very well written and intelligent post. thank you.

2 things. The 10 minute blocktime is a time signature. 1 computer alone can solve it in 10 min, or 10,000.

Sha 256 is not solvable as you describe. There are third party random number variables (transactions) which make it not 'pre-solvable'.

agree. i accepted Satoshi before, now i'm less comfortable.

Wow. I never had any idea that bitcoin mining might be contributing to degradation of encryption systems.

This is why it's so secure.

I remember when I was like John Snow.

Alluding to the possibility of a hash function backdoor?
Perhaps this "rogue" government branch is in possession of some hardware that enables this?

As a thought experiment, let us assume the former statements.
Could we think of a new motivation behind the relationship between Bitcoin and this NSA subgroup?
I think one motivation would be to watch transactions between people who believe they are shielded.

Every technological upgrade this civilization makes is immediately turned against it or it is stolen and hidden (if it's actually beneficial). If you trust this you have to be the, and I mean this with complete love and kindness, dumbest asshole to have ever walked the earth.

LOL I'm with you on the trusting these new cryptocurrencies. Hella fuck no. This sub, oddly methinks, seems in love with cryptos.

You don't understand how Bitcoin works. Read about ECDSA.

We can upgrade to sha5.

YES!! Thank you for this post. I have been saying this for a long time.

Have you seen this?

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm

It was a white paper written in 96 by the NSA.

There is honestly zero doubt in my mind that it was NSA created. The only thing I can't wrap my head around is why they would want to create this decentralized ledger that can live forever with no real way of censorship.

Have you looked into the theory of wikileaks dropping the keys into blockchain transactions?

It would line up with the Economist 2018 one world currency prediction as well.

Sure I'll find some links and post them up. It's a very interesting rabbit hole to go down and was highly censored when it was happing.

Because you can literally follow the money into every black market organization all over the world.

very true. but there are still ways to use cryptocurrencys anonymously

The transaction isn't anonymous, and that's all that matters. Like, imagine an ant hill... some guy once poured hot metal down the hole and then dug it up to find out what it all looked like. Well, that's bitcoin. Every black market is being mapped out. Silk road, alpha bay, all those transactions from all over the world, or maybe the russian mafia and all their connections all over the world, or chinese hackers, or terrorists, or whatever... they poured money down the hole and then dug it all back up in the blockchain.

Yes, for bitcoin. But there are countless other cryptos that provide full anonymous use.

If it was created by the NSA to create a controlling world currency, they fucked up badly because it sparked hundreds of other inovations and cryptos.

And yet, bitcoin is worth 3550 dollars per coin and nobody uses monero. I buy modafinil on the internet, and they take bitcoin, not anything else.

Holy friggin.... WOW. Mind blown!

Digital currencies bring competition to the monetary system. That's a very good thing. As an individual it's good to have a basket of different cryptos not just Bitcoin, Ethereum or Litecoin which are already part of the established system. Also there is a fight within Bitcoin vs. Bitcoin Cash. Both sides claim the other side is evil an powered by TPTB. One sides censors the other not. Make up your mind and research what money actually is before entering the space.

Look at: "Sound money", "ideal money" and the concepts behind it...

That's not really happening, have a read of these links.

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/17132/is-bitcoin-mining-itself-compromising-the-security-of-sha256

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6832049

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/41829/wont-asic-miners-eventually-break-sha-256-encryption

Who cares if it can break SHA-256? Here's a more sinister idea: What if it instead yields a rainbow table for a vulnerability in a different cryptography standard?

But it doesn't and we can know that for a fact...

Only hashes with leading 0s are published (the ones that win the competition). E.g https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000000dad6d19240284ec2224c62871889f9a3f486b4a4b7e952

op, please respond to this point.

basically, only a tiny tiny fragment of the available space for SHA level primes is "blessed" for bitcoin mining. that leaves a nearly infinite field for similarly difficult (time consuming) solutions.

an entirely different field would be opened if the other end of the spectrum were similarly blessed: E.g https://blockchain.info/block/fffffffffffffffffson6d19240284ec2224c62871889f9a3f486b4a4b7e952

u/magnora7

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6sz04j/bitcoin_sha256_and_the_nsa/dlgvfwp/

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6sz04j/bitcoin_sha256_and_the_nsa/dlh4ghd/

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6sz04j/bitcoin_sha256_and_the_nsa/dlgv3c6/

I would advance a related theory about the meta-story behind bitcoin: perhaps it's an exploration into the number field to determine if prime patterns can be found in just a small zone. In this scenario, the leading zeros function as a microscope - you only look at one small focal area but if you find any interesting pattern you expect to see if that holds for other zones.

