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Just as I've started learning about it, there is big news in the realm of Bitcoin's integrity. Read Ars Technica's coverage here. To understand what this news means, and why it could be a big problem for Bitcoin's future, read below!
T oday is for learning. Okay, every day is for learning! However, today is for starting to learn Bitcoin's basics. I bitcoin related words to philosophy be writing as I learn. I am starting with no bitcoin related words to philosophy pertinent technical knowledge, and very little knowledge of Bitcoin's qualitative philosophy or market penetration.
Hopefully, in-progress documentation of my learning process will bitcoin related words to philosophy me further inspiration to continue my analysis.
The first step, to me, seems to be to do some introductory reading, both about Bitcoin's philosophy, and about its bitcoin related words to philosophy and implementation on a qualitative level. Once I understand what the whole thing is about, I can dive into details.
Soon, I suspect that I should attempt to engage with others doing active research on Bitcoin's impact and systems. This will be a project to start in the next few days, but it is worth noting now. It's something that I need to keep in mind when I'm introducing myself to the topic. As such, the thought also seems to be worth recording here. Now on bitcoin related words to philosophy some qualitative reading. Let's start with some qualitative facts about Bitcoin's design and philosophy: That's some information to start with!
I suspect that I will find many questions to ask and many other relevant notes as I keep researching, but this is a start.
Fortunately, as I mentioned, the Bitcoin project is entirely open-source, and thus a determined researcher can find out everything there is to know about it, with enough effort expended. The points above are pretty unstructured. Perhaps it will help to split them apart into two categories: Market qualitiesand Implementation qualities. Market qualities refer to practical things about how Bitcoin operates as currency, how the supply of Bitcoins is structured, and so on.
Implementation qualities refer to the systems in place to make this market function, and to ensure its security. For an electronic currency like Bitcoin, these two categories are bitcoin related words to philosophy linked at some level, but from the perspective of an outsider, they may be more clear viewed differently. So here we go: Market qualities of Bitcoin: Implementation qualities of Bitcoin: A lot of details to think about, and this bitcoin related words to philosophy without getting into anything technical.
That is still to come. I suspect that much of my qualitative bitcoin related words to philosophy is still slightly off too, but it will hopefully self-correct as I immerse myself in more details. I have accomplished most of what I wanted to in this blog at this point - just outlining what my understanding is of Bitcoin after several hours of reading.
So what do I think of all of this? Well, I realize now that previously I had a fundamental misunderstanding of at least one aspect of the problem I intended to look at - I was under the impression that reversible transactions was a major problem for Bitcoin. In fact, as I mentioned above, Bitcoin transactions are designed to be irreversible once completed. If you wait 10 minutes after making a Bitcoin transaction, and receive a completion notice, you can be reasonably certain that there is no way for the other party to back out of the transaction.
This provides a level of fraud protection that seems important for an online virtual currency. I believe other systems - for example, Paypal - deal with significant problems in this vein.
That point seems to warrant more investigation. Moreover, Bitcoin's inherent irreversibility seems to me like it might open some other avenues to fraudulent transactions.
I know that there have been fraud concerns with Bitcoin. It will definitely take investigation to see what is going on there. Bitcoin's creators seem to insist that past problems have been entirely with users not protecting their private Bitcoin keys which represent currency adequately.
Another concern that I still have is that my qualitative investigation has so far told me nothing about the implementation of how Bitcoin actually maintains its worldwide network. How does the block chain get updated across all its mirrors? Bitcoin related words to philosophy do transaction details get communicated to miners? How exactly do concurrent miners function? Are they all working on the same block at the same time? When a new block is completed, how does it get added to the chain?
How much of the network do you need to control in order to be able to potentially disrupt completion of transactions for the entire whole, or worse, compromise the worldwide block chain mirror?
These are all implementation details I will need to look at. In fact, however improbable it seems, it happened for the first time just two days ago. This effective control, and the break it represents from Bitcoin's decentralized philosophy, could spell major problems for the integrity of the entire Bitcoin network, and its future. A problem called "forking" was also mentioned to me, and I have yet to find reference to it.
This is something else I'll have to investigate. Bitcoin related words to philosophy quick Google search reveals that Bitcoin forking refers to a version conflict in block chain interpretation software, where a bug caused one version to declare some valid blocks to be invalid.
This resulted in two divergent block chains, and some Bitcoin double charges. Whether this problem has relevance to Bitcoin's future security is something else to potentially consider. Finally, I have yet to delve into any of the details of Bitcoin's cryptographic implementations. Some preliminary reading reveals that the network relies on standard ECDSA elliptic curve digital signature algorithm for transaction handshakes.
The algorithm used by Bitcoin, SHA, is a bitcoin related words to philosophy of SHA-2, the second iteration of SHA for hashing purposes in validating the block chain's integrity and in implementing proofs of work for new blocks. A lot more to learn about these implementations.
That is it for today. I have not decided on the best bitcoin related words to philosophy for tomorrow's blog yet, but I am sure it will come together.