Entries tagged with this topic. Spans across types and sources — explore connections between people, events, and themes.
36 entries
Ray Dillinger's LinkedIn essay recalling his November 2008 code review of Bitcoin's blockchain code alongside Hal Finney, and his reflections on the altcoin and ICO ecosystem that followed.
CoinMarketCap recorded Ethereum's market cap at roughly 85% of Bitcoin's on June 12, 2017 — the closest the name behind 'the flippening' ever came to the number, before both fell back.
Do Kwon co-founded Terraform Labs and built TerraUSD, an algorithmic stablecoin that collapsed in May 2022, destroying $40 billion. He pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 15 years in 2025.
TerraUSD held its peg with an algorithm, not a reserve. In May 2022 the mechanism reversed: Luna's supply exploded from 343 million to 6.53 trillion, and $40 billion vanished in six days.
Five AI models were asked the same question and independently picked the same coin. Fact-checking their reasons: structural claims held up, confident superlatives mostly did not.
Twice-over fintech founder (E-Loan, Prosper) who co-founded the company that built the XRP Ledger in 2012. In 2021 he called Bitcoin's proof-of-work a technology the industry should retire.
A Silicon Valley executive (Yahoo, AOL) who joined Ripple in 2015 and became CEO in 2016. Has called Bitcoin both China-controlled and, separately, a legitimate store of value.
No supply cap, a fee burn that can push issuance negative, and a 2022 switch from mining to staking — Ethereum's own design documents, read against Bitcoin's fixed 21 million.
Litecoin copied Bitcoin's code and rescaled four parameters by an identical factor of four, then its creator divested his entire holding, citing his own influence over the price.
Monero forked away from a currency whose founders had quietly mined 82 percent of its supply, then built a ledger that hides what Bitcoin's discloses and an emission with no final block.
A 45 billion cap, Ouroboros proof-of-stake, and governance split across three organizations — Cardano's own design documents, read against the numbers that marked its launch.
Bitcoin Cash inherited Bitcoin's ledger and 21 million cap at the 2017 fork, then split twice more under implementation teams with no single founder to arbitrate.
Dogecoin has no whitepaper, no company, and no cap on its supply — a decade-old test of whether Bitcoin's scarcity is what a market actually pays for.
No block-size limit, one company's reference client, and five 51%-attack reorgs in a single year — Bitcoin SV's design record, measured against the 'original protocol' it set out to restore.
A relay chain coordinating parachains, nominated proof-of-stake, and the 2025 vote that capped a decade of roughly-10-percent issuance -- Polkadot's design, read against Bitcoin's fixed 21 million.
A consensus mechanism built on its own clock, an issuance rate that keeps shrinking without a cap, and a supply that started with a premine to the foundation and its investors.
A hundred billion units generated in a single stroke in June 2012, a validator list two organizations curate, and a five-year SEC lawsuit over who was allowed to sell them.
Launched on Bitcoin's blockchain as Realcoin in 2014, USDT mints and freezes at one company's discretion, and its reserve reporting has stayed at quarterly attestations, not audits.
A fiat-collateralized design CENTRE named as a trade-off in its own whitepaper, a reserve that broke the dollar peg for two days in 2023, and a governing consortium later folded into one company.
Created Mt. Gox in 2010 and sold it in 2011, then co-created the XRP Ledger and Stellar. Says the whitepaper convinced him double-spend was solvable at all.
The Google engineer who shipped Litecoin in 2011, called Bitcoin the soundest money in the space for a decade after, and sold or donated every coin he held in 2017.
Ethereum's first CEO, removed in 2014, who built Cardano on the opposite design choices. His verdict on Bitcoin moved from "worth a Turing prize" to "a religion, not an ecosystem".
Monero's long-time lead maintainer. Argues Bitcoin's transparency is the use case for Monero, and cites Bitcoin's 2010 and 2018 inflation bugs as evidence of auditability risk.
Registered dogecoin.com as a joke about altcoin proliferation, left the community in 2015, called Bitcoin cult-like in 2018, and in 2021 rejected the whole industry in public.
Qualcomm engineer who wrote the Proof of History paper and founded Solana. Calls Bitcoin's proof-of-work a masterpiece and says the asset has no value beyond insurance.
Internet entrepreneur who founded Circle and launched USDC in 2018. Built the largest regulated dollar stablecoin while publicly arguing that Bitcoin's value is its non-sovereignty.
Twelve chains, sorted by what each one's issuance rule settles about the price of a single unit — and by how much of that price the rule never touches.
Vitalik Buterin's BitcoinTalk announcement of Ethereum on the Altcoins board, January 23, 2014. The principal Bitcoin-community-facing record of the Ethereum whitepaper publication.
French software engineer. Bitcoin Core contributor from ~2015, founded Bitcoin ABC, led the 2017 BCH hard fork, defended BCH in the 2018 BSV hash war, led the 2020 split into eCash.
Russian-Canadian programmer (1994–). Bitcoin community member from 2011, Bitcoin Magazine co-founder, pybitcointools author, Ethereum whitepaper author (late 2013).
Genealogy of every Bitcoin protocol fork that left a separate chain alive (Bitcoin Cash, SV, Gold) and the adjacent cryptocurrencies derived from Bitcoin (Namecoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin).
Vincent Durham launched Namecoin on April 18, 2011 — the first altcoin and first fork of the Bitcoin codebase. It implemented the BitDNS proposal as a decentralized name registration system.
Charlie Lee launched Litecoin on October 13, 2011 as a Bitcoin-codebase fork with Scrypt PoW, 2.5-minute blocks, and 84 M cap. He framed it as 'silver to Bitcoin's gold'.
Markus and Palmer launched Dogecoin on December 6, 2013 as a Litecoin fork around the 'Doge' Shiba Inu meme. Initially a satire of crypto speculation, it grew into a top-10 cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin SV (Satoshi Vision) split from Bitcoin Cash on November 15, 2018, and a hash war with the Bitcoin ABC faction followed. The SV chain restored larger blocks and 'original' opcodes.
Ray Dillinger's retrospective on his role in Bitcoin's earliest days: reviewing the blockchain code, his division of labor with Hal Finney, and his reflections on Satoshi's integrity.