Ep. 33 The Very Rich, Very Patient Binance Hacker

In this episode of The Unhashed Podcast: Binance has been hacked, and its spurred on a serious conversation about the ethos of the network in terms of reorg. What are the values of Bitcoin? A market of technically feasible bribery or a commitment to immutability? Ryan Selkis has put in a request for a freedom of information grant regarding the discount Ripple offered its enterprise clients. A motion that was denied by the state of new York. Is this perfectly innocent or does this indicate a deeply corrupt alliance with their board member Banjamin Lawsky? And...the taproot and tapscript BIPs have officially hit the Bitcoin Dev Mailing List. But when will the taproot band go on tour again?

Weekly News Wrap Up:

  1. Binance got hacked and lost 7000 BTC or $43 million dollars. This is especially ironic, since only a couple of months ago Binance put out a tweet in which they stated that storing your coins on an exchange may be safer than storing them yourself. Since Binance has been hugely profitable, they expect to recoup the costs within a mere two months. A big controversy unfolded when Core developer Jeremy Rubin suggested on Twitter that the stolen coins could be used to incentivize a reorg in a last-ditch effort to retrieve some of the value. Initially this was being considered by Binance, but they soon deemed it unlikely to succeed. Even though it was abandoned, a big discussion unfolded about whether this fits within the game theory of Bitcoin, or whether such a reorg should be avoided at all costs and perhaps even warrants a UASF style response to reject the reorg.

    1. Warren Togami posted an idea on Twitter to build protection into mining hardware that disallows reorgs.

  2. Liquid Network Expands With New Memberships and Integrations. Blockstream added 14 new members, expanding its line-up to 35 institutions. Additionally, Bitfinex has integrated deposit and withdrawal into LBTC, the Liquid version of Bitcoin, and half a dozen other exchanges will be following suit. On top of that, Tether (USDT) and Stably (USDS), two dollar-backed stablecoins, have announced intent to release liquid versions of their coins on the network.

  3. Jameson Lopp released an extensive article about Craig Wright, in which all the evidence of the fraudulent claim that Craig Wright is Satoshi is outlined in detail. While none of the evidence is new, it has been thoroughly put together and contains the full story for those who still have lingering doubts.

  4. Ryan Selkis made a FOIL request (freedom of information law) about the discount at which XRP was offered to Ripples enterprise customers, which should be granted to holders of the New York Bitlicense. However, after 3.5 months, he got denied access because the information was deemed “too sensitive”, pointing to the corruption of the law, which seems particularly likely because Benjamin Lawsky, the creator of the Bitlicense, joined the Ripple Board of Directors

  5. Pieter Wuille revealed his BIPs for Taproot and Tapscript on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, which are features that are planned to go into the next soft fork together with Schnorr. The combined set of features improve the fungibility of Bitcoin by ensuring all transactions look exactly the same, because advanced scripts and multisig constructions can remain complete hidden.

    1. Bitmex research released an excellent write-up, for those who are curious about the details.

  6. Tron’s Ex-CTO Zhiqiang Chen denies Justin Sun’s accusations of embezzlement and bribery, after announcing in a May 10 Medium post that since his departure from Tron in January 2019, he has been building “a new TRON” called Volume Network.

Listener Questions:

"My question is: what exactly can a miner actually do to someone using an SPV wallet to accept bitcoin. We hear the phrase “trusting hashpower”, but how could this actually play out?"

Shout Outs:

Mario: Bitmex Research

Ruben: Improving SPV mailing list post and Twitter post


One Final Note:

Make sure you are storing your crypto on something secure like aLedger and backing it up on something sturdy like aBillfodl. If you buy these items through the links above, we do take a cut of the profits but it also helps support the show - a win/win for all involved.

Colin aulds