Archive for the ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ Category

The conversation is starting to change around legal duties for … – CoinGeek

When Tulip Trading first took legal action against a group of blockchain developers, arguing that they owe legal duties to their users that compel them to restore access to lost or stolen coins, much of the initial industry reaction was disbelief or even anger. To a certain (now shrinking) group of digital asset enthusiasts who have all bought into the idea that their industry exists outside the ambit of the law,Tulip Tradings suggestioncould only be seen as a non-starter.

But times are changing. Not only did Tulip Tradings lawsuit go on to getrubber-stamped by the U.K. Court of Appealas having a real prospect of success, but regulators around the world are starting to catch up to Tulips line of thinking, which is that blockchain developmentsuch as for BTCis not decentralized, as in fact managed by a tightly controlled group of developers with the exclusive power to make changes to their networks. This centralized power has caught the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which considers centralized power to be a crucial factor indetermining whether a digital asset is a security. According to Tulip Trading and others, such centralization also makes those developers fiduciaries, meaning they owe long-standing legal duties to their users.

A demonstration of this changing narrative comes from a recent episodeIn Early The Crypto Podcast,presented by law firm Shoosmiths and their Blockchain Litigation Lead Matt Green. Back in March, the podcast hosted Nick Smart, associate director for blockchain intelligence at Crystal Blockchain Analytics, to discuss theTulip Tradingcaseand its potential impact on the digital asset industry.

Green and Smarts analysis of the case misses the mark in some respects, but far from the kind of spin you get from the Legal Defence Fund (which is supporting the defendants inTulip), they provide an honest take on the case and why success for Tulip might be more likely than most have assumed.

A few early points of clarity

At the top of the conversation, Green frames his questioning about the case as a conversation about whether the claimants case should go ahead based on the facts. It should be mentioned up front that this case is inarguably going ahead: it has been reviewed by the U.K. High Court and approved by the Court of Appeal, and a three-judge panel decided that the claim had sufficient merit to proceed to trial.

Smart also gets a little careless with the parties names in the case: the claimant is not Dr. Craig Wright but a company he controls called Tulip Trading Limited. It was that companys property that was stolen, and it is that company that is making the claim.

Nonetheless, the hosts recognize that there has been a lot of noise around this case by detractors of Dr. Wright. At one point, Smart remarks on the vocal opposition to Dr. Wright

Could he be one of the group that wereSatoshi Nakamoto? If Satoshi was a group of coders that made this, could he be one of the group? I think possibly- he was around. Could he be an early adopter of the technology? He also could be an early adopter, which I think could be the case.

Lots of accusations get put around him by his detractors that hes not intelligent. Hes a very clever man, and we cant take that away from him.

Claim: You cant own Bitcoin. FALSE

Another point of confusion on the part of Smart isownership of Bitcoin. When explaining that it was Dr. Wrights private keys that were destroyed in the hack, he mentions that the key doesnt give you the Bitcoins because no one really owns them.

In fact, this is one of the points that the Tulip Trading case was praised in the U.K. Law Commissions 2023 report on digital asset law. There, it was said that one of the certainties the case had brought to the law even at this early stage was that it recognizes that crypto-tokens can be things to which personal property rights can relate, that they can be rivalrous and that their characteristics are manifested by the active operation of software.

Its an elementary point for those outside the industry (and many inside of it, too). All the legal rights that apply in any other contextlike property rightsapply to digital assets. Legal precedent may need to be set to tease out precisely how preexisting law should apply. Tulip Trading has demonstrated this as far as property rights in digital assets go, but this principle should be kept in mind any time somebody tries to argue that the industry somehow exists outside the law.

Claim: The case is an attack on open-source. FALSE

The hosts make another critical mistake by saying that the Tulip Trading case is aboutopen-source software. It isnt: the term open source doesnt appear anywhere in Tulip Tradings initial lawsuit or in the High Court andCourt of Appeal judgments.

The case is solely focused on thelegal duties owed by blockchain developers to their users. If any open source project is affected by this lawsuit, its because that project happens to fit the description of the Tulip Trading defendants.

