bitcoin software wallet and later import the remainder coins >> from that paper wallet from which you already import. You should be very aware of that risk when using paper wallets. >> More info on that specific detail, for instance, at: [2]. >> And secondly, I used the words "no more than 256 bits" because the bitcoin address has only 160 bits and not 256 bits. Actually 25 bytes (200 bits), >> due to the adding of the version byte to the RIPEMD-160 hash and the adding of 4 bytes checksum of (SHA-256(SHA-256(ripemd-160WithVersionByte))). >> The bitcoin address has less information than the public address. As you know, there is no way to compress 256 bits into less than that according to >> "Information theory". Though it is theoretically possible to use very short expressions with irrational numbers and later compute them into much longer >> pieces of information, and conversely. >> On the other hand, it is such commonplace that bitcoin public keys and private keys have 256 bits, that using a reference seems to be supererogatory. >> Saying "no more than 256 bits" is just a subtle way of saying that you can go more deeply into technical detail, without actually be lying. >> And regarding "(...)that using a complicated mathematical mechanism involving numbers, letters and cryptographic hashing" >> What would actually be needing a reference there? "complicated mathematical mechanism", "involving numbers, letters", "cryptographic hashing" >> I really don't see what kind of references you would need there. It is all commonplace in plain English? What >>would be needing a reference there? >> I really, don't see what would need a reference in that part of the sentence...
Okay, let's keep going, let's continue...
"one can safely visit a client-side "bitcoin paper wallet generator" that can be saved as a file, and run on any clean computer that may not even have physical access to the internet." >> Well, here we may need to think a bit. Who says that is safe to visit them? Well, I don't think any bitcoin >>developer would disagree on this. >> You can ask any of the hundreds of bitcoin core developers and I would be extremely surprised if there is one >>that thinks it is unsafe to visit a client-side website, that can be accessed even anonymously, with Tor Browser, >>for instance. >> And of course, if they are client-side websites you can save them as a file and later on use them on fresh >>installation that comes with a browser. >> It is a complete no-brainer. Is there really a need for a reference there? What kind of reference? A reference to >>explain what is a client-side website >> and in what sense it is safe to visit them? Or a reference to explain why it is safe to save that client-side >>website into a pen-disk and use it >> in a fresh installation without access to the internet? >> Or, would the reference be to state that these websites are indeed client-side websites? You can just look at the >>code in any browser and save that code into a webpage. They are static web pages. What kind of reference is >>needed? It is a no-brainer, again.
Okay, let's keep going, let's continue...
"The most popular ones are very trustable and have many levels of security which keep being all the time under the strict scrutiny of the whole bitcoin open-source community of developers." >> That's for sure. Does anyone think millions of bitcoiners would trust bitcoin paper wallets with millionaire >>funds if it was otherwise? >> Who would think for a split second that these client-side websites to generate keys are not under constant >>scrutiny by some of the best minds in the world in Mathematics, Cryptography, Computer Science and Programming, >>with all sorts of levels of security being well thought of?
Okay, let's keep going, let's continue...
"More information on this topic is on the section "Paper Wallets", down the page on this article." >> This makes sense. There is a section on the article about "Paper Wallets". >> But the paragraph I want to add is for better clarification of what was being discussed there and makes perfect >> sense there as an additional clarification. When I explain bitcoin private key and public key to someone new to >> bitcoin, they understand it, but usually, the first thing that they will then ask is: "Okay, can you please show >>me an example of those?". >> And that is exactly the point of what I wrote to be put on that Wikipedia page explaining bitcoin: to show how >> they look like.
And there is no need to tell a specific "bitcoin paper wallet" generation client-side website. Because people, can search for it obviously, and search engines will probably rank the most popular and reliable ones first. Of course.
Still, I am totally willing to collaborate and sort it out. We could even talk with some hard-core bitcoiners, for sure. No probs, I will be here to discuss it and collaborate.