I don't know if that squares well with the double-hashing that also complicates and constrains the bitcoin procedure. Not a mathematician. Perhaps someone with deeper insight would throw in?

I do know that the Prime Number Theory tells us we can know approximately how many primes to expect at every "level" of magnitude, and the Riemann Hypothesis suggests a way to describe why the primes vary from their predicted recurrence (long stretches or shorter than expected stretches between).

If those areas could be clarified, possibly by supplying lots of necessarily empirically-driven data collection, like bitcoin, then perhaps all sorts of outcomes befall, in cryptology as well as other pursuits...

you only look at one small focal area but if you find any interesting pattern you expect to see if that holds for other zones.

Why would looking at only hashes that have leading zeros be more effective than looking at a random sample of hashes?

Discovering a fractal symmetry that drives the occurrence pattern for primes would be my intuitive answer.

Maybe a finding a hash with leading 0s has some special mathematical property?

Bitcoin uses the sha256 algorithm twice which I always thought was a bit strange, but a double application means that you get a list of strings of a fixed length (I.e mod n, for a given n) that map to smaller (in binary terms) strings.

Pure speculation, but maybe these 0 leading mapped hashes could be used for the Sha equivalent of a dictionary attack.

So this means the NSA created bitcoin, but set it up in such a way that other people "mining" bitcoins are actually helping secure/or enhance the encryption. "So when computers mine for bitcoins, they are guessing solutions to that particular block's SHA-256 puzzle", I don't really get digital currencies, but it is beyond obvious that they are the next world currency, not like our current currency is backed by anything, just as this digital currency would likely not be backed by anything, it would just be super secure.

I strongly believe that bitcoins will eventually go to 0 in value. There will eventually be a new currency when the dollar loses faith, and bitcoin isn't the solution.

How safe is SHA-256 against attacks from quantum computers these days?

This is why it's so secure.

Anything that simply disappears with the flip of an internet kill switch is anything BUT secure.

You realize our entire society runs on that internet switch, right?

You might be interested to know that way back in the beginning of Bitcoin I was able to get 2 nodes to communicate between TCP/IP over HAM radio.

Not saying you are wrong, about what you said since I do believe that internet dependence is a boon to mankind. ...But there are other means of transport with TCP/IP

So..bitcoin is a voluntary botnet created by the NSA to crowdsource the necessary keys for information gathering? And all they're missing now is the marketing ploy to make bitcoin easy to "understand and use" for the common man?

I don't know that much about crypto currencies, but how can you prevent a monopoly? If SHA-256 is the preferred encryption method, wouldn't everyone use that, thus creating a monopoly?

I see, thanks.

Buy XMR.

Good post, will use a similar progressiont to explain bitcoing to ym non-tech friends.

Would tweak it a bit though. SHA-256 is not an encryption algorithm, it is a hashing algorithm. Hashing is a one way function, you put data in and what comes out is a 256-bits that mathematically represent that data. But the original data can not be determined from the hash. You may be able to figure out what data was used to generate a hash but you can't be for certain that it was the original data because there are collisions in hashing algorithms.

There are 2²⁵⁶ possible hashes using SHA-256. If I have a 512 bytes of data, that means there are 2⁴⁰⁹⁶ possible combinations 512 bytes of data. If I take the hash of something that has 2⁴⁰⁹⁶ possibilities but can only represent it with 2²⁵⁶ possibilities, there will be collisions and that is why SHA is a hashing algorithm not an encryption algorithm.

Again - Good write up, would just tweak it a bit!

I do think there is government backing because of the relationship of bitcoin to the NSA's SHA-256 algorithm.

No.

The solution you search for is one specific for the block you intend to add, it depends on the transactions you add to the block, as well as on the full history of the blockchain. Miners are not all trying to find the solution to the same problem, they're all looking for a solution to a different problem.

They're also not finding a 'perfect' solution, they search for 'good enough' solutions that have a value below a certain limit. Good enough for bitcoin doesn't mean good enough to decrypt things.