Theres no need to guess where the hosts got this idea. Jack Dorseys Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund has been pushing this narrative for months. For instance, LDF lawyer Jessica Jonas appeared at the Bitcoin 2023 event in Miami and said the case was about whether open source developers should owe a fiduciary duty to people who use their code.

This is a lie. The case explicitly concerns blockchain developers, irrespective of whether their development is open source or not. Compare Jonas language to that used by the court of appeal to describe the case:

The question in this appeal is whether the developers who look after bitcoin may arguably owe fiduciary duties or duties in tort to an owner of that cryptocurrency, wrote Lord Justice Birss in delivering the unanimous opinion of the court.

That is what the case is about: nothing more, nothing less.

Bold as the LDFs lies are, its easy to see why the LDF and the developer defendants try so hard to reframe the case in this way. As shown by theEarly In Cryptodiscussion, the proposition at the core of Tulip Tradings case isnt outlandish or unreasonable. Who could disagree that owners of digital assets need some avenue for redress if those assets get stolen? So the Legal Defense Fund cynically tries to engage the sympathies of the much larger open source community, hoping they can be convinced that open source development is under attack and needs defendingand by the way, wont you donate to the Legal Defense Fund to help?

Should blockchain developers owe legal duties?

The open-source issue is, therefore, a convenient distraction for the developers and their backers.

In reality,Tulip Tradingis set to determine a legal issue that is key to the development of digital asset law: Are blockchain developers fiduciaries with respect to those using and relying on them?

Smart recognizes that this might seem like an enormous departure from the status quo within the digital asset industry. But as Smart indicates, the law of fiduciariesisthe status quoand the suggestion that it should apply to blockchain developers is not an outrageous one.

I sometimes feel that cryptocurrency or cryptoassets generally have this idea of financial Dawinism, [which is] If you lose your money to a hack or a scam, well you werent cut out for this life in the first place. Which is lovely, but what if its your fund manager with your pension? I think you might have a different opinion.

And to Smart, the case for what Tulip Trading advocates is clear. Its also necessary for the continued survival of the industry:

Deep down, if anyone is a victim of crime, they want a policeman. They want to have justice. I think for the industry as it rapidly matures in the wake of ongoing scandals, its important that we do think about consumer protection If you want your product to be taken seriously and you want it to be the future of currency and everything else, you do need to think about these things.

Claim: The case is about the centralization of blockchain development. TRUE

At its core, the Tulip Trading case is about themyth of decentralizationin digital asset projects such as BTC. Fiduciary duties exist in situations where a person has undertaken to act on behalf of another in circumstances that give rise to a relationship of trust and confidenceoften as a result of somebody entrusting property to them. One of the most prominent objections to applying these duties to blockchain developers is to say that they are an unfixed, fluctuating group of volunteers who act more as passive stewards of theirblockchainsthan active managers and developers. In that vein, they are often referred to as decentralized. As a result, blockchain users cant be said to have entrusted anything to the developers, nor are of sufficient proximity to them, to qualify for either duty.

Right in time, this illusion is beginning to lift, despite what BTCs supporters would say. The SEC is closely examining the centralization of digital asset projects and has made that question the central part of itsHoweyanalysis to determine which assets are securities offerings and which are not. Earlier this year, The New York Attorney Generaltook action against an ETH-based digital asset on the same basis.

Both Green and Smart recognized the existence of this myth. Green read from a February Wall Street Journal article titled Bitcoins Future Depends on a Handful of Mysterious Coders:

Known as maintainers, coders serve as stewards of Bitcoin Core, an open program that keeps the cryptocurrencys digital ledger up to date with thousands of computers that make its network. Bitcoins current worth and future potential rest partly in the hands of Bitcoin Core maintainers: a group who are chosen by their peers and often vague about their whereabouts.

A loose network of donors pay most maintainers salaries. At least once, the maintainers secretly patched a bug that crypto proponents say could have destroyed the cryptocurrencys value.

Smart says he doesnt know how much that description fits with Tulip Tradings argument. The truth is it fits perfectly. Tulip Tradings lawsuit has identified these factors as clear demonstrations of the centralized control sitting atop all things to do with BTC, namely, that BTCs success depends on the work of a small number of identifiable individuals (which, incidentally, sounds a lot like aHowey test factor, doesnt it?); that these individuals are paid for their work; and that these individuals regularly exercise their power to make changes to the network, even surreptitiously (which should destroy any argument that these individuals are merely effecting the democratic will of the community).

