How It Works: Bitcoin Edition

Nothing like avoiding end-of-the-year physical cleanup with end-of-the-year virtual cleanup! I finally got around to reading this detailed description of how Bitcoin works, recommended by Schneier on his weblog, and I need to hang on to this for next time I’m teaching security. From a teaching perspective, it does a nice job of showing how all of the various types of cryptography come together in an interesting way in this protocol. This is the part that always seems sort of wild to me: The idea is to make it so everyone (collectively) is the bank. In particular, we’ll assume that … Continue reading How It Works: Bitcoin Edition