Since there is nothing else I can do, can I ask you to at least add the following sentence there:
"One of the ways of generating a bitcoin key-pair is using a bitcoin paper wallet generator." Unisight ( talk) 21:28, 7 December 2021 (GMT)
A paper wallet is created with a keypair generated on a computer with no internet connection; the private key is written or printed onto the paper and then erased from the computer.BeŻet ( talk) 13:00, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
Okay, in that case, I ask you to add the following sentence there with a reference link: "The computation to generate a bitcoin key-pair can be done by everyone with a computer. [citation reference link: https://medium.com/coinmonks/how-to-generate-a-bitcoin-address-step-by-step-9d7fcbf1ad0b]" Unisight ( talk) 15:09, 9 December 2021 (GMT)
Creating a bitcoin address requires nothing more than picking a random valid private key and computing the corresponding bitcoin address. This computation can be done in a split second.I think that adding that a computation can be done on a computer might be a bit of a blue sky statement; moreover, you can do it with a calculator, or even with a pen on a piece of paper if you have the patience. Finally, your source doesn't actually state what you're trying to say, and is on Medium.com, which is not allowed. Sorry, not trying to be difficult, just trying to help. BeŻet ( talk) 16:34, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
Theoretically yes, you can do it with pen and paper but I don't think anyone in the world ever did that, not just because it is very time consuming but because you would have to know all the internals of the Elliptical Curve Digital Signature Algorithm and of the cryptographic hashing algorithms which are very difficult to get to grips with. The same with calculators, it would take you endless time and knowledge, not just patience. The fundamental difference between a calculator and a computer is that a computer can be programmed in a way that allows the program to take different branches according to intermediate results, while calculators are pre-designed with specific functions (such as addition, multiplication, and logarithms) built-in. So, if you don't want to be extremely picky with words, yes, people will need a computer to do it. I ask you 1-2 days, to see if I can find a better phrasing of words and a more reliable article to be referenced on Wikipedia, for what I think is important to highlight for better information on this. And we can remove the last three words in my phrasing ("with a computer") if you think that that will make it less of a "blue sky statement". Unisight ( talk) 17:27, 9 December 2021 (GMT)
Hi @ BeŻet:, what about this phrasing and reference link?
"The computation of a key-pair is cumbersome (though there are many tools available to facilitate it). [3] " Unisight ( talk) 18:06, 9 December 2021 (GMT)
115792089237316195423570985008687907852837564279074904382605163141518161494337
). The formulas involved are relatively simple.
BeŻet (
talk)
12:37, 10 December 2021 (UTC)@ BeŻet: Good luck finding people that do it manually. And if they don't have much knowledge and don't require much time to do it, I would really like to know them. You seem the most stubborn Wikipedia editor ever. I will most likely report you for that. Wouldn't be better to admit that you don't want to change a single bit in this Wikipedia article? You have not a good reason for this denial of adding this piece of information (to complement what was said before): "The computation of a key-pair is cumbersome (though there are many tools available to facilitate it). [Reference link: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mastering-bitcoin-2nd/9781491954379/ch04.html] " Unisight ( talk) 13:40, 10 December 2021 (GMT)
@ BeŻet:
What is the reason you don't want to add this final remark there to make the introduction to the concept of a bitcoin key-pair more clear to anyone reading that section of the Wikipedia article? In what sense can you say this is not relevant (when I am here crafting the words with great care to make it much more clear and concise, in this effort to collaborate to have a better article)? Any real good reason? You think what I am adding is not important, and that's it? Or are there real reasons? "The computation of a key-pair is cumbersome (though there are many tools available to facilitate it). [Reference link: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mastering-bitcoin-2nd/9781491954379/ch04.html] " Unisight ( talk) 13:17, 12 December 2021 (GMT)
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It's about 10% out of date now. I'd fix it, but the article is edit-locked. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.21.70.95 ( talk) 23:27, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
I wonder where we should mentioned bans (proposed or already in force).
For instance, @ Selfstudier: mentioned the proposed Russian crypto ban in both the energy consumption section and the "Economic concerns" one, which makes sense as the Central Bank of Russia used both these justifications. We repeat the same information twice (which is not efficient) and in one case we don't give the "real" explanation behind this proposed ban (to defund the opposition to Putin, according to Bloomberg & Meduza).
So should these bans be instead in "Legal status, tax and regulation"?
But even there it's not obvious. 24 countries have, de facto or de jure, banned Bitcoin and most, if not all of them, citing "Economic concerns" and/or "Energy consumption and carbon footprint" and/or "Use in illegal transactions". Should we cite all these countries in the "Criticisms" section as well? Why would we only cite the Russian proposal?
Because of WP:NOTNP I also don't know how much weight we should give to these proposals and they could be moved to Legality of bitcoin by country or territory instead.
What's more, many bans target Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies (there are 17,000 cryptocurrencies as of Jan 22, Bitcoin represents ~40% of the total market cap): should the bans be mentioned on the Bitcoin article? Or the Cryptocurrency one? It seems to me it's like mentioning on Budweiser that it is banned in Saudi Arabia because all alcoholic beverages are banned there.
I don't know what the best solution would be. We could maybe in "Legal status, tax and regulation" after the list of countries where Bitcoin is banned add the list of jurisdictions considering a ban (EU and Russia at the moment for instance). And only mention in the Bitcoin article bans that are Bitcoin-focused? A455bcd9 ( talk) 18:49, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
The legal status of bitcoin (and related crypto instruments) varies substantially from state to state and country to country, and is still undefined or changing in many of them. [...] While this article provides the legal status of bitcoin, regulations and bans that apply to this cryptocurrency likely extend to similar systems as well.