In other words, BTC blockchain development is highly centralized. How else can the continuous, drastic, and even covert tinkering with the underlying protocol be explained?

Claim: Tulip Tradings requests are impossible. FALSE

Tulip Trading is ultimately asking that the court order the developers to restore access to the private keys, such as via a patch.

The crucial point missed by the hosts is that Tulip Trading is not asking for the blockchain to be rewritten in any way. All that is proposed is that a new transaction is added to the blockchain, which appends the previous illicit transaction: the earlier transactions remain transparent and auditable, as do the steps taken to undo them. The integrity of the blockchain, therefore, is unaffected.

Nonetheless, the developers have focused much of their defense on arguing that the relief asked for by Tulip Trading is impossible.

However, history shows that such a patch is feasible or even trivial:Bitcoin originally even had such functionality nativelybefore BTC developers stripped it out. Bitcoin Association for BSV, which was one of the initial defendants targeted by Tulip Trading,has already demonstrated this: they settled the case early on, agreeing to make the changes requested by Tulip Trading. As such, a preview of how Tulip Tradings proposal might work is already available.

But as Smart points out, there is precedent even beyond that.

In 2016, the Ethereum DAO was hacked. And lots of Ethereum was stolen, and basically the developers of Ethereum united and said were going to apply a patch which reverses the change that the money was stolen.

So, generally speaking, what hes asking for isnt beyond the realms of the possible.

Smart points out that a potential difference is that such a patch depends on consensus, but thats more or less Tulip Tradings core point. Changes to Ethereum were supposedly based on consensus, and yet the developers in charge designed and forced through their own solution (to fork the network) anyway.

As legal academic Angela Walch wrote in her widely-cited paperIn Code(rs) we trust: Software Developers as Fiduciaries in Public Blockchains:

The passion, drama, and anger surrounding the Ethereum hard fork show how much was at stake for the Ethereum community, investors in ether, and those who built applications and companies atop the Ethereum blockchain. Yet only a small number of developers and miners in this decentralized system decided what the resolution of the DAO hack would be, in effect determining the financial fortunes of all those relying on the Ethereum blockchain, whether or not they had invested in the DAO.

Smart also observes that this drastic network change supposedly brought about by the decentralized exercise of power remains a highly controversial chapter in Ethereums history to this day. Because, of course, it wasnt decentralized at all. It was the identifiable coreEthereum developers exercising their exclusive power over the network.

Even looking beyond blockchain projects, there is an established track record of courts intervening in cases where peer-to-peer networks are breaking the law. In those cases, the fact that the networks were peer-to-peer did not save them.

Take MGM Studios, Inc. v Grokster as an example. There, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the distributors of peer-to-peer software (in an analogous position to the ever-tinkering BTC developers) were directly liable for the infringements that they enabled. In that case, there was no patch that could have made the Grokster software compliant, so they were forced to shut operations entirely. The blockchain developers facing Tulips lawsuit are luckier. A patchcanbe created to make their services compliant, and if they dont want their networks to end up like Grokster, they must implement it.

Tulip Tradings demands are not just reasonabletheyre desirable

In any case, Smart acknowledges that the concerns at the core of Tulip Tradings casewhich Dr. Wright has talked about at lengthare important.

Like him or not, it doesnt really matter. When he talks about this idea that cryptocurrency is not anonymous, and what kind of cryptocurrency do you really want, this idea that as you said the description of these people as shadowy, elusive, people behind the scenes [Dr. Wright] says who do you really want running your money? Do you want a group of people who you never know and have no claim against and can do nothing to them if they wrong you?'

After which, the host appears to get the point: Is what hes proposing really that radical?

Smart reluctantly admits that no, its not radical at all. But he then perfectly encapsulates how critics of Tulip Tradings lawsuit descend into non-sequitur and emotional arguments when confronted with legal reality. He laments that the BTC developers are feeling the heat of the law (which is what one tends to feel when operating outside the bounds of the law) and says that if you got someone to fix your plumbing and then found out weeks later it had flooded your house, you wouldnt take them to court (you certainly would). Instead, says Smart, youd resolve it between you.

