BitCoin is a public ledger | Hacker News Reader

BitCoin is a public ledger

erratasec.blogspot.com

51 pointsllambda12 comments

I have seen so many times in news stories that bitcoin mining reveals a series of new bit that make up a bitcoin, or that a bitcoin is just a series of bits.

Bitcoin is a ledger, that ledger is public. The columns are labelled with things like 17Zsi2TiKrZoAoaQ7bzt3wPB5NZV1T4KeE, That column _is_ the bitcoin in your wallet. You need to have a password to move something out of your column and into another. That's the private key to your wallet.

Most people understand ledgers. Most of the misunderstandings about bitcoin (especially regarding anonymity) indicate that people don't realise that bitcoin is a ledger.

Haha, even here, misinformed (often angry) comments are directed at Bitcoin supporters that align precisely with what you're saying. Some of the accussations are simply flat out incompatible with an open/public ledger, let alone getting into anything Bitcoin specific.

And that's despite stuff like this being posted repeatedly. In fact, this is a repost from like ~~2~~ 10 days ago, isn't it? ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5796935 )

Looks like everyone's tuckered out. A full day of WWDC and PRISM and the Bitcoin story only has 4 comments after 2 hours. Get some rest, guys! ;)

Don't forget E3, some of us play games too!

It might also be because this link has been posted at least two times recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5796935

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5807149

Y'all know that there's already a protocol designed exactly for doing this without hacking BitCoin, don't you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping

This sounds like a modern version of the Poor Man's Copyright[1] where you mail yourself some document for _protection_.

[1] http://www.snopes.com/legal/postmark.asp

    $ echo foo > bar
    $ gpg --sign bar
    $ gpg --verify bar.gpg

It looks like the method described in the article also provides a verified timestamp without the need for a (centralized) timestamp authority. I'd say that's a pretty important difference.

Doesn't this actually destroy bitcoins (of which there will only ever be a finite amount)

Sure, in the sense that they are now permanently unusable by being transferred to keys for which the private key is not known.

By sending a single satoshi (0.000000001 BTC), the monetary effect is insignificant. There will eventually be 2,100,000,000,000,000 of such units.

Bitstampoer on github already does a Verizon of this.

https://github.com/newell-purdue/bitstamper

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