As the "Energy consumption and carbon footprint" section indicates, the topic is highly complex, is covered in many reputable sources, and is notable.
I would propose to create a new article Environmental impact of Bitcoin, and move most of the section to it (note: currently, the link is a redirect).
The article could be modeled after Environmental impact of wind power, Environmental impact of concrete, Environmental impact of nuclear power, etc. -- Thereisnous ( talk) 09:11, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
@ JBchrch: you reverted Markus1423 that core is in C++. I think this is non-controversial and well known that Satoshi wrote it in C++. I am no expert on this, but that is at least what google is telling me coinbase & tnw. But I didnt find any wsj, or bloomberg quality sources that said that. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf ( talk) 08:36, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
the first versionand TNW by saying
Bitcoin mining(which would be consistent with Narayanan et al. 2016 and Antonopoulos 2017 saying that the software for nodes is written in C++). I don't think this information has been proven to be verifiable, unfortunately. JBchrch talk 14:59, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
apparently important claim not covered by multiple mainstream sourcesI would say that we are in WP:REDFLAG territory and would expect to see some more solid, secondary sourcing on this. The best we can do with the github (and the sources I've referred to above) is to say that the client software is written in C++. There's maybe an argument that in decentralized systems the client software is all we have, and so the language of the client software would be the language of the crypto, I guess? But we are falling into OR territory here, which is why we need proper, unequivocal sourcing for the claim that "Bitcoin is written in C++". JBchrch talk 05:10, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
The current article says:
Satoshi Nakamoto stated in his white paper that: "The root problem with conventional currencies is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust."
Actually, this statement cannot be found in the Bitcoin whitepaper. Instead, as also the referenced " New York Times" article shows, the original source is not the whitepaper:
"In a 500-word essay that accompanied the code, Nakamoto suggested that the motive for creating bitcoin was anger at the financial crisis: “The root problem with conventional currencies is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.” [New York Times Sunday Review]
I did not check whether the Nakamoto quote actually can be found in the 500-word essay as claimed by the NY Times.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Emundo ( talk • contribs) 20:59, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
Is it really WP:DUE to mention that Ukraine is accepting Bitcoin donations, especially in a section entitled " Adoption by governments", which might be quite misleading? BeŻet ( talk) 20:41, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
I've removed it for now. If anyone feels it needs to be added, let's discuss here first. BeŻet ( talk) 11:43, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
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you need to update the value of BTC mined. it currently stands at 19,010,313 as of now 49.182.133.167 ( talk) 04:47, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
I think we need to add Prospera in section(of Infobox_cryptocurrency) of countries where Bitcoin is a legal tender. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arkeke ( talk • contribs) 06:09, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
In 2010 a vunerability(CVE-2010-5139) was exploited in the Bitcoin protocol causing two different addresses to receive 92.2 billion bitcoins each. A fix in the formet of a new version of the client was published within five hours of the discovery that contained a fork to the consensus rules that rejected the problematic transactions and rolled back the transactions, this required the chain to split in two by a hard fork(as by en.wikipedia's definition), with newer versions not being compatible with previous versions, until the newer one eventually prevailed.
In 2013 another vunerability(CVE-2013-3220) was discovered and also required the chain to split by a hard fork, invalidating previous versions once again.
As the 2013 split was written about, it would also be of significance to mention the previous and first split too. Not to mention "it's the only major security flaw found and exploited in bitcoin's history".
— Preceding unsigned comment added by S1L3nTtttt ( talk • contribs)
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change Paul, Sam ( talk) 10:23, 1 May 2022 (UTC)
/info/en/?search=Hal_Finney_(computer_scientist) Hal Finney as the original founder of the Bitcoin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Web3 student ( talk • contribs) 06:56, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
This edit seems unnecessary, may violate WP:NOTNEWS and WP:RUMOR. Mkwia ( talk) 14:58, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
@ Asukite: I removed a sub-section you created and moved it here to talk for discussion.
