Mastering Bitcoin

Asset owners (or custodians) generate private keys, sign messages indicating asset transfer, and then broadcast those messages to the public so that the world can verify the scarce asset hasn’t been double spent. Each private key is tied to a public key. Where KYC/AML are necessary, public keys can be mapped to some off-chain identity system (e.g. ... See more

A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the ... See more

millions and millions of people own U.S. dollars, which means precisely that some bank has a list and there is an entry for them on that list. It’s probably not in Excel, but same basic idea: The bank has a list of dollars in its accounts, the list is not kept via any sort of consensus mechanism or blockchain or whatever; the bank just keeps the li... See more