I'd absolutely avoid running a pruned node if I'd have been running a business. If you go pruned, you should expect that Bitcoin database might corrupt and you'll have to re-index. While it is trivial to do that with a non-pruned node, you'd need to request downloading every single block all over again in pruned mode. It is also useful for a business to be flexible with the blockchain, with stuff such as lightning nodes and block explorers, which are designed to work on non-pruned nodes.

Think of it as a database, which is stored in thousands of computers across the world. These computers are called "nodes" of the network, and by the protocol they will follow the database that contains the most "work". By "work", I mean that it contains evidence that the most mining has happened in that chain; another way to think about it, is that the most resources have been spent on that database. It is trivial to verify that with the uniformity of hash functions.

If you follow that route, and simply accept as valid transactions included in that most-worked-database, then what you have is a network where minting money and transaction verification are done collectively, without any central authority whose presence is mandatory for the network to operate.

So, by "breaking" a curve you mean brute forcing it, expecting to finish in a reasonable time? I suppose that includes finding an algorithm that can do it in a better than linear time complexity for large curves?

My response goes to your philosophical conclusion, that every computation can be performed in a constant time no matter what. Hash functions are deterministic, and thus fall into your generality. But, what about non-deterministic things, like quantum phenomena? Couldn't there be problems which cannot be solved in a constant time, as their complete randomness changes them fundamentally?

I understand your assertion like "We can solve anything in constant time if we are able to try out everything in the worst case". But, isn't philosophy pretty much suggesting that you can't know everything?

If both curves share the same properties except size, can you break the 32-bit curve without breaking the 256-bit one? If yes, can you please explain me how?

But P versus NP isn't just about algorithm complexity. It's about solving the problem easily if it's easy to verify that it can be solved. It's objectively difficult to find the solution in something like an SHA256 collision by brute forcing. Also, doesn't this theory rely on determinism? How can you be certain that a problem can be solved in O(1) if for example there is complete randomness involved?

Good books for Bitcoin:

• Mastering Bitcoin 2nd Edition - Programming the Open Blockchain.
• Programming Bitcoin.
• Mastering the Lightning Network (LN).

Good links for learning more about cryptography:

• General course around cryptography: https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/courses/OnlineCrypto/
• Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm, used to verify Bitcoin transaction signatures: https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/ecdsa

Good places to ask question about both:

• https://crypto.stackexchange.com/
• https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/
• this forum.

I'm a little confused on what you are trying to accomplish.

- If you want to make a custodial wallet, then keep things simple. Custodial means no access to private keys.
- If you want to make a non-custodial wallet on the browser, then you don't need dumpprivatekey.
- If you want to make a service in which people will send and receive bitcoin, then just take care of signing transactions from the backend.

In any case, you should never share private keys over a communication channel.

To me it's simple. You either want to verify post-softfork transactions (i.e., taproot), or you want to use a new mempool policy which wasn't possible from the UI in previous versions, like -mempoolfullrbf.

This is what I do:
- Download builders' keys: git clone git@github.com:bitcoin-core/guix.sigs.git
- Go to the builders-key directory and run: find . -type f -name "*.gpg" -print0 | xargs -0 gpg --import
- Verify the binaries.
- Anonymously use a search engine to find results for a couple of public keys just to check they have been archived (so they are legitimate).

I'm not feeling confident of buying a house these days (or investing in real estate generally). I mean, look around what's happening. From day to day, your country might join a war. Houses can be confiscated.

If you want to invest some capital go with either bitcoin or some S&P 500 index. The real investment, in my opinion, comes down to your skill set, i.e. how useful you are. Financial intelligence surely helps, but I cannot fathom how one can live poorly if they're masters of a skill.

It is theoretically possible for two hash function inputs (pre-images) to share the same output (hash), even though the possibilities for such thing to happen are extremely slim; 1 in 2^256, to be precise. However, from a protocol point of view, it is impossible, because even if you found an SHA256 collision, it is protocol rule to reject that transaction: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/915

What is worth to be said, is that while two transactions sharing the same TXID is impossible, it is possible for two transactions to spend the exact same inputs, create the exact same outputs and still have different TXIDs, because there can be more than one valid signatures. (Unless you use Segwit, which doesn't take into account the signature when hashing transaction data)

Tip: don't listen to crap stats when it comes to cryptocurrencies. "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" applies.