Data leakage In June 2022, a team of researchers published a paper [1] (not yet peer-reviewed) claiming that data leaks existed in the pre-2011 version of the blockchain. The researchers claim to have identified that around 64 individuals mined the majority of Bitcoin that was created in 2009 and 2010, and even identified a couple of the individuals already publicly associated with the early addresses, including one person using the moniker "Dr. Evil", and Ross Ulbricht. [2] [3] According to researcher Erez Lieberman Aiden, "…Bitcoin has been through extensive changes since 2011! So some forms of data leakage may work less well now, and some may work better.” [3]
While the subject is interesting, and maybe noteworthy for inclusion, we do have a sourcing consensus in place that this runs afoul of. We are not using low-quality sources on crypto articles, and we are including all cryptocurrency sites (such as coindesk) in that. I guess the non peer-reviewed source also is included in that group. The NYT source would be a good source, and I do recall other mention of this news as well. Maybe you can re-formulate it, or if we cannot create a whole section just move the NYT part into the chronology part (higher up in the article) as one sentence. Thank you! Jtbobwaysf ( talk) 04:03, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
References
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I have added a few choice nuggets from the criticism section to the lede to create a more balanced introduction to the topic that reflects to total content of the article (not just the pro-Bitcoin stuff). I think this is a significant improvement to neutrality. We should not restrict the negatives to a "Criticism" section deep in the article where it might be overlooked by the casual reader. Criticisms of Bitcoin have become increasingly significant and need to be reflected in the lede. Jehochman Talk 14:50, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
This article is wrong in that it immediately calls bitcoin a currency. Currencies are used by courts to discharge civil disputes, by governments to collect taxes, by businesses to issue payroll. Bitcoin is, at best, a security. It's not a currency, and wikipedia shouldn't list it as such. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:AB10:85A0:F964:FE32:93DC:2E03 ( talk) 23:48, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
Surprising that there is no mention of this device anywhere on Wikipedia 38.133.22.196 ( talk) 21:18, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
Under the History -> "2020–present" section, the linear Bitcoin price chart is misleading. It makes it seem as if Bitcoin's price made very little movement until just recently. The logarithmic chart under Economics -> "Price and volatility" is the more accurate way to represent price changes over long periods. It should simply be copied to the first section, but I'm not able to edit this article. Thanks! Scott Teresi ( talk) 23:52, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
I'm surprised there's no "Security" section.
One of the most important features of Bitcoin is that it is a push-based financial system. In tranditional finance transactions, you give your private keys to a merchant and hope they don't make a mistake in the transaction (eg overcharge you accidentally) or malicious (eg sell your credit card data). If they do, you have to dispute the charges.
In bitcoin, you never give your private keys to the merchant (pull). You *send* money to them (push). This is a fundemental paradigm shift from traditional finance to cryptocurrency finance. And one of the key design decisions by Satoshi was to prevent transaction rollbacks and all of the unnecessary waste.
Can we add a section describing how traditional finance uses a "pull" transaction system and bitcoin uses a "push" transaction system. I couldn't find anything on all of wikipedia that describes these two fundamentally different transaction models.
More info here https://www.coincenter.org/education/crypto-regulation-faq/how-are-payments-with-bitcoin-different-than-credit-cards/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maltfield ( talk • contribs) 10:14, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
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A plot of Bitcoin electricity consumption would be very suitable for the section "Energy consumption".
I suggest adding this plot right before the sentence "Bitcoin has been criticized for the amount of electricity consumed by mining.":
Elikrieg ( talk) 22:38, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. I updated the plot to version 3 (
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bitcoin_electricity_consumption.png). The estimate is now clearly highlighted. Maximum/minimum encompass the shaded area (I think we should not entirely exclude upper/lower bound from the official data. This is also the way the researchers display the data at
https://cbeci.org/). The time point of each country's electricity consumption is now indicated in the figure legend. I also increased font sizes and changed the aspect ratio for better legibility.
Elikrieg ( talk) 11:43, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
A user asked me to comment on this issue. I think a graph like this would be relevant, and we have decent peer-reviewed sourcing for the data. May require notes (from sources like CBECI and De Vries' peer-reviewed papers) on calculation methods and the degree to which this sort of thing is a best-effort estimate, which is why CBECI and De Vries' numbers vary. No opinion on including the outliers - David Gerard ( talk) 20:38, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
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change "psuedonymity" to "pseudonymity" in the second paragraph Gduverger ( talk) 18:01, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
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an US company -> a US company Troll Control ( talk) 09:00, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
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Change /info/en/?search=Bitcoin#Analysis to /info/en/?search=Bitcoin#Criticism. "Analysis" is somewhat of a misleading euphemism for what the section contains: criticism. CynicusRex ( talk) 07:02, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
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In the section "Ownership", after the sentence: "The vast number of valid private keys makes it unfeasible that brute force could be used to compromise a private key."
It could be added the following, to help clarify it all:
To see what a private key and a public key look like (which after all are just long numbers with no more than 256 bits, but that can be compressed to less than that using a complicated mathematical mechanism involving numbers, letters and cryptographic hashing), one can safely visit a client-side "bitcoin paper wallet generator" that can be saved as a file, and run on any clean computer that may not even have physical access to the internet. The most popular ones are very trustable and have many levels of security which keep being all the time under strict scrutiny of the whole bitcoin open-source community of developers. More information on this topic is on the section "Paper Wallets", down the page on this article.
