Month: October 2024

It has now been sixteen years since the original publication of the Bitcoin whitepaper on the cryptography mailing list. Satoshi went and dropped the paper in the place it would be best received, where all of the cypherpunks and cryptography nerds who had been obsessed with digital cash systems for years hung out and regularly discussed that and other related topics.

The whitepaper was by no means even close to a comprehensive description of the Bitcoin protocol. It didn’t describe the scripting language at all, it didn’t go into a difficulty adjustment algorithm, it just vaguely described the concept of one. It didn’t define the exact protocol blocks were propagated across the network with (just a vague description), or the difference between consensus and policy rules. It didn’t define an issuance schedule or a total supply, just that it could be finite at some arbitrary value and eventually end issuance to support the network based solely on fees.

None of the actual implementation details or specifics of the actual system were described in any way whatsoever. Just the general concept of a proof-of-work secured blockchain and how it could function without a central third party taking the role of record keeper for the transaction history to prevent double-spending.

This is still a rather profound document given all of its shortcomings when weighed against the Bitcoin protocol itself in totality. Applying proof-of-work with a difficulty adjustment to the double-spend problem is the profound breakthrough that actually differentiated Bitcoin from prior attempts at digital cash, such as bitgold or e-cash.

While the whitepaper itself is by no means close to enough information to reimplement the protocol as it stands today, it is enough to replicate a similar enough system. It’s the heart of it, the bits that really had to exist for the protocol we know to be brought into the world. Despite its lack of details and specificity, it will stand the test of time as one of the most important academic papers released in the 21st century.

Everything brought into the world starts with an idea, and the ideas in this paper are truly profound in the implications and consequences they have had, and will continue to have on the world around us.

Happy Whitepaper Day. 

This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

A press release circulating yesterday proved yet again that there’s nothing the mainstream media loves more than some crazy nut claiming to have created Bitcoin.

Follow Rizzo on X.

https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/

In honor of White Paper Day, the latest event, billed as the unveiling of the “legal identity” of Satoshi Nakamoto, attracted a who’s who of press, including the BBC, who were caught up in the Craig Wright scandal in 2016. (Wright was later legally deemed not to be Satoshi.)

Even that burn didn’t stop their reporters from interviewing the latest man who’s claiming – without evidence – that he created Bitcoin, though. 

This time, our fake Satoshi is Stephan Mollah.

No, it’s not the first time Mollah has pulled this stunt. He sued crypto exchange Coinbase all the way back in 2021, claiming that they stole his company name from him, at the time saying that Satoshi Nakamoto was his pseudonym and true identity.

Long story short, the claim was so outlandish there’s even an online investigations company that uses Mollah as a way to advertise the effectiveness of their software.

Just look at this image.

You can follow the thread of the BBC’s reporting for the highlights, they’re full of his inane statements, as well as complaints from the reporters about what they had to sit through, including the “increasingly easy to fake screenshots” that he showed.

“I created the Bitcoin technology, but I am not happy with it,” Mollah said. “I have evidence of all of that, but I am here to make the statement.”

Mollah pledged to reveal the true details at some later date, finally showing the event for what it was, an announcement of a fake announcement.

The audience was riveted. 

Still, after all the hoopla over HBO’s documentary, which went to extraordinary lengths to fake a convincing Satoshi reveal earlier this month, I have to say, Mollah is somehow refreshing.

This is really the way all Satoshi Nakamoto reveals should be – total sideshows, devoid of any reasonable intrigue. Hopefully, if we get enough of these, we’ll convince the media to end its fruitless search for Satoshi’s true identity.

After all, as Bitcoin Mechanic says, isn’t that all he ever asked of us? 

This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

Follow Aaron on Nostr or X.

Some things in Bitcoin are just not up for debate.

The plural of bitcoin is also bitcoin— not bitcoins. (One bitcoin, two bitcoin, three bitcoin…) Bits is a better sub-denomination than sats. (100 sats is actually one bit, like a 100 cents is one dollar; being a wholecoiner makes you the Bitcoin-equivalent of a millionaire, as that would mean you have a million bits.) And October 31st is not Bitcoin’s birthday.

Bitcoin’s birthday is January 3rd. It says so right there in block 0: 2009-01-03 19:15:05 GMT +1. On that day Bitcoin’s blockchain launched, with 50 newly generated coins issued to Satoshi Nakamoto’s public key. (But from which Bitcoin’s creator cannot spend according to the protocol rules; since Satoshi was the only person who could have created the genesis block, that would have effectively constituted a 50 BTC pre-mine.)

