Explaining Bitcoin Addresses

Since I first got involved in Bitcoin, I’ve sought a simple means of explaining Bitcoin and the technology that underpins it, the Blockchain, to my friends and family, looking for a simple yet true-to-life analogy that illustrates something so complex. My understanding of the actual technological aspects of them is somewhat limited, so forgive the fact that this analogy inevitably has its own limitations, but I hereby present it to you - the glass deposit box analogy. Addresses, keys and the Blockchain. One of the first things people ask me when I talk to them about Bitcoin is, ‘if it’s on....

If you didn’t know already, Vertcoin is an ASIC-resistant coin, one of the first coins I found out about andwrote about. Vertcoin with has been slowly dropping in market cap over the last few days, but that hasn’t discouraged the community with releases such as the Stealth Address, and now the POW change to Lyra2. Below is a short video explaining stealth addresses more in-depth. Vertcoin aims to be the cryptocurrency of choice for personal and business use. We were the first to offer Stealth Addresses protecting everyone’s right to privacy on the blockchain. We believe this to be a much....

As long as a system requires technical expertise for operation, it will be relegated to use by a small group of technologists. If every person who walked onto an elevator was presented with a keyboard and DOS-style command line terminal, most of us would be looking for the stairs. The nerds among us may eagerly seek out the proverbial programmable elevators, but the average person just wants to push a button to get from one floor to the next, not master gravity-defying vehicles. Bitcoin addresses have long been a point of confusion for new users introduced to the technology. It's difficult....

Explaining Lightning Network specification BOLT 12 and how it works with the Bitcoin Layer 2 protocol.

James Smith, CEO of Elliptic, a new start-up that specializes in the provision of blockchain intelligence to law enforcement and other financial institutions, stated during the Blockchain Money conference held in London last week that “Bitcoin is too transparent.” In his presentation Smith stated that they have identified 200,000 bitcoin addresses, but “we don’t try to identify every user, what we identify is criminal authority.” The “vast majority of the activity in bitcoin is perfectly legitimate,” he stated, before introducing Alphabay, a darknet drugs market. They are pretty well run,....