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Go deep on one question.
Rabbit holes are long reads on a single idea, each with its sources at the foot of the page. Pick a shelf, or start with the newest.
24 rabbit holes, about 5 hours of reading
Newest
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Rabbit Hole · 16 min
The Time Warp: How Lying About the Time Could Break Bitcoin's Difficulty
A seam in Bitcoin's 2009 code would let a miner with most of the hash rate drive difficulty to its minimum within weeks, in under six with all of it. It has been used on other coins and planted once on testnet, never used on Bitcoin, and the fix is written and waiting for a soft fork.
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Rabbit Hole · 14 min
Quindecillions: Why Nobody Can Stumble on Your Bitcoin
After a vanity address search, readers ask whether the address already had coins in it and how many wallets the search found on the way. Every Bitcoin address is a drawer. There are about 1.5 x 10^48 of them, 57 million hold coins, and no search on record has landed on a funded one by chance. The same arithmetic is why nobody has to register a key before using it.
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Rabbit Hole · 15 min
Which Coins Does Your Wallet Spend?
Your wallet does not have a balance. It has a bag of coins, and every payment starts by choosing which to spend. What that choice costs today, what it costs later, what it tells a chain analyst, and how the reference wallet decides, with four algorithms and one score.
Pick a shelf.
All 24 rabbit holes on one pageHow It Works
10What actually happens when you use it?
How do I hold it safely and privately?
Who changes the rules, and how?
History
5What happened, and what changed after?
The strongest objections, including where the critics are right.