Every bitcoin that isn't sitting on an address protected by a truly random 256-bit number will be moved into one that is, with enough time.
If you aren't starting from verifiable randomness, you're wasting your time.
I'm no longer trusting anything except SHA-256 and a handful of other functions. I didn't lose any coins in this current fiasco, but I'm done relying on entropy I didn't produce myself. You can't trust a supply chain, you can't trust a dev. You can only trust math and your own eyes.
This is a massive blow to "easy" self-custody, but perhaps that was always an illusion.
Fair enough, but for Bitcoin to work we need to be able to use software generated wallets. Otherwise it becomes obscure and niche rather than the ideal hard money for everyone.
I agree with you. I'm honestly pretty troubled by this. I don't know if I can feel comfortable trusting a key I didn't generate myself. But this will never work as money if we can't trust software wallets
I think adding analog entropy should become highly recommended or mandatory. Maybe even something like "drag your finger around the screen" or whatever rather than coin flips or dice rolls for phone wallets, and mix that in with what is believed to be good RNG.
How does one create a truly random 256 bit number?
Agreed.
So many threads in the past couple of days to post this question, so I’ll just post it here (although I know it doesn’t get to the gist of your post):
I understand that you can just roll a bunch of new/good dice or throw 264 coins in a shoebox, shake them up, and randomly pull them out in stacks sufficient to create your own private key…and then you can stamp the corresponding seed into a metal of your choice and hide it for the next thousand years, but then what? You can’t enter those words into sparrow running on your personal computer. Do you put them into a hardware device and rely on it solely as a signer? Cyph3rp9nk brought up a great point on nostr the other day or so that Satoshi’s coins, the largest honey pot ever, have never been swept. To somewhat tie this back to your post, what was/is the OG niche cypherpunk method of utilizing a purely human generated, totally random, private key with a wallet software?
I thought I was a decently educated bitcoin user, but this fiasco has me second guessing everything.
Agree