Yes, Bitcoin was first proposed through Satoshi’s white paper on October 31, 2008. But you don’t celebrate your birthday on the day your mom told your dad she wanted to have a kid. Nor do you celebrate it on the day your parents conceived you, or on the day they announced you to the world via a gender reveal party.

You celebrate your birthday on the day you were born, and the same is true for Bitcoin. January 3rd.

Happy Bitcoin White Paper Day.

This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

Follow Mark on X.

Ah, Halloween. The one night a year where we’re supposed to be scared of things that go bump in the night. You know, your classic cast of characters: Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, your weird neighbor who leaves their Christmas lights up all year round. But here’s the thing—none of those guys actually scare us anymore, do they? I mean, a werewolf might give you a mild startle, but you know what’s really terrifying? The sound of a fiat currency money printer. That, my friends, is nightmare fuel for 2024.

Remember when Frankenstein’s monster was the height of terror? Big, lumbering, slightly awkward in a “do you even lift, bro?” kind of way. Sure, he was menacing back in his day, but now? Come on, Frankenstein’s just a misunderstood guy with a bad skin-care routine and no Wi-Fi. Dracula? The guy’s been outpaced by vegan diets and everyone’s obsession with garlic these days. Werewolves? Maybe once upon a time, but now we’ve got laser hair removal for that.

No, the real monsters of the past just don’t cut it anymore. Today, we’ve got something far scarier, lurking quietly in the background, slowly draining the life out of our savings accounts. Forget the undead—this beast prints its way into our nightmares. Enter: the fiat currency money printer. Terrifying, isn’t it?

Imagine this: you’re dressed up as a money printer for Halloween. You walk into the room, wearing a suit made entirely of dollar bills, making that eerie brrr noise. Suddenly, everyone’s blood runs cold. Forget vampires—this is the stuff of real terror. Because the truth is, inflation doesn’t just take your blood—it takes your hard-earned money and leaves you with less and less every day. Now that’s scary.

Inflation is the ultimate modern-day monster. It sneaks up on you, slowly chipping away at the value of your currency, all while governments crank up those money printers like it’s a haunted house attraction they’re particularly proud of. Only this time, it’s not candy coming out—it’s debased, devalued paper that used to be worth something.

So yes, folks, this Halloween, the money printer is the real villain. It doesn’t wear a mask or haunt a castle; it lurks in central banks and government policies. Every time that printer goes brrr, your savings are silently screaming in terror.

But like every good horror story, there’s a hero. And in this tale of financial fear, that hero is Bitcoin. In a world where inflation runs rampant and fiat currency gets printed into oblivion, Bitcoin is the knight in shining blockchain. It’s here to protect you from the terrifying specter of currency debasement, offering a lifeline out of the inflationary horror show.

Picture this: while Timmy and Sally are out trick-or-treating, they stumble upon a house where, instead of handing out candy, they’re offering something much sweeter—financial sovereignty. No money printers here, just the decentralized beauty of Bitcoin. It’s the one thing that can stand up to inflation and say, “Not today, money monster.”

With a fixed supply of 21 million coins, Bitcoin doesn’t play the “brrr” game. It’s like garlic to a vampire, or silver to a werewolf. Inflation can’t touch it. And as we all know, the scariest thing about monsters is when they can’t be stopped—but Bitcoin can stop this one.

Happy Halloween, and may your portfolio stay spook-free.

David Marcus is taking his experience as the former head of PayPal and Meta Messenger and applying it to building on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.

At Lightspark’s first partner summit, Lightspark Sync, he and his team rolled out new capabilities for the Universal Money Address (UMA) standard it launched one year ago. These new features will make it easier to tip, pay for subscriptions and invoice over Lightning (and in conjunction with banks in some cases).

At the summit, Lightspark also unveiled a new Bitcoin L2 it has built — Spark — which is interoperable with Lightning and which enables users to use bitcoin (and stablecoins) non-custodially.

I sat down with Marcus the day before Lightspark Sync to learn more about what drives him. We also discussed his strategy in harnessing the power of Bitcoin as a neutral global settlement layer, while still meeting everyday users where they’re at regarding what type of money they like to use.

A transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows below.

Frank Corva: I recently saw you post on Twitter that you were happy to be sick on a weekend versus on a weekday because you’re so excited about what you’re working on here at Lightspark. What about this work makes you so excited?

David Marcus: Well, the general idea of changing the way money moves around the world is something that I’ve been obsessed with for a very long time. The fact that we can really change this for potentially billions of people in a profound way is a once in a generation opportunity that I get to actually work on with an amazing team. It’s exciting when you start making progress and when you start to see product market fit.

