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Nick Smart was recently interviewed on the In Early podcast hosted by Matt Green, Blockchain Litigation Lead at Shoosmiths. Smart gave his views on Bitcoin as a technology, as well as some of the legal issues surroundingDr. Craig Wright, Tulip Trading vs. BTC Core developers, and more.

Bitcoin fundamentals

The interview begins with Green asking Smart for anoverview of Bitcoin. He characterizes it as a digital currency secured by cryptography. More specifically, it is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.

Moving on to proof-of-work, Smart explains that its a way of securing the Bitcoin network. It helps confirm that Nick sent Matt a transaction. Computers solve a math puzzle, and whoever wins builds the next block, so they get to say what the correct version of events is. They also get a reward (the block subsidy) and any transaction fees in the block. Proof of work helps keep the Bitcoin network safe and secure, and you need more than 50% of the hash power to attack it. Readers interested in a more in-depth look at proof of work canread this article.

Tulip Trading vs. Bitcoin Association for BSV & Ors

After the initial explanation about Bitcoin, Green pivots to one of the legal cases surrounding Dr. Wright. He asks Smart who the claimant is and what his claim is.

Smart explains that the claimant is Dr. Craig Wright. Hes a computer scientist and businessman who claims to be Bitcoins inventor (he is). Dr. Wright faces much opposition within the cryptocurrency industry, and some do not believe him, he says. Is he reallySatoshi? Smart says nobody can know for sure as there is no conclusive evidence, but regular CoinGeek readers know there is plenty of evidence, and Dr. Wright won aFlorida court casenaming him Bitcoins sole inventor.

What is his claim in theTulip Trading case? Smart explains that Tulip Trading owns a vast swathe of Bitcoins, but there was a sophisticated hack on his home network, and private keys to assets worth $3 billion were stolen from encrypted and protected files on Dr. Wrights computer network. He discovered the hack when looking at other transactions, but the attacker had deleted his logs, taken the private keys, and stole some other information.

Dr. Wright wiped the hard drive without taking digital images of it, which could have provided forensic evidence of the attack. Smart admits we are all capable of acting emotionally in the moment, but he thinks the preservation of that evidence could have helped Dr. Wrights case a lot. However, the attacker is in a strange position whereby they cant move the stolen funds as it would be immediately noticeable.

While all of the details will become clear as the case goes on, essentially, the hack has deprived Dr. Wright of his assets and their private keys. Smart points out something important here: the case does not rest on Dr. Wright proving he had control of specific private keys. Rather, it rests on him proving he had control of these Bitcoins at any point in time.

What does Dr. Wright want developers to do? He wants them to write a patch that would enable Tulip Trading to regain control of the assets.

Smart points out that while there is much grumbling about this in the cryptocurrency space, there is precedent. When the Ethereum DAO was hacked, developers applied a patch and recovered stolen Ethereum. Previous bugs in BTC were also patched. Therefore, Dr. Wright is asking for something that is technically possible.

However, somedevelopersmight not want to do this and may be legally compelled to do so. Is such a legal order enforceable internationally? Smart doesnt know, but he does acknowledge that it could create another hard fork in the BTC network. For now, the defendants are claiming that miners would ignore any proposal they make, but time will tell if thats so.

So, it can be done, but should it?

The interview then strays into more moral/philosophical territory. Green poses the question of whether something should be done just because it can be done.

Smart recognizes that the assets in the identified wallets are worth billions, and applying a patch may cause them to lose significant value if many people decide to sell once it is applied.

Furthermore, in some peoples view, Tulip Tradings request goes against the spirit of Bitcoin, Smart says. Of course, Dr. Wright would disagree, saying that being able to recover stolen property is perfectly in alignment withwhat Bitcoin is about, even if others have misunderstood it.

Whether people like Dr. Wright or not, a lot of what he says makes sense, and whether this should be done depends on whether he can prove he is the rightful owner of the assets, Smart concludes.

Looking at the potentialimplications of the case, Smart acknowledges they will be huge no matter what way it goes. As someone involved in digital asset recovery, he was to know what the standard of evidence for proving you own something is. He also notes that if Dr. Wright is successful, it will have implications for other situations in the industry: e.g., the victims of theQuadrigaCX scamand other crimes may attempt to recover their digital assets by the same means.

Ultimately, there are still many unanswered questions, and this case should help answer some of them. Who is responsible for what? Which jurisdiction will have supremacy over legal orders? Are they enforceable internationally? What happens if some developers refuse to comply while others dont? These questions all have to be answered, and they could even have implications beyond the blockchain space.

To learn more about the Tulip Trading legal action and its implications, read CoinGeeks latest piece on how the conversation is starting to charge around the legal duties for blockchain developers.