(feel free to edit, change it, and adapt it to what you think is finer. My aim is to make it as easy as possible to introduce this specific topic to noobs) Unisight ( talk) 05:36, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
Okay, let's read what it is saying:
"To see what a private key and a public key look like (...)" >> Does that need any reference? I don't thing so, since in the previous paragraph private keys and public keys were being mentioned and this is just telling that there is a way to see how they look like.
Let's continue... "(which after all are just long numbers with no more than 256 bits, but that can be compressed to less than that using a complicated mathematical mechanism involving numbers, letters and cryptographic hashing), (...)" >> Does this need references or clarifications? Well, yes, actually it does, namely if you want to be strictly technically correct. >> Okay, so I will have to agree, in this specific point and taking into consideration the Wikipedia editing rules we will probably need to do some work here. >> Let's see. The first thing pretty much everyone calls the bitcoin address: public key. >> But, as you know, if you want to be strictly technical, which means you will be making more than 99.9% of the world population more confused about it all, and not >> understanding it at all, public keys and bitcoin addresses are not the same thing. >> The reason I used the words "no more than 256 bits" was firstly because private keys go from: >> 0x1 to 0xFFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFE BAAE DCE6 AF48 A03B BFD2 5E8C D036 4140 >> and not from 0x1 to 0xFFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF. >> Indeed, that doesn't mean the private key can be less than 256 bits, but it is still true that as was said "is no more than 256 bits" >> And makes that subtle details more salient for the more strictly technically and precising oriented. >> The second reason for using the words "no more than 256 bits" was that though both private key and public key are 256 bits, >> when you look at them in a bitcoin paper wallet generator they don't look at all like long numbers (of 256-bits). >> The private key will probably be shown in the "Wallet Import Format (WIF)" [1] >> which makes it look much more compact than a 32 bytes number in hexadecimal. >> Technically, it is still 256 bits, otherwise we would be losing information. And technically you are not compressing it, you are just encoding it into >> a different format that is more handy for people to scan with their mobiles. Also note that once you import your coins you should consider the >> bitcoin paper wallet discarded and you should not think that you can spend coins in your bitcoin software wallet and later import the remainder coins >> from that paper wallet from which you already import. You should be very aware of that risk when using paper wallets. >> More info on that specific detail, for instance, at: [2]. >> And secondly, I used the words "no more than 256 bits" because the bitcoin address has only 160 bits and not 256 bits. Actually 25 bytes (200 bits), >> due to the adding of the version byte to the RIPEMD-160 hash and the adding of 4 bytes checksum of (SHA-256(SHA-256(ripemd-160WithVersionByte))). >> The bitcoin address has less information than the public address. As you know, there is no way to compress 256 bits into less than that according to >> "Information theory". Though it is theoretically possible to use very short expressions with irrational numbers and later compute them into much longer >> pieces of information, and conversely. >> On the other hand, it is such commonplace that bitcoin public keys and private keys have 256 bits, that using a reference seems to be supererogatory. >> Saying "no more than 256 bits" is just a subtle way of saying that you can go more deeply into technical detail, without actually be lying. >> And regarding "(...)that using a complicated mathematical mechanism involving numbers, letters and cryptographic hashing" >> What would actually be needing a reference there? "complicated mathematical mechanism", "involving numbers, letters", "cryptographic hashing" >> I really don't see what kind of references you would need there. It is all commonplace in plain English? What >>would be needing a reference there? >> I really, don't see what would need a reference in that part of the sentence...
Okay, let's keep going, let's continue...
"one can safely visit a client-side "bitcoin paper wallet generator" that can be saved as a file, and run on any clean computer that may not even have physical access to the internet." >> Well, here we may need to think a bit. Who says that is safe to visit them? Well, I don't think any bitcoin >>developer would disagree on this. >> You can ask any of the hundreds of bitcoin core developers and I would be extremely surprised if there is one >>that thinks it is unsafe to visit a client-side website, that can be accessed even anonymously, with Tor Browser, >>for instance. >> And of course, if they are client-side websites you can save them as a file and later on use them on fresh >>installation that comes with a browser. >> It is a complete no-brainer. Is there really a need for a reference there? What kind of reference? A reference to >>explain what is a client-side website >> and in what sense it is safe to visit them? Or a reference to explain why it is safe to save that client-side >>website into a pen-disk and use it >> in a fresh installation without access to the internet? >> Or, would the reference be to state that these websites are indeed client-side websites? You can just look at the >>code in any browser and save that code into a webpage. They are static web pages. What kind of reference is >>needed? It is a no-brainer, again.
Okay, let's keep going, let's continue...