Corva: Some members of the Lightspark team just showed me the new capabilities of the Universal Money Addresses (UMA) as well as Lightspark’s new Bitcoin L2, Spark. You’re catering to both everyday people who want to move money globally and Bitcoin enthusiasts who care about self-custody. Is the strategy to just get as many people using your products as possible?

Marcus: Just to backtrack a little bit — I don’t need to convince you, but once you get the conviction that Bitcoin is the only thing that can actually be the internet of money because it’s the only asset and network that’s neutral enough to be that, then you have to wonder: Why hasn’t it already won?

If you go back and peel the onion, you start to see, first of all, bitcoin wasn’t moving all that quickly or cheaply. That’s where the Lightning Network came in. The problem with the Lightning Network, while it’s been around for a while, was that it was really hard to implement, really hard to operate and really hard to maintain. And it wasn’t super reliable for transactions.

So, we invested a good chunk of the two plus years of our existence into really making an enterprise grade entry point into Lightning for institutional players, banks and exchanges. That really changed the game, because a lot of them were looking at the lack of activity on the Lightning Network and at the complexity of getting on the Lightning Network and then it became a self-fulfilling prophecy: there’s no activity, it’s too hard, I’m not going to do it

Corva: I’ve heard those complaints before.

Marcus: We broke that cycle by launching Lightspark Connect. That was the foundation, because if you can’t make what I call TCP/IP packets for money — fragments of bitcoin on Lightning — work really well, then you can’t do anything. That was priority number one.

Then we realized we need to enable people to move the currencies they use for their everyday goods and services on the network. That’s when we launched UMA, which is this Universal Money Address standard built on top of LNURL, and extended it so that regulated entities can not only be compliant but can also change in and out of bitcoin and get a quote from the counterparty they’re sending to for the desired currency of the recipient.

That was starting to really work, but then we realized, “Okay, we need to reach [people on] the network that are going to implement UMA natively across the world, but network effects are going to take forever.” That’s where Extend comes in. It makes Bitcoin, Lightning, and UMA compatible with the legacy payment and banking rails, which is really critical.

That’s now launching, and we’re seeing really promising traction with making the entire banking sector basically compatible with Lightning. People have the ability to send and receive money in real time 24/7, no bank holidays, no weekends, nothing.

Then we realized that institutions are building on top of UMA and are offering the ability for their customers — whether they’re consumers or businesses — to claim an UMA address, which is good for peer-to-peer payments, but there’s so much more that we can do. That’s where UMA Request and UMA Auth come in.

Corva: From what I’ve learned thus far, these seem like they will be quite important for merchants.

Marcus: With UMA Request, whether you’re a business or an e-commerce site, you can request money from a wallet [that holds] another currency, and have the transaction settled on Lightning. Then there’s UMA Auth, which is OAuth for money. It’s basically the ability for wallet holders or account holders that are UMA-enabled to delegate push and pull of funds with user set limits. If you make the credit card comparison, you can give your credit card for a subscription, but you don’t set the limit.

So now, if you look at where we are: We basically made Lightning the thing that moves bitcoin fast and cheap — really easy to integrate, maintain, and operate. We figured out a way to move fiat currencies on top of the network in a seamless way. We extended the network to make it compatible with the old banking rails. But what’s missing for Bitcoin now to win fully and entirely and become the true open standard for moving money on the internet? I think there are two things that are holding it back.

One is self custody wallet support. If the network is a closed network and only works between custodial entities, we don’t want that. We want this thing to be as open as possible. Also, for developers, if you need to ask someone for permission to develop something, to test something, to build something, then it’s not like the internet — it’s like CompuServe or AOL.

Support for fast and cheap self-custody wallets on Bitcoin is something that we tried to figure out with Lightning, and it’s basically impossible. I mean, it’s possible but economically non-viable to park that amount of liquidity in front of every self-custody wallet for an eventual future transaction. Then, there are a bunch of different things that we explored with LSPs. They are either non-compliant or have a lot of other issues around how they move money.

The second thing was stablecoins, which are basically a version of a US-dollar denominated bank account for people who can’t have the real thing. As they grow in popularity and usage, if we can’t make them travel natively on Bitcoin, then we’re at a disadvantage. And so that’s why we built Spark, which is what we see as a totally non-linear jump forward for Bitcoin that will enable self-custody wallets to interoperate fully with Lightning.