Watch Ian Grigg: How I learnt the full story of Satoshi Nakamoto

New to blockchain? Check out CoinGeeks Blockchain for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about blockchain technology.

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'In Early' Podcast talks to Nick Smart about Bitcoin, Dr. Craig Wright ... - CoinGeek

Crypto enthusiasts think investing in crypto right now is like buying the internet in 1996, a massive comparison to the nascent technology. Manhattan is believed to be one of the prime properties; people are spending billions for a piece of land. Imagine if someone had bought the whole island when there was nothing; he would now be the richest man.

Satoshi Nakamoto released the white paper for Bitcoin on January 3, 2009, and the world changed foreverthe people who have invested and held on to their investments since are among the richest now. To better understand how investing in crypto is related to buying the internet, one must consider the era of the mid-1990s.

Facebook (Meta) will arrive after eight years, Apple Inc. is on the verge of bankruptcy, Microsoft is still the king of desktop operating systems, Amazon is a tiny online book store, Netflix has just started a mail-order DVD rental service, and Google is only a research project at Stanford University. Everyone knows where these giants are now, changing the face of technology and getting rich simultaneously.

Crypto is believed to be increasing, giving less time for the advisors to react. Lack of regulatory infrastructure, events like FTX-saga, crypto winter, and Terra ecosystem collapse, along with numerous hacks, exploits, and frauds. These scenarios have dwindled the faith of retail investors, and only high-net-worth individuals or those who are crazy enough to hold on are bullish on crypto.

With the world economy going through its most problematic phase in decades, crypto is a viable option. The main goal behind the emergence of cryptocurrency was to provide an alternative financial system, remove the intermediaries from the equation, and pass the power to the masses. The crypto industry faced its fair share of criticism but is now garnering interest from almost every sector of society.

A tech investor in 1990 would have had Netscape, Lycos, Excite, Microsoft, etc., in the portfolio. But since most are no longer functional, the investment went down the drain. It took years for Google to surpass Microsofts market capital. Currently, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google (Alphabet) or FAANG stocks are believed to be the best for the long term.

Instead of investing in either of the companies, investors would have bought the internet protocol. The base layer on which these companies operate would make the investor immensely powerful if preowned by a person. The companies would either buy the protocol or pay hefty rent to use the technology.

Similarly, investing in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum would be like investing in internet protocols like TCP/IP and HTTP. These internet standards are considered lower-level standards that facilitate secure data transmission across the internet. Also, they serve as the foundation for complex applications at higher levels.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are similar to these protocols. Even if they are Layer-1 solutions facilitating fund transfer across the network. But they also serve as the foundation for building complex protocols, decentralized applications (dApps), smart contracts, etc.

When the demand for these higher-level complex applications increased with the advancement of the internet, the base layers became extremely valuable and essential. Similarly, with ongoing advancement in the crypto industry, Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchain serve as foundations for current and future applications. Their value might gain immensely in the future.

The protocol standard of Bitcoin and Ethereum would serve as a building block for future applications. Experts argue that Bitcoin might not allow such development, but a similar thing was said for TCP/IP or HTTP at the beginning.

In 1994, the internet was weird and scary; only enthusiastic and tech-savvy people were excited about it. The same is the current scenario for Bitcoin; its weird and scary, and only a select number of people are excited. Since the 1990s, many internet companies have vanished, and only the strongest survived the dot-com bubble bust. Similarly, only select have survived the crypto winter, and they might soon be more than what people believe them to be.

Steve Anderson is an Australian crypto enthusiast. He is a specialist in management and trading for over 5 years. Steve has worked as a crypto trader, he loves learning about decentralisation, understanding the true potential of the blockchain.

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Is Buying Bitcoin, ETH Now Akin to Buying Internet in the 1990s? - The Coin Republic

And while Canadian authorities moved against this funding source with the same alacrity and hammer-like intensity they displayed with the dollar-denominated fundraising sites, St. Louis was far more successful in distributing the money he raised to its intended recipients. According to the Rouleau Report, he managed to distribute 14.6 Bitcoin, or approximately $800,000, to the truckers. The remaining 6.7 Bitcoin, or less than $300,000, was eventually seized by police. (Note how the bulk of the left-hand orange line flows into the blue Available to protestors line on the charts right side.)

As a recent documentary by the Reason Foundation explains, Financial censorship, or cutting off access to the global banking system, is one of the most powerful tools that governments have for punishing people. The actions of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau governments during the convoy certainly meet the definition of financial censorship. Virtually anyone who tried to make a donation in Canadian legal tender via electronic means found their efforts ultimately stymied. At the same time, St. Louis experience with Bitcoin suggests that cryptocurrencies may offer far greater personal privacy and, accordingly, stronger resistance to interference by third parties including governments intent on exercising politically motivated financial censorship.