"The most popular ones are very trustable and have many levels of security which keep being all the time under the strict scrutiny of the whole bitcoin open-source community of developers." >> That's for sure. Does anyone think millions of bitcoiners would trust bitcoin paper wallets with millionaire >>funds if it was otherwise? >> Who would think for a split second that these client-side websites to generate keys are not under constant >>scrutiny by some of the best minds in the world in Mathematics, Cryptography, Computer Science and Programming, >>with all sorts of levels of security being well thought of?
Okay, let's keep going, let's continue...
"More information on this topic is on the section "Paper Wallets", down the page on this article." >> This makes sense. There is a section on the article about "Paper Wallets". >> But the paragraph I want to add is for better clarification of what was being discussed there and makes perfect >> sense there as an additional clarification. When I explain bitcoin private key and public key to someone new to >> bitcoin, they understand it, but usually, the first thing that they will then ask is: "Okay, can you please show >>me an example of those?". >> And that is exactly the point of what I wrote to be put on that Wikipedia page explaining bitcoin: to show how >> they look like.
And there is no need to tell a specific "bitcoin paper wallet" generation client-side website. Because people, can search for it obviously, and search engines will probably rank the most popular and reliable ones first. Of course.
Still, I am totally willing to collaborate and sort it out. We could even talk with some hard-core bitcoiners, for sure. No probs, I will be here to discuss it and collaborate.
Since there is nothing else I can do, can I ask you to at least add the following sentence there:
"One of the ways of generating a bitcoin key-pair is using a bitcoin paper wallet generator." Unisight ( talk) 21:28, 7 December 2021 (GMT)
A paper wallet is created with a keypair generated on a computer with no internet connection; the private key is written or printed onto the paper and then erased from the computer.BeŻet ( talk) 13:00, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
Okay, in that case, I ask you to add the following sentence there with a reference link: "The computation to generate a bitcoin key-pair can be done by everyone with a computer. [citation reference link: https://medium.com/coinmonks/how-to-generate-a-bitcoin-address-step-by-step-9d7fcbf1ad0b]" Unisight ( talk) 15:09, 9 December 2021 (GMT)
Creating a bitcoin address requires nothing more than picking a random valid private key and computing the corresponding bitcoin address. This computation can be done in a split second.I think that adding that a computation can be done on a computer might be a bit of a blue sky statement; moreover, you can do it with a calculator, or even with a pen on a piece of paper if you have the patience. Finally, your source doesn't actually state what you're trying to say, and is on Medium.com, which is not allowed. Sorry, not trying to be difficult, just trying to help. BeŻet ( talk) 16:34, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
Theoretically yes, you can do it with pen and paper but I don't think anyone in the world ever did that, not just because it is very time consuming but because you would have to know all the internals of the Elliptical Curve Digital Signature Algorithm and of the cryptographic hashing algorithms which are very difficult to get to grips with. The same with calculators, it would take you endless time and knowledge, not just patience. The fundamental difference between a calculator and a computer is that a computer can be programmed in a way that allows the program to take different branches according to intermediate results, while calculators are pre-designed with specific functions (such as addition, multiplication, and logarithms) built-in. So, if you don't want to be extremely picky with words, yes, people will need a computer to do it. I ask you 1-2 days, to see if I can find a better phrasing of words and a more reliable article to be referenced on Wikipedia, for what I think is important to highlight for better information on this. And we can remove the last three words in my phrasing ("with a computer") if you think that that will make it less of a "blue sky statement". Unisight ( talk) 17:27, 9 December 2021 (GMT)
Hi @ BeŻet:, what about this phrasing and reference link?
"The computation of a key-pair is cumbersome (though there are many tools available to facilitate it). [3] " Unisight ( talk) 18:06, 9 December 2021 (GMT)
115792089237316195423570985008687907852837564279074904382605163141518161494337
). The formulas involved are relatively simple.
BeŻet (
talk)
12:37, 10 December 2021 (UTC)@ BeŻet: Good luck finding people that do it manually. And if they don't have much knowledge and don't require much time to do it, I would really like to know them. You seem the most stubborn Wikipedia editor ever. I will most likely report you for that. Wouldn't be better to admit that you don't want to change a single bit in this Wikipedia article? You have not a good reason for this denial of adding this piece of information (to complement what was said before): "The computation of a key-pair is cumbersome (though there are many tools available to facilitate it). [Reference link: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mastering-bitcoin-2nd/9781491954379/ch04.html] " Unisight ( talk) 13:40, 10 December 2021 (GMT)
@ BeŻet:
What is the reason you don't want to add this final remark there to make the introduction to the concept of a bitcoin key-pair more clear to anyone reading that section of the Wikipedia article? In what sense can you say this is not relevant (when I am here crafting the words with great care to make it much more clear and concise, in this effort to collaborate to have a better article)? Any real good reason? You think what I am adding is not important, and that's it? Or are there real reasons? "The computation of a key-pair is cumbersome (though there are many tools available to facilitate it). [Reference link: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mastering-bitcoin-2nd/9781491954379/ch04.html] " Unisight ( talk) 13:17, 12 December 2021 (GMT)
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It's about 10% out of date now. I'd fix it, but the article is edit-locked. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.21.70.95 ( talk) 23:27, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
I wonder where we should mentioned bans (proposed or already in force).