Further, finding a combination of two values that gives you a third, which is all it does, is not at all interesting data, nor is it hard to find. You can perform millions of these calculations very quickly, going through the bitcoin system where all but a very very tiny minority is discarded is pointless. Only if two out of the three values are interesting would there be some kind of point. But they're not. None of the three values are interesting whatsoever outside of the context of bitcoins. The block hash you start with isn't, the value you try to reach isn't and the solution isn't.

Bitcoin mining gets you absolutely nowhere when it comes to hacking anything.

^ this is correct.

Bitcoin mining gets you absolutely nowhere when it comes to hacking anything.

Show me the fucking theorem proving that. And you'd better make sure it was written in Coq or Agda or some other proof assistant so I can actually vaguely trust it.

I can't supply that level of rigor here, if you can for the opposite statement then feel free to supply it.

The problem with the logic of the OP is easy to see though. For bitcoin mining, you supply essentially two variables, the block information including transactions and a value you tweak to get the desired result. The two variables A and B are combined, then the SHA-256 algorithm is applied to get a variable C. This variable C is again put through SHA-256 to get a final variable D. If D < target, you get a hit and have mined a block.

Since any number below the target is accepted, it's a terrible way to find answers if you as a hacker have some hashed value you want to crack. There are essentially three ways in which you can hack things given knowledge about a lot of sha-256 hashes. Either you have a hash D and do a reversal, where you try to find the original value used that was likely used to get a certain hash. Or you have a hash D and do a collision attack by finding two values that produce that same hash. Or you find a way to solve sha-256 to do the other two options better. In all cases, the bitcoin system does next to nothing.

Reversal wise, the bitcoin system could give you the information that some hash C could've been the input used for the answer D, or that A+B results in C. But even if you randomly do have a D sitting around somewhere that was used in the chain, which is extremely unlikely. Then you'll find that both A+B and C are useless pieces of information, they have no relevance outside of bitcoin. They are unlikely to have been the original inputs of whatever hash you're sitting on. There is no benefit here over just hashing millions of values and saving all of their results. That is a way faster method of building a database. By the time you've written the code to read the blockchain data, you could've easily gotten more results with a simple loop.

The same issue is present for the other two techniques. You could do a collision attack using C, if you know that D needs to be reached. But the blockchain produces answers for A+B->C->D so slowly, that again, you're better off just computing millions of hashes yourself. You could try to infer something from the knowledge that A+B->C or C->D, but there's no extra info here over just hashing millions of values yourself.

Indeed, to be fair, the benefit is not literally 0, since collision attacks could be done if you happen to have a hash that has been found in the chain. It would be such a weirdly inefficient way of building a database for that purpose though. One hash every so many minutes? If the blockchain is some magic Sha-256 crowdcomputing hacking scheme, it's an extremely dumb one.

Show me the fucking theorem proving that.

If it were possible to crack SHA by calculating lots of SHA hashes, it wouldn't be effective as a security measure. It would be cracked already. The whole point of a good hash function is that it's resistant to that kind of attack.

Now you might say, what if it's backdoored? Well then, why do you need the bitcoin miners at all?

If it were possible to crack SHA by calculating lots of SHA hashes, it wouldn't be effective as a security measure.

Depends on timescales. No cryptographic security measure except for one time pads can last forever due to the continuous increase of intergrated circuit integration density and hence computational power and/or energy efficiency otherwise known as Moore's law.

It would be cracked already.

...which was what the OP implied...

Now you might say, what if it's backdoored? Well then, why do you need the bitcoin miners at all?

Because perhaps the backdoor relies on said bitcoin miners to keep it as obscured as possible? Backdoors fundamentally rely on security by obscurity, after all.

I do think there is government backing because of the relationship of bitcoin to the NSA's SHA-256 algorithm.

Gonna need some actual evidence for this, there isn't any in your post.

The US government has zero incentive to back any cryptos because of what they see as an inherent protection for criminals that's built into the system. Not to mention the massive cost for adoption. The benefits you claim in your post are massively outweighed by the detriments.

This same protection is simultaneously seen by proponents of cryptos as a big pro - anonymity is good in all things.

There's a reason why major US institutions refuse to adopt cryptos - it's expensive to make these sorts of major sweeping changes, and there are too many things "wrong" with the current state of cryptos to justify the obvious benefits.

You're gonna trust the Guardian here?

They're making a story into something completely different than what it actually is...

The IRS wants the tax revenue, not to legitimize the currency or push for wider adoption. Why would the IRS want more people using a currency that makes it harder to generate taxes from?