Here is what you need to know about how it happened. And why Ottawa wants to make sure it never happens again.

Bitcoin for Beginners

The worlds first cryptocurrency was created by an unknown person or group under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party, Satoshi wrote in the seminal document Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.

Bitcoin and newer cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Litecoin or Dogecoin rely on a foundational technology called blockchain. This is effectively a digital ledger, similar to the records of a banking statement, that allows a digital currency to fulfill the role of traditional money by acting as a unit of exchange. The necessary security is provided through advanced encryption conversion of all data from a readable into an encoded form hence the crypto in cryptocurrencies.

Blockchain has two key features. First, unlike traditional centralized databases, it exists on many computers, or nodes, around the globe. In this way it cannot be shut down; no single entity has control over it. Second, it is immutable. Every time a transaction occurs, it is recorded in an ever-lengthening chain of information blocks that cannot be tampered with. This chaining is done through a consensus mechanism, which verifies the validity and security of any transaction. Unlike traditional currencies issued by governments, the consensus mechanism operates without the need for a trusted intermediary, such as a bank, to oversee the process.

Since Bitcoins are electronic, they can reside in a trading platform similar to how stocks and bonds are bought and sold. They can also be held in a crypto wallet. A crypto wallet is simply a place that holds the private digital key (similar to a login ID and password) necessary to access and manage a users cryptocurrency. While this wallet can be digital, it can also be as rudimentary as a piece of paper printed with the key, or a seed phrase 25 random words that can be used to recover the key. A wallet can also be a special physical device with sophisticated tamper-proof security features, or a digital application (either online or locally installed) that holds the key and is used to interact with the cryptocurrency.

Another important aspect of cryptocurrencies is how they are created. Bitcoins are mined rather than minted or printed. Bitcoin miners compete with each other to solve the complex cryptography problems required to maintain the consensus mechanism, and are rewarded for their effort with new Bitcoin. Anyone can become a miner, as long as he or she has the necessary computer hardware and a data centre with a sufficiently robust air conditioning system to deal with the heat generated by all that computing effort. Financial success in mining thus becomes a race between the Bitcoin the miner earns and their electricity bill.

How to Seize Crypto Simple and Advanced Techniques

If you hold your Bitcoin in a trading platform or online application wallet, your wallet is technically controlled by the third party that manages that platform or app. This unfortunately means a government can issue an order that the funds be blocked or transferred to another, government-controlled wallet address. In this sense, Bitcoin is no different from funds held in ordinary bank accounts or on the crowdfunding platforms Ottawa froze during last years imposition of the Emergencies Act.

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The Promises and Pitfalls of Bitcoin, and the Looming Threat of a ... - C2C Journal

Two Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs), 300 and 301, have overtaken the conversation in the Bitcoin community. Altogether known as Drivechain, these proposals would activate peer-to-peer trustless pegs between Bitcoin and up to 256 side blockchains (sidechains).

Prior to August, a tracker of tweets containing the word Drivechain averaged less than a half dozen results per day. Nowadays, there are suddenly thousands of daily tweets about Drivechain.

Sidechains using BIPs 300-301 are funded with BTC and withdrawable into BTC, yet they are entirely separate blockchains with independent rules, operations, and tokens. If the Bitcoin community were to activate these Drivechain BIPs, there could be up to 256 distinct sidechains, each denominated in BTC.

Each sidechain could operate any type of blockchain, including copies of existing ones or brand new ones. Indeed, there are already testnet versions of popular blockchains. For example, there are Monero and zCash sidechains in the Drivechain testnet.

Long-time Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr recently rebased Drivechains years-old code and submitted a formal pull request (PR) to Bitcoin developers. It remains a contentious, miner-activated soft fork proposal. Drivechain has failed to attract consensus for activation across the Bitcoin network for years. There is no proposed code for activation nor a Bitcoin Core software client that would support Drivechain in the near future.

The author of the BIPs, Paul Sztorc, has been working on Drivechain since 2015 when he proposed a whitepaper for Truthcoin, a Drivechain-powered prediction marketplace with two tokens, BTC-pegged CashCoins and speculatively-priced VoteCoins. Its worth noting that neither Truthcoin nor its tokens exist on any mainnets.

Sztorc formally proposed BIP 300 in 2017 and BIP 301 in 2019 to the formal Bitcoin devlist. Hes been promoting Drivechain ever since, and founded a company to promote it, called LayerTwo Labs, which raised $3 million in December.

LayerTwo Labs says the benefits of Drivechains include support for Turing-complete smart contracts, stablecoins, privacy features, low-fee payments, DeFi, and asset tokenization.