One has to think that given more time to think of a response, Smart would never have said this last point. All you need to do to illustrate why the legal system really is the only option is to ask why the scores of people who have had their digital assets stolen havent simply gone to the developers to resolve it between themits because those developers would tell their users to take a hike.

Which is precisely why the law has the power to step in.

All of the other concerns expressed by Green and Smart focus on the impact that legal intervention would have on the price of these coins: this is irrelevant. The value of BTC is not important to the law. If by finally enforcing long-established legal rights in the digital asset context causes certain coin values to drop, such bloated valuations were on borrowed time.

Whats more, if any digital asset is ever to realize its true value, lawsuits like the one brought by Tulip Trading are necessary growing pains. Maybe its true that success for Tulip Trading would lead to price crashes in the short term, but that would only be true because its necessary to unlock growth in the long term. The industry cannot prosper outside the ambit of the law.

Watch: Digital Asset Recovery on Bitcoin Explained

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The Role of Marketing in Crypto Presales: Unlocking Success for … – Tekedia

In the world of cryptocurrencies, presales play a vital role in the success of new tokens. Strategic marketing efforts during the presale phase are instrumental in generating awareness, building investor confidence, and distinguishing coins in a crowded market.

Bitcoin (BTC) and Pepe Coin (PEPE) had intriguing marketing campaigns establishing them as some of the best crypto to invest in. On the other hand, Scorpion Casino Token (SCORP) is making its own mark on the crypto market with an exciting presale campaign. As investors seek the best cryptocurrency to invest in 2023, these coins stand out, thanks to their strong marketing campaigns.

Bitcoin, the pioneer of cryptocurrencies, has transformed the financial landscape laying the foundation for the entire crypto industry. Its features, which includes a decentralised peer-to-peer network, secure transactions, and limited supply, have propelled it to become the most valuable and recognised digital currency globally. Bitcoins marketing efforts in its early days primarily relied on word-of-mouth, online communities, and the publication of the whitepaper by its mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. The groundbreaking concept and the potential for financial disruption attracted a niche group of crypto enthusiasts who embraced Bitcoin.

As Bitcoin gained mainstream recognition, conferences, meetups, and collaborations with mainstream companies have expanded its marketing reach, contributing to its success as the leading cryptocurrency, and remains one of the best cryptocurrencies to invest in, in 2023.

Pepe Coin, a deflationary meme coin built on the Ethereum blockchain, has leveraged the popularity of meme-based cryptocurrencies. With unique features such as a no-tax policy, a redistribution system, and a burning mechanism, Pepe Coin has captured the attention of crypto enthusiasts. Marketing played a crucial role in Pepe Coins success. Through targeted promotions on social media, engagement with meme communities, and strategic partnerships, Pepe Coin effectively tapped into the meme culture and became a popular coin to invest in. The presale model employed by Pepe Coin further fueled excitement and demand, as early investors had the opportunity to acquire tokens at discounted prices.

Scorpion Casino Token aims to disrupt the online gambling industry by creating the number one social gambling platform. It offers users the opportunity to earn daily yield based on the casinos performance. Marketing will play a crucial role in Scorpion Casino Tokens growth. By leveraging social media platforms, strategic partnerships, and targeted advertising, Scorpion Casino Token aims to generate awareness, build trust, and attract a wide user base.

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Effective marketing strategies play a crucial role in the success of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoins marketing success can be attributed to its first-mover advantage and word-of-mouth marketing, while Pepe Coins marketing strategy capitalises on the popularity of meme culture, utilising online communities and viral campaigns. The marketing efforts for Scorpion Casino Token focus on attracting investors within the crypto community by utilising social media platforms and strategic partnerships. Presale marketing not only creates a foundation for a projects growth but also establishes a strong community base, instilling investor confidence and paving the way for a promising future.

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Nakamigos Set To Launch Its Hottest NFTs This Year Can It Bring … – Inside Bitcoins

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Non-fungible tokens have suffered a brutal comedown in recent weeks. The NFT market slump started sometime mid-this year, leaving the majority of NFTs shielding more than 70% of their floor prices. The NFT market collapse has also severely affected investors conviction in non-fungible tokens, which may take some time to rebuild confidence.