Ahhh. Yeah. The experts which recommend storing bitcoin on centralized exchanges. Who are they by the way? Imaginary I suppose. 

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As I have previously said, institutional investors prefer the regulatory oversight and convenience a third party provides, so it's pretty reasonable. I also don't expect them to know much about bitcoin.

Actually, Bitcoin should be the least of your concerns, because Bitcoin wouldn't exist as long as the Internet went shut down universally. Nobody could send transactions, nor create new coins, so it'd be an absolute pause. Since there would be no economic network activity, then nobody could sell bitcoin either. The price of bitcoin would pretty much remain the same, because there would not be any volume.

Once the Internet come back after x years, the Bitcoin network could continue operating normally under a hard fork (to adjust the difficulty manually). That would definitely decrease its price.

Only until the next difficulty adjustment. After that, it would take normal times to mine blocks.

Yes, in every single halving we've experienced so far, the price would increase more than the block reward decline. That's probably why hash rate has skyrocketed comparably to previous halvings. But, that doesn't mean history will repeat itself. We can't make schedules based merely on Bitcoin doubling in price every four years. 

It'd be disastrous, and to be frank, Bitcoin would be one of my least concerns. From the top of my head:

- Instantaneous global communication would cease, which would slow down everything.
- Banking transactions would not be possible because the banking application wouldn't be able to query the banking database. That means incapability of cashing out from your bank account either, as ATMs use the Internet.
- Every business which exists digitally would go bankrupt, completely disrupting the economy. Few of the businesses with physical representation would survive.
- Healthcare services such as health monitoring would be disrupted.
- Smart devices like smartphones, security cameras, smart cars etc., would be compromised and render useless.

By the way. Everybody would go nuts.

To be pedantic, it's the block subsidy that's getting halved. The block reward can be anything, as long as there are mined transactions which pay respectively.

This is not how it works. Just because the mining reward will shrink, it doesn't ensure price increase. If the miners can't pay their bills, they simply shut down their business. Block reward shrinking means pretty much hash rate decline on the long term.

I mean, sure. Let's adopt a conservative approach when developing the main layer, but why not taking advantage of all the resources used to secure it and mess with any potentially problematic idea in a separate layer (i.e., sidechain)? Everybody's happy then, because the main layer remains secure, and people still demand bitcoin to create stuff in sidechains without selling it for altcoins.

There is already that sidechain, it is called Rootstock.

Unless extremely trustworthy, you shouldn't share information such as the location of your seed phrase with anyone. Let alone the seed phrase itself.

That is so underrated feature. You can't steal someone's bitcoin if you merely break into their house. There are nearly infinite ways to hide a seed phrase if you're creative. The thief must force you to give them permission.

That's why I think something bad must have happened. It would be trivial, accurate and subtle to let us know.

Something must have happened since then. They would have reached the forum as soon as they reached their destination. If this email conversation happened in August, then probably something bad must have happened to them.

It's totally possible to open up multiple channels in just one transaction: https://thebitcoinmanual.com/articles/open-multiple-lightning-channels/. Unless you believe that suddenly a billion people would want to adopt bitcoin as currency. Rather, I think this (if it happens), it will happen gradually.

Lol. You think that the new generation will be capable of running full node 24/7, being aware of back ups and sending / receiving capacities? I'm a lot more concerned about that, and I'm pretty sure that's the reason people are encouraged to use lightning centrally.

I'd agree with a dynamically increased block size, just as someone else had proposed, but I'm looking forward to see how you will find consensus on that. It'll probably be easy if it's common sense / equilibrium, as you say. 

CZ publicly admitting he can't predict the future is a key phrase for the crypto-community. The person who owns literally the most profitable crypto-exchange, with net worth estimated to be more than $10 billion does not know what will happen; let alone you.

It'll be my second halving, but I'll have to agree with his points. Basically, he says that everything's possible after the early, post-halving days. In May 2020, it took a couple of months to break $11k IIRC, but it was also Covid and everyone started looking into cryptos, so again, we don't know what's gonna happen this year.