My Bitcoin master thesis

[Lethos]

Brilliant master thesis, I have a feeling you'll feel more criticism from your peers here than whom marked this paper (teacher).
Not because you really got anything wrong, but damn we can be picky.

[ThePiachu]

Brilliant master thesis, I have a feeling you'll feel more criticism from your peers here than whom marked this paper (teacher).
Not because you really got anything wrong, but damn we can be picky.

Yes, I knew what I was getting myself into when posting it, and well, it will allow me to write some small follow up addressing all the nitpicks to make the dissertation all that more valuable.

My supervisors weren't generally picky with it, most I got was "remove long quotes, add some basic explanation of the gist of what Bitcoin is and a chapter describing how different people view Bitcoin from their perspective". I don't think the reviewer had any problems with it either. Overall I got the highest grade for my thesis.

[Lethos]

Brilliant master thesis, I have a feeling you'll feel more criticism from your peers here than whom marked this paper (teacher).
Not because you really got anything wrong, but damn we can be picky.

Yes, I knew what I was getting myself into when posting it, and well, it will allow me to write some small follow up addressing all the nitpicks to make the dissertation all that more valuable.

My supervisors weren't generally picky with it, most I got was "remove long quotes, add some basic explanation of the gist of what Bitcoin is and a chapter describing how different people view Bitcoin from their perspective". I don't think the reviewer had any problems with it either. Overall I got the highest grade for my thesis.

Congrats then! Well done on achieving that grade. Any big plans now you've got your masters?

[ThePiachu]

Find some job, earn some money, work on some side-projects, move eventually. I should give the vanity pool website some attention, and I've also got an idea for another Bitcoin-powered website for artists (although I'll probably have to incorporate Paypal into this as well).

[Vladimir]

great work!

[scribe]

Looks like a really useful - and accessible - read. Looking forward to browsing this alongside Bitcoin Magazine

[apetersson]

great! reading it right now.

don't assume just because we find some errors in it the work is not excellent. you face some of the most critically thinking individuals here.

[deepceleron]

Is this research for your doctoral dissertation: Study in social engineering - willingness of users to download and use a file format with a history of multiple security exploits and remote code execution vulnerabilities onto their personal computers containing digital currencies?

[wachtwoord]

lol, that is not the best reason to hate pdf though. The main reason is the format itself.

[LoupGaroux]

Apparently Polish universities consider Master's theses on actual content and not just weight as American universities do. Less than 100 pages with citations? You got off easy there! I had to cough up 312 pages for "Comparative Models of Worker Housing - Failure in the American Entitlement Model of Subsidized Housing". And I'm guessing you have had at least 20X the readers that I have had in 30 years less time.

Well done, Scholar.

[wachtwoord]

For the same amount of content explained in a similar level of quality and clarity "less is more" is definitely valid.

[Vladimir]

“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”

Blaise Pascal

[ThePiachu]

great! reading it right now.

don't assume just because we find some errors in it the work is not excellent. you face some of the most critically thinking individuals here.

Yes, I'm aware of that. Thanks to such scrutiny I'll be able to write some small follow up to my thesis explaining what things I got wrong in it, to allow future readers not to make the same mistakes.

Is this research for your doctoral dissertation: Study in social engineering - willingness of users to download and use a file format with a history of multiple security exploits and remote code execution vulnerabilities onto their personal computers containing digital currencies?

Hmm, sounds interesting. But sadly, no, I'm not that smart to pull some stunt like that off;). Heck, I didn't even know there were any problems like that with PDFs...

Apparently Polish universities consider Master's theses on actual content and not just weight as American universities do. Less than 100 pages with citations? You got off easy there! I had to cough up 312 pages for "Comparative Models of Worker Housing - Failure in the American Entitlement Model of Subsidized Housing". And I'm guessing you have had at least 20X the readers that I have had in 30 years less time.

Well done, Scholar.

Ouch, that is a bit harsh. I think there might be even be some amount of pages here that is considered too much, and that would be about 100. After that the reviewers might scowl (although there is no strict formal limit of pages).

Heck, when I was writing my bachelor's thesis on an erasmus exchange in UK and then used it again in my polish university, I had to increase my page count from 46 to 54 with just some basic theory (also removing all project management pages).

It might be due to the fact that for a long while getting a master's degree over here was considered a standard for a lot of people - I think the bachelor's degrees have been introduced not long ago, before that it was either master's or getting some work education. So I doubt too many people would be getting that degree if it took so much effort, while in other countries it might be considered more uncommon, thus requiring more work.

[cypherdoc]

great! reading it right now.

don't assume just because we find some errors in it the work is not excellent. you face some of the most critically thinking individuals here.

Yes, I'm aware of that. Thanks to such scrutiny I'll be able to write some small follow up to my thesis explaining what things I got wrong in it, to allow future readers not to make the same mistakes.

Is this research for your doctoral dissertation: Study in social engineering - willingness of users to download and use a file format with a history of multiple security exploits and remote code execution vulnerabilities onto their personal computers containing digital currencies?

Hmm, sounds interesting. But sadly, no, I'm not that smart to pull some stunt like that off;). Heck, I didn't even know there were any problems like that with PDFs...

Apparently Polish universities consider Master's theses on actual content and not just weight as American universities do. Less than 100 pages with citations? You got off easy there! I had to cough up 312 pages for "Comparative Models of Worker Housing - Failure in the American Entitlement Model of Subsidized Housing". And I'm guessing you have had at least 20X the readers that I have had in 30 years less time.

Well done, Scholar.

Ouch, that is a bit harsh. I think there might be even be some amount of pages here that is considered too much, and that would be about 100. After that the reviewers might scowl (although there is no strict formal limit of pages).

Heck, when I was writing my bachelor's thesis on an erasmus exchange in UK and then used it again in my polish university, I had to increase my page count from 46 to 54 with just some basic theory (also removing all project management pages).

It might be due to the fact that for a long while getting a master's degree over here was considered a standard for a lot of people - I think the bachelor's degrees have been introduced not long ago, before that it was either master's or getting some work education. So I doubt too many people would be getting that degree if it took so much effort, while in other countries it might be considered more uncommon, thus requiring more work.

i finished it yesterday.  well done.  learned alot about the various attacks possible.  i'm not sure there's another work out there as complete as yours.

[ThePiachu]

From what I read, no, unless you count the Stack Exchange as a whole.

[zebedee]

Two things that jumped out at me reading the first few pages:

Page 17: 

     D = T/TMin.

I think you mean D = TMin/T as TMin is actually a larger number.

2.1.3 Ideally, the hashing algorithms should be free of collisions[1], meaning that for any two
different messages that are used as an input of the function, their digests should always
be different. Otherwise algorithm is considered broken, as it opens a possibility of data
manipulation.

I don't think you mean that.  You mean it's computationally infeasible to find a collision.   Collisions
are guaranteed for any shortening hash function such as SHA256, which isn't considered broken.

[SimonL]

I lightly skimmed and this could be a great resource. Great work, and thank you. This really adds value and depth to the Bitcoin community.

[malevolent]

bumping in case some of you missed this topic (1st post especially)

[Unuser]

Grammar errors, my friend.

[ThePiachu]

Grammar errors, my friend.

I'm glad you were so specific.