You're not thinking about this properly. If you can figure out the location of nodes you can also compile a list of technologically savvy people and figure out who has what computing power that could also be use for a brute force attack on secure government computers while simultaneously incentivizing people to participate in the system under the guise of it being crypto currency in principle which attracts technologically savvy people looking to make money. That way the NSA now has a list with everyone with the intelligence and hardware and expertise that could potentially try and breach their systems and the NSA incentivized people and organizations to do so monetarily. The Chinese have a large stake in bitcoin and Chinese hackers have presented a huge security problem to the NSA.

Trust me when I say that they're an extremely cunning group of people who are all far ahead of their time and are the real masters of the long con.

They had even the earliest ISPs give them backdoor access to all of their data traffic and that was in the 80s and that is why it is so laughable that America was so up in arms about Edward Snowden.

The NSA has super computers large enough to fudge the network and they have been collecting every single piece of raw analog signal on the planet since the early 60s and deciphering it in their basements for a really long time.

I know this is some deep rabbit hole shit but do not underestimate the capabilities of the agency.

I was talking to someone the other day about this. I always figured bitcoin may have been a way to solve real world cryptography problems.

There's an important point here that can be expounded on further. Bitcoin has lead to the creation of a multi-billion dollar SHA 256 ASIC industry - as foreseen by Satoshi Nakamoto. There are also Scrypt ASICs. In fact, cryptocurrencies using a certain algorithm for hashing is the tipping point that allows these ASICs to be created. The concern of backdoors in SHA 256 vs Scrypt because of creator are valid. However, the fact of the matter is that the existence of these cryptocurrencies establish a sort of multi billion dollar bug bounty on cracking or exploiting such exploits. Thanks for the great post - Just my two bits of extrapolation :).

Wasn't the #1 reason to buy bitcoin to get away from central bank controlled currencies, and now as you state the central banks are backing bitcoin so it defeats the entire original purpose.

Honest answer. I get people are making nice profits on bitcoin and are excited to promote it, but the more hedge funds and central banks are buy it, the less I trust it personally.

I'm not a Bitcoin enthusiast but if you're even thinking about exchanging some fiat for crypto, you're going to want to go with ETH.

You hit a lot of good points.

We will definitely see bitcoin replaced with a better version, not once, many times over across human history as our computing technology evolves. Soon SHA-256 will be too simple for our needs. We will need more sophisticated and secure systems to replace it, which will come with new cryptocurrencies. The security of the currency will dictate demand, which will allow for computer scientists to compete for the next best crypto for the consumer, a digital race if you will.

I remember a good visualization of what it takes to guess a sha256 hash (randomly chosen (p@ssword isn't a password podesta)). It was 4 billion to the 8th power.

Something like

• Start with a single computer doing nothing but guessing (4 billion guesses a second)
• Make it as powerful as every computer in the world combined (4 billion total)
• Give said super computer to every male on the planet (4 billion)
• Ensure that all habitable planets in the milky way run the same setup (4 billion inhabitable planets)
• Ensure that all know galaxies run the same setup (4 billion galaxies in known universe)
• Do this for half a trillion years (4 billion seconds squared)

And you would have a 1 in 4 billion chance of guessing correctly.

And yeah, we've got a quarter of a billion pre-guessed solutions... but sha256 is haard.

And even if moors law and quantum computing and all those other words no one really understands... we switch to 512.

sha256 - 1e+77 - 4bil ^ 8 atoms - 1e+123 - 4bil ^ 13 sha512 - 1e+154 - 4bil ^ 16

I really can't imagine we'll need to "up the sha" in my lifetime... but if it happens, I can't imagine we'll have to do it more than once or twice ever. Unless we solve p=np, in which case everything's fucked.

Monero.

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Just follow the breadcrumbs and draw your own conclusions.

Have you presented this conspiracy theory to any Bitcoin forum online or to any cryptographers or mathematicians? I don't know enough about those fields to draw my own conclusions.

2 things. The 10 minute blocktime is a time signature. 1 computer alone can solve it in 10 min, or 10,000.

Sha 256 is not solvable as you describe. There are third party random number variables (transactions) which make it not 'pre-solvable'.

very true. but there are still ways to use cryptocurrencys anonymously

LOL I'm with you on the trusting these new cryptocurrencies. Hella fuck no. This sub, oddly methinks, seems in love with cryptos.