I'm still learning Tor and networking in general but feel that I have a working understanding, so apologies in advance if this post is just stupid.

I've recently fallen down a rabbit hole that started with the question "Can I host a website on the bitcoin network?" which basically evolved into "Can the bitcoin network function as the Tor network?"

Ignore for a second why you would want to do this if Tor already exists, or what the inherit benefit would be for doing this, because it's really just a question of "is this possible?"

Is there a protocol for hosting hidden services on the bitcoin network already? I think it would be a neat project to try working on if no one else has done so.

I imagine it working practically the same as Tor, my node would use onion routing to create circuits to introduction point nodes on the network. It would be cool if the hidden service descriptor's public key could be an address, it could be used as a URL to reach the node at some port serving HTML or whatever.

This way I can also just give someone a bitcoin address, they'd reference it on a hash-table and get back the nodes acting as introduction points to my hidden service. As with Tor they chose a rendezvous node, sending an authentication token and requesting that message be passed along to the introduction point, the introduction point passes it to my hidden service, my hidden service sends back the token and an approval message to the rendezvous node, the node acts as another hop in the circuit between the requester and my hidden service completing the connection.

Now back to the questions of "Why do this if Tor already exists?" and "What inherit benefit would this have for bitcoin, why does bitcoin need this ability?"
I don't have an answer other than it sounds fun, and I suppose it doesn't need this but I don't think it would be detrimental to bitcoin if it had this ability either, if anything it just adds additional functionality and creates an alternative to Tor hidden services. Mostly I just think it would be really cool to host a blog or something on the bitcoin network.

I would appreciate feedback, even if it's just to explain why this is a dumb idea. I'm still new to doing development in this space and still learning, I'm trying to see how things are related and learning hands on the inner workings of these systems and protocols, just figuring out what all is even possible.

I'm not even sure if any of this would be possible without introducing a new BIP or if it could be possible as a separate piece of software that is just dependent on bitcoin core. I don't believe that bitcoin core has the functionality to do this type of network communication and onion routing and it most certainly doesn't have a hash-table that would be needed to find the introduction points from the provided address.

Again any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.




I recently began working on trying to do the same thing. I wanted a python library that would let me change the RPC authentication info so that I could use python to send RPC commands to my node and store the returned data into a CSV file.

There were some libraries I found on Github but they didn't do exactly what I wanted, so I started writing a library myself. I've tested it with a few commands, and it works. Using the requests library and this link https://curl.trillworks.com/ you can convert all the bitcoin-cli curl commands to python. I've been making them into functions so they're callable within other programs.

What makes you assume that Satoshi Nakamoto is a real person and not a pseudonym? Many authors throughout history have made anonymous publishing or gone under pen names. If this is the case Satoshi Nakamoto may not even be a single person. Satashi Nakamoto is irrelevant, it's the code, the white paper, that's important and to this day it continues to work.

Hey, so I ran into this same issue.

I was trying to use Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS and Bitcoin Core 0.20.0 and I had installed Bitcoin Core through the Snap Store.

I managed to get it working and it is downloading the blockchain now so I figured I'd share the solution.

Turns out the problem isn't with bitcoin-qt at all, the issue is with how snap does permissions and handles connections.

Heres a link to the interface management documentation:
https://snapcraft.io/docs/interface-management

Basically, the issue is that by default bitcoin-core doesn't allow read/write access to removable media.

You can view the interface connections by typing

This pulls up all the relevant information and you'll notice that the Slot for removable-media is left blank.

The documentation for the removable-media interface says that when it is enabled, you have read/write access to storage in /media.
https://snapcraft.io/docs/removable-media-interface

To connect the removable-media Plug to the empty Slot simply type

Then, just check using the snap connections command again to see if it worked.

Once you have the manual connection made, you can then change the data directory in the Bitcoin Core GUI. Its important to note though that you first need to send a copy of  the bitcoin-core folder from your snap folder to your external hardrive. Do NOT just move the folder, you have to make a copy, it crashed my device when I tried just moving it.

So your custom data directory path should look something like
It should still say "a new directory will be created" underneath.
Then just hit OK and it should work and begin downloading.

Best of Luck!

I do not claim to be an expert in quantum computing or even quantum physics. But I do have some prior knowledge on the subject.

The beauty of bitcoin is that it is open source and allows people to make changes in the code which makes it scalable and relatively adaptable. There are quantum-resistant protocols out there. The threat that quantum computing poses to bitcoin is very much the problem quantum computing poses on any SHA-26 encryption, however, research is already underway to counter this threat.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-37110-4_9
This is a link to a research paper that specifically looks into how these protocols can be used to make bitcoin quantum-resistant.

The fact bitcoin uses SHA-26 encryption is nice because it means when an industry-standard algorithm comes out to provide quantum-resistant encryption, it can easily be adopted by the users of the network, and network users will have the incentive to make the switch.

The threat lies between now and when these algorithms are available. I'm not worried so much about Honeywell or another research quantum-computer being used to launch a 51% attack on the BTC network, I'm more worried about a nation-state like China trying to use the technology to take down bitcoin, but I will say that with the power quantum-computers have, I'm sure bitcoin isn't high on the list of targets for quantum-cyber attacks, I would assume China would be more interested in using that technology against other quantum-computing capable nations.

Many people are speculating that pre-COVID global economic levels won't return until 2023. I'm also inclined to believe that, news came out today that the EU is considering banning travel from the USA due to their inability to manage the virus.

I don't see the US or any other major country slipping back into lockdowns, not anytime soon at least. If more lockdowns are to come it won't be until the fall months start and COVID-19 cases start spiking again as many medical professionals predict will happen. Even then, take the US for example which is already experiencing record high spikes, there is no intention to go back into lockdown, the only other possibility would be a democratic governor locking down the state to economically protest Trump, but that seems unlikely as they would also be shooting themselves in the foot economically. I seriously don't think the economy could support another lockdown. I think the goal, especially in the US, is to just defund testing centers to hide the real numbers and try sweeping it all under the rug.

The pandemic will most certainly persist until the end of the year if not longer depending on where in the world you are.

I personally think we're living through a paradigm switch, China already has been working for decades to build new economic infrastructure to establish what the CCP calls "a post-American world", there's also been a lot of tension lately between China and India, Syria is still a flashpoint, Iran and North Korea remain nuclear threats, and when you toss a pandemic into the mix, things don't look good. Usually, when the world has been faced with a pandemic coupled with geopolitical, and economic tensions it has resulted in a paradigm shift, automation usually speeds things up too. Maybe I'm pessimistic, but I just don't see a way in which things ever go back to the way things were before COVID-19, and honestly, I think there's a growing number of people who don't want it to.