story // 3 dispatches over 177 days

The block story

From apr 22 to oct 16. It travelled bitcoin→mining. Every dispatch below uses at least one of its words: “block”.

1. apr 22
   Coinbase's Quantum Board Flags 6.9 Million Bitcoin as Vulnerable

   Coinbase's Independent Advisory Board on Quantum Computing and Blockchain published its first position paper Tuesday. The 50-page report, authored by researchers from Stanford, UT Austin, the Ethereum Foundation, Eigen Labs, Bar-Ilan University, and UC Santa Barbara, identifies wallet-level cryptography as the primary vulnerability and estimates 6.9 million BTC sit in wallets where public keys are already visible on-chain. The board recommends migration begin immediately rather than wait for the threat to become urgent. NIST recommends migration by 2035; the report suggests that timeline may prove optimistic. Post-quantum signatures are tens to hundreds of times larger than current ones, which could increase block data costs by up to 38x. This is the first time a major US exchange has assigned a specific BTC-at-risk number and published a coordinated industry position.

   “block”

2. aug 10
   The BIP-110 Fork Mined 2 Blocks and Stalled. Its Missing Replay Protection Is Still Your Problem

   BIP-110's mandatory signaling window opened at block 961,632 on August 8 with miner support near 2.5 percent, and the nodes enforcing it split onto a minority chain that mined 2 blocks and stalled. The main network never blinked. The fork shipped without replay protection, and that design choice is the part holders should actually understand.

   “block” · story reaches mining

3. oct 16
   Bitcoin Difficulty Rose 5.92% at Block 971,712, the Largest Increase Since June

   Bitcoin's mining difficultydifficultyA protocol setting that adjusts every ~2 weeks to keep blocks arriving about every 10 minutes, rising and falling with hashrate.See it on the site → reset to 140.58 trillion at block 971,712 on October 16, up 5.92% from 132.72 trillion and the largest increase since the +7.15% adjustment on June 27. The same Bitcoin now pays miners about 5.6% less per unit of hashratehashrateThe total computing power securing the Bitcoin network, in hashes per second — a measure of how much work backs the chain.See it on the site →: at the October 15 close of $82,133.70, subsidy-only hashpricehashpriceWhat a miner earns per unit of hashpower per day — revenue divided by hashrate. It falls as competition rises or price drops.See it on the site → falls from $38.90 to $36.73 per PH/sPH/sPetahashes per second: a quadrillion guesses a second, the unit for a fleet of mining machines. One current machine does about 0.2 PH/s (200 TH/s). per day.

   “block”