On September 7, Bitcoin Core developer Wladimir van der Laan tweeted that he may be "done with coins" all together. He later confirmed to Cointelegraph that he was indeed taking a break from his duties as a Core developer and one of the custodians of the project’s Github repository. One of the factors that led him to this decision was a Twitter storm that lasted for days and was caused by the renaming of a variable that specifies a list of characters that cannot appear in filenames due to operating system restrictions. Source: Bitcoin Github repository. How could something this …

Bitcoin Core developer Pieter Wuille has migrated from Blockstream to Chaincode Labs. Wuille has been with Blockstream from the beginning, having co-founded the company in 2014. When asked about Wuille's departure, Blocksteam’s CEO Adam Back said: “Pieter’s doing what he always has — working on Bitcoin — and he’s still a Blockstream advisor and continues to collaborate with our research team Andrew Poelstra, Jonas Nick and Tim Ruffing on muSig along with independent researchers and contributors. So I think that means Blockstream contributors on MuSig research roughly going from 4/5th to 3/5th of the people actively working on muSig cryptor.” …

Many crypto heavyweights use Twitter as their primary tool for sharing information (or even misinformation) about their own projects or other interesting subjects. Some of them even consider Twitter engagement their most important performance indicator. We decided to put the Twitter habits of the crypto elite under a microscope to get a better sense of how they actually engage with the popular social media platform. Android, Apple or Web? For our analysis, we picked 13 crypto entrepreneurs (we measured each Winklevoss twin’s habits independently). To make our list, the subjects had to be actively running a crypto business and command …

Ethereum (ETH) creator Vitalik Buterin acknowledged that he both sold and donated away his Ether holdings for fiat when the price was $700. While he did not specify, it seems unlikely that he sold his entire ETH stake — though how much ETH he owns today is currently unknown. Buterin also said that he had not bought any Bitcoin (BTC) since before 2017. Source: Twitter. He mentioned that under his advice, the Ethereum Foundation had also sold its holdings close to the asset’s all-time-high of $1,200. On a previous podcast with Eric Weinstein, he specified that the Foundation had liquidated …

In a Cointelegraph interview, Adam Back provided additional clarity on his perceived Bitcoin (BTC) maximalism. Blockstream’s CEO believes that Bitcoin is enough and there is no need for a multitude of derivative projects. Back said, “I think it's like TCP/IP the internet exists. We don't need 5800 TCP/IP copies trying to monetize and profiteer off pumpanomics or such. It detracts from value (I gather there are about 5,800 altcoins as of today)”. He noted that innovators should focus on Bitcoin instead: “It's modular, you can build anything you want using it, if you're trying to innovate, go ahead and innovate”, …

Adam Back recently took to Twitter with controversial comments on many of the industry’s largest crypto projects — including Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), Ripple (XRP), and Stellar (XML). His tweets placed these projects in the same category as a number of bonafide scams, which he considers to have been orchestrated as “premines”. We interviewed Back in order to clarify his position on the matter, starting with questions of how he feels about Satoshi Nakamoto essentially premining over one million Bitcoin. Back responded that “Bitcoin has no premine”, adding that he considers Patoshi research to be “highly speculative”. However, he agreed …

Computer scientist and Blockstream CEO, Adam Back, has compared Ethereum and other high-cap altcoins to Ponzi schemes in a Twitter tirade today: “Bitconnect, Charles Ponzi, Ethereum, Onecoin, Cardano, Ripple, Bernie Madoff, Stellar, Dan Larmer. All looking very similar grade to me.” Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff are two of the most famous creators of Ponzi-schemes, while Bitconnect and OneCoin are famous cryptocurrency projects that were revealed to be Ponzis. Back likened such schemes to altcoins Ethereum, Ripple and Stellar, along with “Dan Larmer,” presumably a reference to Bitshares and Steem creator Dan Larimer. Back’s swipe came in a dialogue with …

According to Marshall Hayner, an early Bitcoin (BTC) adopter, Adam Back had a beer with Satoshi Nakamoto in London. “Yeah, I met him once” Metal Pay CEO Marshall Hayner told Cointelegraph a story he heard from Back at a party in Los Gatos some years ago. The party was thrown to celebrate the formation of Blockstream and its successful capital raise. Hayner said that he was invited to the party by Austin Hill, who was Blockstream’s CEO at the time. The community was small and closely knit, with only a select few people in attendance. Allegedly, after a few drinks, …

With block #632874, which was mined on June 3, the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain’s expected cumulative work hit a new milestone. According to Blockstream co-founder Pieter Wuille, it has now surpassed 2^92 double-SHA256 hashes, or 4951760157141521099596496896 hashes. Wuille noted that the previous milestone — 2^91 hashes — was secured in August 2019, also revealing the current rate: “These days we add 2^57 hashes - as much work as was done ever by november 2010 - every 1.3 milliseconds on average…” Crypto pioneer Adam Back — who was cited in the original white paper — retweeted Wuille’s findings, calling blockchain “a new …

Blockstream’s Adam Back says that unlimited money printing will drive retail investors toward Bitcoin and push the price to $300,000 within five years. In an interview with Bloomberg — in which he once again denied he was Bitcoin (BTC) creator Satoshi Nakamoto — Back outlined his thinking behind the sky-high price prediction. The cypherpunk OG — who was cited in the Bitcoin white paper — added that BTC may not need the long-awaited flood of institutional money to push it into a bull run. “It might not require additional institutional adoption because the current environment is causing more individuals to …

According to an early Bitcoin (BTC) developer, Satoshi Nakamoto sought help from outside cryptographers prior to launching Bitcoin. Laszlo Hanyecz, who worked closely with Satsohi in 2010, told Cointelegraph that he was befuddled by Satoshi’s choice of the elliptic curve secp256k1. The use of this curve, at the time, was unusual. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) curves were much more common. Many Bitcoin enthusiasts over the years have been speculating as to whether this is luck or genius, as the curve chosen by Satoshi is more efficient and also makes any backdoor less likely. “I had a bunch …

In a recent Cointelgraph interview, Ethereum co-founder and Cardano founder Charles Hoskinon said that he believes that Adam Back “checks all the boxes” as a Satoshi Nakamoto candidate. The puzzle of Satoshi’s true identity never seems to get old. Although Hoskinson admits that he does not have any hard evidence connecting the Blockstream’s founder to the pseudonymous Bitcoin creator, he did make a mental profile of Satoshi — Back seemingly has a perfect fit. Hoskinson believes that Satoshi was somebody, who lived either in Western Europe of the coastal United States, was comfortable with British English, and had a background …