Mining Revenue Smoothing and Miner Behavior
Revenue smoothing products transfer difficulty risk from miners to counterparty desks, reshaping hashrate dynamics and who stays online through tough epochs.
№ 038BitcoinBitcoin's Unspendable Outputs and the Shrinking Float
Millions of BTC are locked in addresses no one controls. The supply effect is real; the estimates are murkier than most analysts admit.
№ 039BitcoinBitcoin Proof-of-Work: Why Blocks Cost Real Energy
Bitcoin's Hashcash mechanism forces miners to burn electricity to produce valid blocks. The energy expenditure is the security model, not a design flaw.
№ 040SecurityMerkle Mountain Ranges: Proof of Inclusion Explained
MMRs let blockchains prove data inclusion against a growing history without invalidating old proofs. The mechanic, the math, and the tradeoffs.
№ 041BitcoinBitcoin Full Node Economics: A Ten-Year Breakdown
Hardware, bandwidth, and opportunity costs all shape whether running a full Bitcoin node makes financial sense. The arithmetic, read straight.
№ 042BitcoinBitcoin Coin Selection: Fees, UTXOs, and Wallet Algorithms
Coin selection algorithms quietly determine your transaction fees and UTXO bloat. This piece breaks down Branch and Bound, dust, and consolidation strategy.
№ 043BitcoinBitcoin Anti-Fee-Sniping: Mechanism and Miner Incentives
Anti-fee-sniping uses nLocktime to make block reorgs unprofitable. Learn the exact mechanism, the privacy tradeoff, and why it matters more each halving.
№ 044MiningBitcoin Nonce Exhaustion: How Miners Roll Timestamps
A single ASIC sweeps Bitcoin's 4-billion nonce space in 0.00003 seconds. The timestamp field and ExtraNonce are what keep the search running.
№ 045MiningMining Farm Cooling Costs: Engineering Per-Hash Efficiency
Cooling is a mining farm's second-largest expense. Operators who master thermal infrastructure cut cost per hash, this piece breaks down exactly how.
№ 046BitcoinBitcoin Script Has No Loops: Security by Design
Bitcoin Script omits loops entirely, not as a limitation, but as a deliberate defense against Denial-of-Service attacks on every node in the network.
№ 047BitcoinBitcoin Compact Block Relay: Latency, Numbers, Mechanics
Compact block relay cuts Bitcoin's propagation bandwidth by ~98%. BIP 152 explained with figures, a worked example, and misconceptions addressed.
№ 048BitcoinWhy Bitcoin's Timechain Makes Censorship Very Costly
Bitcoin's block structure makes retroactively censoring a confirmed transaction ruinously costly. Here's the exact mechanism, with numbers.