Nakamigos is a perfect example of an NFT collection, showcasing strong market resilience amid the recent NFT market slump while other NFT collections tumble. In this article, we look at whether this collection will rebuild confidence among investors and bring back the NFT season.

Launched in March 2023, Nakamigos is an NFT collection from the digital asset incubation studio HiFo Labs, featuring a limited edition of 20,000 NFTs hosted on the Ethereum network. The NFTs in the collection are 2424 pixel characters in a style reminiscent of the blue-chip NFT project CryptoPunks.

The collection derives its name from the pseudonymous founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamigos means being the friends of Nakamoto. During the launch, the Nakamigos team allocated 17,000 NFTs for minting and reserved 500 NFTs for developers.

Its worth noting that the team behind Nakamigos NFTs has been endowed with corresponding commercial rights, a gesture that mirrors Yuga Labs move to offer commercial licensing rights after acquiring CryptoPunks and Meebit NFTs in 2022.

Nakamigos NFT project has strong backing, featuring more than thirty-eight thousand followers on Twitter. It also has endorsement from notable crypto investors such as Michael Novogratz, the chief executive officer of Galaxy Investment Partners.

Nakamigos has remained strong, trading above 0.33ETH in several months despite the recent market slump. In the past 24 hours, the Nakamigos NFT collection has a floor price of 0.37 ETH, showcasing an uptrend. The NFT collection has recorded a trading sales volume of 40 ETH in the past 24 hours.

Source: CoinGecko.com, Nakamigos Trading Activity

In April, Nakamigos teased about launching another project before the end of the year. Last month, the NFT project shared another teaser, showcasing the possible launch of another project. The highly anticipated NFT project is expected in this years next three months.

Since Nakamigos has showcased its full market potential amid the bear. This NFT collection will likely bring back the NFT market lively from its deep slumber. Therefore, its just a matter of time before the NFT market probably retests hype similar to the historic 2021 Bull Run.

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Who is Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin? – The Coin Republic

Mr. Pratik chadhokar is an Indian Forex, Cryptocurrencies and Financial Market Advisor and analyst with a background in IT and Financial market Strategist. He specialises in market strategies and technical analysis and has spent over a year as a financial markets contributor and observer. He possesses strong technical analytical skills and is well known for his entertaining and informative analysis of the Financial markets.

The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is one of the most tantalizing mysteries in the tech world. This shadowy figure launched the first decentralized digital currency in 2008 and then disappeared into thin air. Pretty intriguing, right?

One cant help but love a good mystery. And Satoshi is one of the most intriguing mysteries the tech industry has seen. This enigmatic character invented a groundbreaking technology that is changing finance forever. But despite having such a huge impact, Satoshi managed to stay completely anonymous. And in a world where everything is traceable and recorded, this makes the Satoshi saga all the more captivating. It seems Satoshi must have gone to great lengths to cover their tracks and hide any biographical details that could reveal their identity. It makes one wonder what were they trying to hide?

Some speculate Satoshi has an extensive background in computer science and math. This seems plausible just look at how complex and brilliantly designed Bitcoin is! All signs point to Satoshi being a technical genius, if not something more, like a time traveller from the future. But the latter remains just a theory for now. Whats clear is that the complexity of Bitcoins design shows its creator possesses an exceptional mind. After unleashing Bitcoin on the world, Satoshi stuck around for a while, communicating with other developers working on the protocol. But by 2011, poof! Satoshi disappeared just as mysteriously as they had arrived. This sudden departure left the crypto community scratching their heads, wondering if Satoshi had moved on to other projects or just preferred to remain an enigma.

Now everyone has their own theories on who Satoshi really is. People have studied their writing style, followed clues, trying to unlock the mystery have often felt that theyve gotten close, but still never gotten a definitive answer. The clues about Satoshis identity go round and round with no definitive answer landing.

Part of what makes Satoshi such a fascinating character is their anonymity. It was clearly important to stay in the shadows, even as Bitcoin took off. It makes one think they were on to something big like the crypto revolution we now live in. Satoshis anonymity serves as a reminder of the power of privacy and the impact it can have.