It really extends the reach of self-custody to Lightning. It makes stablecoins a reality on Bitcoin, which they couldn’t be as well on Lightning, because, if you look at Taproot Assets and [other protocols like it], they’re pretty good on top of Lightning, but then you go back to the problem of pairwise channels for each of those stablecoins. In a world where you’re going to have thousands of stablecoins, it’s just not going to work.

We believe Spark solves the last two problems standing in a way of Bitcoin becoming the internet of money.

Corva: UMA Auth enables people to make payments within other apps. Was it challenging to build something that accomplishes this, something that makes payments and tipping not only possible but easy?

Marcus: There are several things here to unpack. First of all, making Lightning work really well for regulated entities was really hard. Once you’ve done that, you need to build something that enables them to move the money that people want to use and do it in a way in which regulated entities can meet their compliance requirements. That’s something that’s non-trivial.

Then, the Extend piece is actually understanding how payment systems work and really doing the work — which is a lot of work — to make the network compatible with existing payment rails.

So, A, it’s a lot of work. B, it’s a lot of understanding of not just how Bitcoin and Lightning work, but also how traditional payments globally work, what the regulatory landscape looks like, and what people, what companies and regulated institutions actually need to trust the network that they’re going to connect to and offer to their customers.

Corva: Do banks see the benefits in using Lightning as a settlement layer? In some ways, it seems like with what you’ve built, there would be no need for CBDCs, which would help keep smaller banks in business, because it isn’t a given that CBDCs will be able to be used for international remittances.

Marcus: Some banks do, and some others will eventually, but they’ll take a little more time.

At the end of the day, if you build a more efficient network that enables global money movement faster, cheaper, in real time 24/7 and with no blackout dates, then that’s where money is going to flow and the financial system and the ecosystem players are just going to need to adapt to that.

If you’re a bank you’re going to be able to offer global payments to your clients at a cheaper rate and have a margin on top of that, which you know is going to be very comfortable if you’re competing with the current alternatives — international wire transfers are still forty five to fifty dollars.

Corva: You’re working with Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC) and the team from Alby. It seems like you really have your ear to the ground regarding new technologies coming to market in the Bitcoin, Lightning and Nostr spaces.

Marcus: Absolutely. With Nostr Wallet Connect, there’s actually a really good solution to the problem of delegating Auth, or delegating the ability to push and pull from a wallet with a protocol, that is starting to have nascent network effects in the Bitcoin and Nostr communities.

It’s really good work, and so why not extend it and enable more things to happen with Nostr Wallet Connect for mainstream use cases? That’s the way we look at things. We look at what the entire community is building, we contribute to those efforts, and then we try to extend it to bring it to mainstream consumers so they can use it in a way that is going to be familiar and not foreign to them.

Corva: Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to share?

Marcus: We’re really excited. We feel like all of these capabilities that we’ve been hard at work on in are almost two and a half years of existence are reaching a tipping point right now where basically there are all of the capabilities that are required for Bitcoin to decisively win at becoming the open internet for money, and now it’s just a matter of executing, of finding all of the entities that are going to not only share that vision but execute it with us.

That’s why — to your point about me not wanting to be sick on a work day — I feel like this is just too exciting to not work on every day.

Introduction

Introducing the Bitcoin Popularity Index (BPI), the first comprehensive search study of its kind. This index has been curated in an attempt to measure the global reach and impact of Bitcoin through a broad analysis of Google search queries.

Unlike many studies that offer absolute data or blend various aspects of cryptocurrency, the BPI data aims to deliver insights of Bitcoin interest specifically, by considering factors such as language diversity, Google’s browser dominance and population sizes. This approach allows us to gauge not just the raw interest but also the relative intensity of Bitcoin engagement across different nations. We can therefore highlight which countries are punching above their weight, relatively speaking.

While not intended as a definitive answer, the BPI serves as a useful exercise—perhaps the best snapshot we have amid imperfect data. By integrating these various elements, the Bitcoin Popularity Index offers a unique perspective, shifting away from generic metrics to provide a richer, more contextual understanding of how Bitcoin’s adoption is advancing worldwide.

Bitcoin Popularity Index 2024

You can download the infographic here.

Key Findings

The USA scores the highest number of queries with 14,432,650 queries per month, followed closely by Brazil with 12,400,260. Germany, India and Turkey complete the top 5. The top 7 positions and 8 of the top 10 are occupied by Western European countries (as per EuroVoc’s regional definitions).“Western” countries around the world have an average BPI of approximately 3,720 (compared to 1,250 elsewhere), indicating a relatively high popularity of Bitcoin.Africa has the lowest BPI scores among the continents. This is unsurprising given that internet penetration in Africa is only 40%.The most prominent Bitcoin queries are price queries, and more often than not the price of bitcoin against the dollar. In Egypt, however, bitcoin is more frequently priced in bars of gold instead of the dollar or the Egyptian pound. The total number of monthly Bitcoin-related queries is nearly 77 million, with direct searches for “Bitcoin” approaching 10 million. The ratio of Bitcoin-to-Ethereum queries is 9:1.