For instance, @ Selfstudier: mentioned the proposed Russian crypto ban in both the energy consumption section and the "Economic concerns" one, which makes sense as the Central Bank of Russia used both these justifications. We repeat the same information twice (which is not efficient) and in one case we don't give the "real" explanation behind this proposed ban (to defund the opposition to Putin, according to Bloomberg & Meduza).
So should these bans be instead in "Legal status, tax and regulation"?
But even there it's not obvious. 24 countries have, de facto or de jure, banned Bitcoin and most, if not all of them, citing "Economic concerns" and/or "Energy consumption and carbon footprint" and/or "Use in illegal transactions". Should we cite all these countries in the "Criticisms" section as well? Why would we only cite the Russian proposal?
Because of WP:NOTNP I also don't know how much weight we should give to these proposals and they could be moved to Legality of bitcoin by country or territory instead.
What's more, many bans target Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies (there are 17,000 cryptocurrencies as of Jan 22, Bitcoin represents ~40% of the total market cap): should the bans be mentioned on the Bitcoin article? Or the Cryptocurrency one? It seems to me it's like mentioning on Budweiser that it is banned in Saudi Arabia because all alcoholic beverages are banned there.
I don't know what the best solution would be. We could maybe in "Legal status, tax and regulation" after the list of countries where Bitcoin is banned add the list of jurisdictions considering a ban (EU and Russia at the moment for instance). And only mention in the Bitcoin article bans that are Bitcoin-focused? A455bcd9 ( talk) 18:49, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
The legal status of bitcoin (and related crypto instruments) varies substantially from state to state and country to country, and is still undefined or changing in many of them. [...] While this article provides the legal status of bitcoin, regulations and bans that apply to this cryptocurrency likely extend to similar systems as well.
As the "Energy consumption and carbon footprint" section indicates, the topic is highly complex, is covered in many reputable sources, and is notable.
I would propose to create a new article Environmental impact of Bitcoin, and move most of the section to it (note: currently, the link is a redirect).
The article could be modeled after Environmental impact of wind power, Environmental impact of concrete, Environmental impact of nuclear power, etc. -- Thereisnous ( talk) 09:11, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
@ JBchrch: you reverted Markus1423 that core is in C++. I think this is non-controversial and well known that Satoshi wrote it in C++. I am no expert on this, but that is at least what google is telling me coinbase & tnw. But I didnt find any wsj, or bloomberg quality sources that said that. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf ( talk) 08:36, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
the first versionand TNW by saying
Bitcoin mining(which would be consistent with Narayanan et al. 2016 and Antonopoulos 2017 saying that the software for nodes is written in C++). I don't think this information has been proven to be verifiable, unfortunately. JBchrch talk 14:59, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
apparently important claim not covered by multiple mainstream sourcesI would say that we are in WP:REDFLAG territory and would expect to see some more solid, secondary sourcing on this. The best we can do with the github (and the sources I've referred to above) is to say that the client software is written in C++. There's maybe an argument that in decentralized systems the client software is all we have, and so the language of the client software would be the language of the crypto, I guess? But we are falling into OR territory here, which is why we need proper, unequivocal sourcing for the claim that "Bitcoin is written in C++". JBchrch talk 05:10, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
The current article says:
Satoshi Nakamoto stated in his white paper that: "The root problem with conventional currencies is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust."
Actually, this statement cannot be found in the Bitcoin whitepaper. Instead, as also the referenced " New York Times" article shows, the original source is not the whitepaper:
"In a 500-word essay that accompanied the code, Nakamoto suggested that the motive for creating bitcoin was anger at the financial crisis: “The root problem with conventional currencies is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.” [New York Times Sunday Review]
I did not check whether the Nakamoto quote actually can be found in the 500-word essay as claimed by the NY Times.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Emundo ( talk • contribs) 20:59, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
Is it really WP:DUE to mention that Ukraine is accepting Bitcoin donations, especially in a section entitled " Adoption by governments", which might be quite misleading? BeŻet ( talk) 20:41, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
I've removed it for now. If anyone feels it needs to be added, let's discuss here first. BeŻet ( talk) 11:43, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
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you need to update the value of BTC mined. it currently stands at 19,010,313 as of now 49.182.133.167 ( talk) 04:47, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
I think we need to add Prospera in section(of Infobox_cryptocurrency) of countries where Bitcoin is a legal tender. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arkeke ( talk • contribs) 06:09, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
In 2010 a vunerability(CVE-2010-5139) was exploited in the Bitcoin protocol causing two different addresses to receive 92.2 billion bitcoins each. A fix in the formet of a new version of the client was published within five hours of the discovery that contained a fork to the consensus rules that rejected the problematic transactions and rolled back the transactions, this required the chain to split in two by a hard fork(as by en.wikipedia's definition), with newer versions not being compatible with previous versions, until the newer one eventually prevailed.
