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I have recently been assigned to advise a student on a senior thesis in math. She has taken linear algebra, introductory real analysis, basic cryptography, and abstract algebra. Her interest is in cryptography. And she has a love of Bitcoin. The point of a senior thesis is to get a student to teach themselves a subject and learn to find and read mathematical papers. Original work that could be published would be nice, but is often untenable.

My question is whether anyone knows of any research that is/has being/been done in cryptography related to Bitcoin. Thanks.

EDIT: I am looking for a link or reference to research papers involving Bitcoin and cryptography, some of which would be accessible to my student.

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    $\begingroup$ Would you mind rewording your question some? I'm having a hard time figuring out what you are asking. As worded you are asking if anyone knows of any research that is or has been done. The answer to that is clearly yes, someone does know of research that is/has been done. Are you wanting a list of research areas within the bitcoin realm that relate to cryptography? Is there something specific that a simple search of "bitcoin" on google scholar is not turning up that you are interested in? $\endgroup$
    – mikeazo
    Sep 5, 2012 at 19:02
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    $\begingroup$ Yes, as your question is now, it is either not a real question, or a "list question", and those tend to be not constructive (and closed as such). Or too localized. $\endgroup$
    – Paŭlo Ebermann
    Sep 5, 2012 at 20:19
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    $\begingroup$ I am voting to move the question to Bitcoin.SE, the Q&A site dedicated to the subject. Also take a look at bitcointalk.org, the community forum. I now see the question is about a year old, not sure if Bitcoin.SE existed back then but the question belongs with them. I hope your student did well. Cheers $\endgroup$
    – rath
    Aug 14, 2013 at 14:20
  • $\begingroup$ think this is a great question, dislike questions closed as too broad with not very many answers. also recently asked about "cool cs project ideas" on Computer Science meta but it got deleted :( ... some key research questions in bitcoin would be eg how to get the "proof of work" function to apply to more practical problems, how to decrease/minimize the overall energy requirements/consumed by the network, how to decrease price spikes/volatility, etc. $\endgroup$
    – vzn
    May 1, 2014 at 22:42
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    $\begingroup$ How about this or this. But no, this is definitely a list-style question, which is explicitly marked as not a good fit for this format in the FAQs $\endgroup$
    – Cryptographeur
    May 2, 2014 at 8:12

3 Answers 3

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I have a list of Bitcoin-related publications here:

Bitcoin Bibliography (Crypto & Security)

They are all the academic papers (as opposed to whitepapers) that I know about, relating to security or cryptographic aspects (as opposed to economic or implementation aspects) of Bitcoin. Most are published.

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Here's the Research article on the Bitcoin wiki:

You might find some of the authors in the list have related research that is not directly related to Bitcoin so is absent from that list.

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If you wait a bit, then you can point her to the papers that will appear here Workshop on Bitcoin Research which is going to be held during Financial Crypto 2014.

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