A Comparison of Continents

Oceania leads with the highest average BPI at about 4,901, indicating a very strong popularity of Bitcoin in this region. This data is derived from just two countries (New Zealand and Australia), both benefiting from high levels of internet penetration.

Europe follows with an average BPI of 3,719 from 41 countries, showcasing the relative strength of Bitcoin popularity across the continent, placing it well above most other regions. 

The Top 50 Countries

Countries 1-15

Countries 16-32

Countries 33-50

Methodology of Data Collection

Selection of Data: Given that Google withholds all search query data for terms relating to cryptocurrency, identifying the most reliable dataset was important. In an effort to be as comprehensive as possible, datasets from SEMRUSH, Ahrefs, DataOs, Moz and Google Trends were all downloaded and researched. SEMRUSH proved to be the most reliable based on its accuracy and depth, which is consistent with SparkToro’s study as well as SEMRUSH’s own research on search volume data.Data Comparison and Selection: Although the results were often similar for the most part between SEMRUSH and Ahrefs, the two largest available datasets. There were significant discrepancies between the two for many terms. The data for some countries showed more than an 80% difference. This variability made it impractical to blend the data or fill in gaps for countries where SEMRUSH provided no data, as the differences were too substantial to reliably aggregate.Query Configuration: Broad match queries for “Bitcoin” and “BTC” were utilized across alphabet groups including Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Japanese, Devanagari, Perso-Arabic, Cyrillic, Tamil, Sinhala, Chinese and Thai.Incorporation of Demographic and Search Engine Data: Population figures were integrated from Worldometers, and Google’s market share data was sourced from Statcounter. For the purposes of this study, the Google market share was recalculated to 100% for all countries to standardize the impact of search engine usage on the data.Calculation of Per Capita Search Volume: With the aforementioned data, a per capita search query volume for each country was calculated. This step was crucial for normalizing the data across different populations, allowing for a like-with-like comparison of Bitcoin interest irrespective of country size.Data Visualization: The final results were categorized and plotted on a Chloropleth map using the visualization tool Datawrapper. This allowed for a clear visual representation of Bitcoin popularity across different countries, highlighting regions with particularly high or low levels of engagement.

The percentage of a country’s population using the internet wasn’t factored into the calculations, since those without internet access are less likely to show interest in Bitcoin. Africa’s most recently published internet adoption rate is 40%, comparable to the rates in Europe and the United States of America in 2005. Although this rate remains low, it is increasing, as is the adoption of Bitcoin. 

Scope of Data and Limitations

The Bitcoin Popularity Index (BPI) offers comprehensive insights; however, it is constrained by the absence of data from 77 countries, including China, Iran, Cuba and 33 African nations — particularly Tanzania, Kenya and Sudan. This lack of data from key regions can result in an incomplete global perspective on Bitcoin engagement.

Furthermore, the BPI is based on third-party estimations, as Google does not share specific search query data for Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. VPNs can play their part too by obfuscating where searches originate from, but this is not expected to have impacted the results too much.

The data is erroneous in a small number of countries, as “BTC” is the name of a phone company in the Bahamas, an internet provider in Botswana and a shopping mall in Slovenia.

Summary

The Bitcoin Popularity Index (BPI) provides a detailed look at global interest in Bitcoin through the lens of Google search queries. While this study employs the best available data, it is important to note that it is not intended to definitively answer which country has the strongest Bitcoin adoption. Rather, the BPI serves as a gauge of general interest and engagement with Bitcoin across different nations.

The data reveals that Oceania has the strongest BPI scores, though Europe shows the greatest strength across the board, with 41 out of 43 countries performing strongly. It is also evident that search data is stronger in countries with higher internet penetration, thus creating a data bias favouring such countries.

A valuable follow-up to this study would involve examining other metrics that could provide further insights into Bitcoin adoption. Some examples of those metrics include the number of Bitcoin nodes, Bitcoin Lightning Network nodes or hashrate distribution. Such data points could offer a more comprehensive understanding of how deeply Bitcoin has permeated different regions and could help paint a fuller picture of its global adoption.

Furthermore, the goal is to make the BPI an annual calculation, providing a comparative approximation of how Bitcoin interest and adoption progress across all surveyed countries on a yearly basis.