Whoever Satoshi really is, they sparked something huge. Bitcoin has exploded in popularity and changed finance forever. Bitcoin is now accepted at a myriad of companies. Wikipedia, Microsoft and AT&T all accept payments and donations through Bitcoin. Not too odd you might say. However, over the past few years in Canada weve seen Burger King, Subway and even KFC now accept the cryptocurrency. Part of this is due to the leader of the opposition, Poilievre, being a very vocal pro-crypto force within the country. Along with this weve also seen it become key for online gaming, with skins and microtransactions becoming a use for Bitcoin. Online casinos in the country have also gotten in on the action, with many now also allowing Bitcoin for deposits. However, if youre not too confident with your cryptocurrency, you can always still stop in at real money online casinos for a more traditional experience. Not insignificant changes considering it came from an anonymous inventor! Even if Satoshis identity never surfaces, they have cemented their place in history. That Bitcoin was created and continues to grow as it has is testament to Satoshis vision and technical brilliance.

The legend of Satoshi will keep growing as Bitcoin continues to make waves. But hopefully their true identity emerges eventually! A character that is this intriguing deserves their full story told. For now, Satoshi remains one of techs most compelling pseudonymous figures. What an exit that was!

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Who is Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin? - The Coin Republic

How to put words into a Bitcoin address? Here’s how vanity … – Cointelegraph

Have you ever wondered whether a Bitcoin (BTC) address or a string of 2635 alphanumeric characters can happen to have human-readable words instead of random letters?

Youve probably heard of the Lightning Network, which allows you to create a fancy BTC address that looks like an email or a web domain. But theres also a way of creating Bitcoin addresses containing human-readable words on the original Bitcoin blockchain. Such addresses are known as vanity Bitcoin addresses.

A vanity Bitcoin address is a personalized BTC address that contains a specific pattern or word in a part of its total 26-35 character string of letters and numbers. Unlike a usual Bitcoin address which is made of random characters a vanity Bitcoin address allows users to customize their addresses or even send a specific message just within the address.

The term vanity address comes from the plain meaning of the word vanity, which is used to express inflated pride in oneself or ones appearance. In line with the direct meaning, vanity addresses are used by those who want to stand out and give their wallet address a unique identity.

Vanity Bitcoin addresses became popular a few years after the anonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto launched the cryptocurrency back in 2009. The first vanity address generator, called VanityGen, was released as an open-source platform on GitHub in 2012. One of the first references to vanity addresses on Bitcointalk.org a major crypto forum created by Nakamoto goes back to 2013.

According to Trezors Bitcoin analyst Josef Tetek, Nakamoto didnt use vanity addresses: He disappeared from the public before vanity addresses became popular, Tetek told Cointelegraph, referring to Nakamotos vanishing in 2011.

Besides the Bitcoin blockchain, vanity addresses are also available on other networks, including the Ethereum blockchain. Unlike Bitcoin vanity addresses, which allow users to choose among 2635 alphanumeric characters, Ethereum vanity addresses only feature hexadecimal numbers, as Ether (ETH) addresses can only include letters A through F and numbers zero through nine.

According to the ETH Optimism vanity address generator, creating an Ethereum vanity address starting with 0xFad69 would take up to five minutes.

There are two ways of creating a vanity BTC address: manually and using specialized vanity address generator services. The first method relies on software and requires some computing power and coding skills to run programs to find Bitcoin addresses starting with a specific word combination.

Many Bitcoin experts like Trezors Tetek agree that the first method is the most secure way of creating a vanity Bitcoin address, as this method allows users to keep their seed phrase private. Being the only owner of a private key or a seed phrase enables the user to be the sole holder of the funds associated with the address.

The manual method requires installing vanity address-generating software like VanityGen, which is available on the cloud-based software website GitHub. Running such software requires certain computing power specs, with larger sequences of symbols demanding more time to create a vanity address.

Various sources estimate that generating a vanity address containing a five-symbol word takes about one hour using a regular personal computer, while larger sequences like seven symbols could take up to three months. More sophisticated setups involving powerful graphic cards or even application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips can significantly reduce the time needed to generate a vanity address.

The second method of creating a vanity address is more straightforward but less secure as it relies on delegating the address search to third-party services, also known as vanity address miners.

