Two VERY important events for #Bitcoin coming up: The next block The next halving Everything else is just noise. Good night, Nostr! 😴

GOOD MORNING NOSTR, STAY HUMBLE AND STACK SATS 🫡

LOL https://shop.btcpp.dev

You know what’s as scarce as #Bitcoin? Knowledge. 💡 So… shhh 🤫 Don’t spread it.

@npub1cn4t...3vle says, “Anyone who truly understands #bitcoin doesn’t just allocate 1% of their portfolio as a hedge.” “For those who get it, bitcoin is the entire portfolio.”

Website that gave 5 bitcoins to each visitor will be revived by investor. Charlie Shrem, founder of the #Bitcoin Foundation, announced this Sunday (4) that he will be reviving the first Bitcoin “faucet” in history. Originally created by Gavin Andresen, the site gave 5 bitcoins to each visitor back in 2010.

Using #Bitcoin via the Lightning Network to pay at SPAR, a European grocery chain 🇨🇭

@npub1cj94...0efa explains how US Treasury Bonds are not strong collateral for borrowing against. Sell Bonds. Buy #Bitcoin

GOOD MORNING NOSTR, STAY HUMBLE AND STACK SATS 🫡

The OP_RETURN drama just shows how MANY people don’t understand the basics of how #Bitcoin works. Spoiler: you can’t stop arbitrary data storage on the timechain. Trying to do so might even make things worse. Some people are saying it's possible to "filter" spam in the mempool. Wrong. That’s unfeasible. Anyone saying that is either misinformed or acting in bad faith. The mempool is just local policy. Who really decides what goes into a block are the miners. Many blindly believe influencers without understanding the fundamentals: #Bitcoin is a decentralized database designed to store data. Financial transactions are one type of data — not the only one. "But shouldn’t we prioritize financial transactions?" Yes. "But can we stop arbitrary data from going into the timechain?" No. "Are there good reasons to store arbitrary data on #Bitcoin?" Absolutely. L2s and scalability solutions depend on on-chain proofs. That’s just data storage. It doesn’t matter what your node accepts or not — miners are incentivized to include these transactions and profit from them. Financial incentives are what drive the system. Period. If you try to become a “Bitcoin™ Defender” by running software with crazy filters... Guess what? The transactions go straight to the miners (with extra fees) Small miners get left behind Mining centralizes People will hide the data using steganography (and you won’t even notice) Even worse: it discourages developers. Few people work full-time on #Bitcoin already. Imagine having to deal with drama and FUD just to propose a basic PR? Fewer devs = slower progress = more risk = weaker #Bitcoin. "But what about spam?" #Bitcoin already has a built-in antispam: fees. Don’t want to see JPEGs or zk-proofs? Use real #Bitcoin: spend, self-custody, join the circular economy. You know why “spam” increased so much? Because most people stopped using #Bitcoin on-chain. Today it’s all custodians: Strike, Wallet of Satoshi, Liquid… Less usage = more free space = more arbitrary data on the timechain. Want to fix it? More real usage → more demand for block space → higher fees → less incentive to use Bitcoin as storage. Simple. And effective. Want to “save #Bitcoin”? It’s not through filtering, censorship, or hysteria. It’s through real usage, open source, economic incentives, and freedom. #Bitcoin is neutral. And that’s a good thing.

"Anybody who has zero #Bitcoin is really missing the most asymmetric bet that I have ever seen." — @npub1d3f4...r4xv

The 80-byte limit on OP\_RETURN is just a Bitcoin Core policy — not a consensus rule. In theory, there has never been a hardcoded limit on the timechain. In practice, most nodes follow the 80-byte standard. Removing the limit doesn’t cause a hard fork. It’s just a relay policy.

GOOD MORNING NOSTR, STAY HUMBLE AND STACK SATS 🫡

In 2015, an eccentric millionaire placed bitcoins in weak addresses. For years, the prize has been contested by bots, GPUs, and in the future, it is expected to be the first target of quantum attacks. The individual's goal was to monitor the advancement of computational power capable of breaking Bitcoin keys. These keys have up to 256 bits of entropy, which can be understood as the difficulty of discovering them. They are simply large numbers, on the order of 2²⁵⁶. He then created 160 addresses, each with fewer bits of difficulty, from 1 to 160, and placed a few satoshis in each one, doubling the amount in the next. The total prize reached nearly 1,000 BTC. There are still 916 BTC left to be claimed.

The Mempool Open Source Project®

Explore the full Bitcoin ecosystem with The Mempool Open Source Project®. See the real-time status of your transactions, get network info, and more.

The first few dozen addresses were quickly looted. There are bots monitoring the blockchain and stealing UTXOs that have some vulnerability — such as low entropy in the generation of the private key.

The Mempool Open Source Project®

Explore the full Bitcoin ecosystem with The Mempool Open Source Project®. See the real-time status of your transactions, get network info, and more.

It was only at the end of 2015 that one of the owners of these bots noticed that the source of the bitcoins all came from a single transaction. He decided to share the discovery on the Bitcointalk forum, and that’s when more people began competing for the remaining prizes.

Bitcoin puzzle transaction ~32 BTC prize to who solves it

Bitcoin puzzle transaction ~32 BTC prize to who solves it

In 2019, the creator exposed the public keys of some addresses (those with indexes ending in 0 or 5). This is done simply by moving the coins—the key appears in the transaction. With it, other methods can be used, making it easier to crack.

The Mempool Open Source Project®

Explore the full Bitcoin ecosystem with The Mempool Open Source Project®. See the real-time status of your transactions, get network info, and more.

One of these methods is a very old algorithm from 1978: Pollard's Kangaroo Algorithm — a clever trick used to find private keys when part of the keyspace is known. Imagine two kangaroos jumping across a number line, one tame and one wild, eventually landing on the same spot. It’s a classic in cryptography, and now it's being used to chase Bitcoin prizes. Since then, several programs and even participant "pools" have emerged, all trying to crack the next address. "kowala24731" secured an investment in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent GPUs and managed to break addresses #67 and #68 in early April. Yesterday, someone, probably a beginner, cracked address #69 but didn’t secure the spending properly and exposed the public key. In a few seconds, some bots cracked the key and replaced the transaction, battling for the balance. The last one paid a total fee of 1.2M sats.

The Mempool Open Source Project®

Explore the full Bitcoin ecosystem with The Mempool Open Source Project®. See the real-time status of your transactions, get network info, and more.

The time to crack these addresses — discovering the private key from the public key — is quite short. A GPU can do it in less than a minute. That’s why those who crack the keys can't publish it to the network; they must send it directly to a miner to include it in a block (like Mara). Among the addresses with exposed public keys, the record was 130 bits of entropy, set by "RetiredCoder," who also cracked other keys. These addresses are likely serving as "canaries in the coal mine" for the attacks Bitcoin may face. As long as there are still hundreds of BTCs sitting in them, yours should be safe.

“At the end of the day, no matter what they say, their only answer is to keep printing money.” — @npub1cn4t...3vle Choose freedom. Opt out with #Bitcoin.