In 2013 another vunerability(CVE-2013-3220) was discovered and also required the chain to split by a hard fork, invalidating previous versions once again.
As the 2013 split was written about, it would also be of significance to mention the previous and first split too. Not to mention "it's the only major security flaw found and exploited in bitcoin's history".
— Preceding unsigned comment added by S1L3nTtttt ( talk • contribs)
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change Paul, Sam ( talk) 10:23, 1 May 2022 (UTC)
/info/en/?search=Hal_Finney_(computer_scientist) Hal Finney as the original founder of the Bitcoin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Web3 student ( talk • contribs) 06:56, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
This edit seems unnecessary, may violate WP:NOTNEWS and WP:RUMOR. Mkwia ( talk) 14:58, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
@ Asukite: I removed a sub-section you created and moved it here to talk for discussion.
Data leakage In June 2022, a team of researchers published a paper [1] (not yet peer-reviewed) claiming that data leaks existed in the pre-2011 version of the blockchain. The researchers claim to have identified that around 64 individuals mined the majority of Bitcoin that was created in 2009 and 2010, and even identified a couple of the individuals already publicly associated with the early addresses, including one person using the moniker "Dr. Evil", and Ross Ulbricht. [2] [3] According to researcher Erez Lieberman Aiden, "…Bitcoin has been through extensive changes since 2011! So some forms of data leakage may work less well now, and some may work better.” [3]
While the subject is interesting, and maybe noteworthy for inclusion, we do have a sourcing consensus in place that this runs afoul of. We are not using low-quality sources on crypto articles, and we are including all cryptocurrency sites (such as coindesk) in that. I guess the non peer-reviewed source also is included in that group. The NYT source would be a good source, and I do recall other mention of this news as well. Maybe you can re-formulate it, or if we cannot create a whole section just move the NYT part into the chronology part (higher up in the article) as one sentence. Thank you! Jtbobwaysf ( talk) 04:03, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
References
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I have added a few choice nuggets from the criticism section to the lede to create a more balanced introduction to the topic that reflects to total content of the article (not just the pro-Bitcoin stuff). I think this is a significant improvement to neutrality. We should not restrict the negatives to a "Criticism" section deep in the article where it might be overlooked by the casual reader. Criticisms of Bitcoin have become increasingly significant and need to be reflected in the lede. Jehochman Talk 14:50, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
This article is wrong in that it immediately calls bitcoin a currency. Currencies are used by courts to discharge civil disputes, by governments to collect taxes, by businesses to issue payroll. Bitcoin is, at best, a security. It's not a currency, and wikipedia shouldn't list it as such. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:AB10:85A0:F964:FE32:93DC:2E03 ( talk) 23:48, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
Surprising that there is no mention of this device anywhere on Wikipedia 38.133.22.196 ( talk) 21:18, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
Under the History -> "2020–present" section, the linear Bitcoin price chart is misleading. It makes it seem as if Bitcoin's price made very little movement until just recently. The logarithmic chart under Economics -> "Price and volatility" is the more accurate way to represent price changes over long periods. It should simply be copied to the first section, but I'm not able to edit this article. Thanks! Scott Teresi ( talk) 23:52, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
I'm surprised there's no "Security" section.
One of the most important features of Bitcoin is that it is a push-based financial system. In tranditional finance transactions, you give your private keys to a merchant and hope they don't make a mistake in the transaction (eg overcharge you accidentally) or malicious (eg sell your credit card data). If they do, you have to dispute the charges.
In bitcoin, you never give your private keys to the merchant (pull). You *send* money to them (push). This is a fundemental paradigm shift from traditional finance to cryptocurrency finance. And one of the key design decisions by Satoshi was to prevent transaction rollbacks and all of the unnecessary waste.
Can we add a section describing how traditional finance uses a "pull" transaction system and bitcoin uses a "push" transaction system. I couldn't find anything on all of wikipedia that describes these two fundamentally different transaction models.
More info here https://www.coincenter.org/education/crypto-regulation-faq/how-are-payments-with-bitcoin-different-than-credit-cards/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maltfield ( talk • contribs) 10:14, 28 June 2022 (UTC)