Drivechain would allow up to millions of altcoins with variable prices to vie for their sidechains BTC backing. For example, a Drivechain clone of BNB Chain on would allow millions of Drivechain-cloned BEP20 tokens to trade among speculators vying for a share of the BTC committed to the sidechain.

More conservative sidechains might choose to use only a single, BTC-pegged token. Others might choose to enable millions of speculative tokens. Again, each sidechain chooses its own operating rules.

If Bitcoin were to activate Drivechain, each sidechain would have to first attract 90% of the hashrate during the activation period in order to secure one of Drivechains 256 slots. Thereafter, the operators of the sidechain would have to attract mainchain BTC contributions in order to grow the value of their sidechain.

Read more: Bitcoiners respond to Mike Greens scarcity destroys value critique

Depositing into a sidechain is a quick, straightforward process. Deposits are easy because anyone can send BTC from a personal, single-signature wallet into a Drivechain wallet. Simple.

Withdrawing from a sidechain, however, could take as long as six months. Specifically, withdrawal finality requires at least 13,150 miner-upvoted blocks within 26,300 continuous Bitcoin blocks.

This lengthy, cumbersome process is purposeful, according to Sztorc. Withdrawals from a sidechain initiate from Drivechains anyone-can-spend wallets and require at least three months of cooperation by miners in order to settle those funds with finality back into the Bitcoin network. This long period of cooperation reduces the risk of transaction reversal, double-spending, and theft to near-zero.

A few years after its 2015 introduction, Sztorc changed the name of his peer-to-peer prediction marketplace proposal Truthcoin to Hivemind. He proposed a way to make cheap talk expensive through monetary wagers on real-world events.

Of course, there already are various forms of prediction markets, including PredictIt, Augur, and Polymarket. Hiveminds differentiated value proposition is its alleged unstoppability due to its Bitcoin-operated sidechain.

Truthcoins rebranding sparked yet another debate about Bitcoin sidechains. Some supporters say Satoshi Nakamoto first supported the idea of sidechains. Specifically, Satoshi suggested the idea of merge-mined blockchains that could coexist alongside Bitcoin, share mining power, and experiment with new features. Satoshi mentioned BitDNS as an example, an idea that became Namecoin, which still operates today. Vitalik Buterin ported Namecoin onto Ethereum with some modifications like the Ethereum Name Service (ENS).

However, Satoshi seems to have said very little about sending BTC back and forth between mainchain and sidechain, as Truthcoin developer Paul Sztorc proposed when he introduced BIP 300 in 2015.

BIP 300 and drivechains drew some early support from celebrities in the Bitcoin community like Roger Ver. Ver invested in the Truthcoin project in 2015. Their reasoning implies that sidechains could have at least partially solved the big block issue that caused the Bitcoin War of 2017.

Read more: Blockchain dev says DAOs dont work, elected leaders are the answer

Observers like Digital Cash Network and Human Events writer Joel Valenzuela opined that the current Bitcoin community had a bad habit of rejecting win/win solutions like Drivechains and accepting increasingly centralized and custodial solutions like Lightning Network.

Others call sidechains an unnecessary distraction, citing work on two-way pegged (albeit federated and non-peer-to-peer) sidechains like Liquid or Rootstock.

Skeptics also questioned the long-term fee model for sidechains, questioning why miners would not just steal the sidechains BTC backing outright.

Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr said the funds on a drivechain would technically belong to the drivechain miners, who could ignore the rules without a legal, contractual obligation to preserve the BTC for their real owners in the sidechain. He said the ability of miners to steal BTC from sidechains makes Drivechain different from protocols like the Blockstream-led Liquid. Blockstream selects Liquid functionaries, who sign literal contracts promising to follow functionary rules.

However, Sztorc countered that fees from operating reliable sidechains earning transaction fees for the long-term would benefit miners without them having to forcefully steal the sidechains BTC backing.

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Explained: How Drivechain captured the attention of the Bitcoin ... - Protos

1. Why do professional women over 50 suddenly leave their jobs? Based on research from Dr Lucy Ryans 5-year PhD journey, Revolting Women explores the reasons behind outdated attitudes and assumptions about midlife women and provides advice on how corporations can retain this wise and ambitious talent pool.

2. Corporate leader James Fielding takes us on an inspiring leadership journey in All Pride, No Ego: A Queer Executive's Journey to Living and Leading Authentically. The book encourages leaders to own their truth not just for themselves, but for their communities. Fielding highlights his own leadership style, analyses the successes and failures that have informed his rise up the corporate ladder and provides strategies for employing servant leadership.

3. Continuing the theme of inspiring leaders, Sally Percy details the trials and tribulations of some of the most iconic current leaders in 21st Century Business Icons: The Leaders Who are Changing Our World. From Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to Bitcoins Satoshi Nakamoto, each chapter uncovers the secret to their success.

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Back to school book roundup - Management Today