Reliance on Bitcoin vanity services is associated with major risks, as miners can potentially take over the address and its assets at any time. That is because such miners are the first to receive the private key before passing it to the customer. The private key is generated at the moment of creating a Bitcoin address and cannot be changed afterward.

The vanity generation service is often offered via websites like Vanitygen.net, allowing users to simply order a certain desired word or sequence to be searched with computing power bought online. Such services often allow users to order a sequence of letters up to eight symbols. Once generated, the private key for the vanity address is sent to the customers email in exchange for the agreed price.

For example, generating a Bitcoin vanity address starting with 1Satoshi would cost around 0.0217 BTC, worth around $600 at the time of writing. Larger sequences like 1Nakamoto would require at least 0.11 BTC, or as much as $3,250.

Its important to note that not all letters and numbers can be included in a vanity Bitcoin address, just like a normal BTC address. Some letters, like the uppercase letter for O, the uppercase letter for I, the lowercase letter for L, and the number 0, are excluded from the set of 2635 alphanumeric characters available in all Bitcoin addresses. The exclusions aim to help users avoid confusion when sending funds on the Bitcoin blockchain.

A decision on whether or not to use a Bitcoin vanity address ultimately depends on the reasons for having such an address in the first place, taking into account all possible risks. Some cryptocurrency exchanges like BitMEX have experimented with vanity addresses using the native Segregated Witness (SegWit) address format Bech32 with the bc1qmex prefix.

A spokesperson for BitMEX told Cointelegraph that most vanity addresses are used for marketing or considered a bit of fun.

Bitcoin vanity addresses were quite popular on BitcoinTalk circa 2011, when many solicited donations to their personal vanity address, for example, 1Name, the BitMEXs representative noted, adding:

The firm also attempted to use vanity addresses to make it harder for attackers to scam users since BitMEX only gave vanity addresses to users. However, one should not rely on vanity addresses as a security mechanism, as more advanced attackers could manage to copy the vanity address format, the representative noted.

BitMEXs spokesperson says vanity addresses are best suited for advanced users: The main weakness for individual users is reduced privacy. In general, we would advise users not to reuse addresses at all, adding that newer BitMEX customer addresses no longer feature a vanity prefix.

Trezors Bitcoin expert Tetek strongly advised against using vanity addresses because such addresses even if generated in a secure manner promote address reuse, which is a bad practice in terms of privacy. He said:

Besides privacy and asset safety risks, vanity BTC addresses are also associated with security vulnerabilities. In 2022, hackers managed to steal $3.3 million in crypto through a vulnerability in Ethereum vanity address-generating tool Profanity. Additionally, in March 2023, attackers also used hacked vanity addresses to steal $500,000 worth of tokens from layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrums airdrop.

Despite Bitcoin vanity addresses becoming much less popular since 2011, there is no evidence that such addresses have not been used in recent years.

One report recently described the use of a Bitcoin vanity address containing swearing words apparently directed toward Russias President Vladimir Putin. The address has transacted a total of 0.29 BTC ($7,595) in 67 transactions between 2018 and 2020, turning its balance to zero.

One of its last recorded transactions included a 0.0004 BTC ($10) transaction to the public Bitcoin address of famous Bitcoin critic Warren Buffet, who was given a BTC address and a gift from Tron founder Justin Sun.

Moreover, challenges and considerations persist. For instance, the security risks linked to vanity address generators must be addressed, prompting the development of more secure and user-friendly tools. Vanity address creation could become more streamlined and available to a wider audience, not just those with coding expertise, as blockchain systems develop and incorporate new features.

However, the privacy issues raised by the reuse of addresses will remain a crucial consideration. Therefore, users who want personalized addresses must balance the advantages of uniqueness against possible privacy breaches.

While its important to understand that Bitcoin vanity addresses are quite risky and expensive, such addresses apparently unlock some new and maybe weird use cases of the cryptocurrency. With that in mind, its up to Bitcoin users whether the future of Bitcoin vanity addresses is bright or not.

Collect this article as an NFT to preserve this moment in history and show your support for independent journalism in the crypto space.

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How to put words into a Bitcoin address? Here's how vanity ... - Cointelegraph