Lex Fridman with Elon Musk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxREm3s1scA
In this podcast, Musk mentions Nick Szabo as the creator of Bitcoin.
http://time.com/money/5002378/bitcoin-creator-nakamoto-billionaire/
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bit_Gold_proposal
https://nakamotoinstitute.org/secure-property-titles/#selection-77.5-88.0
https://web.archive.org/web/20160709091851/http://szabo.best.vwh.net/
Faster Bitcoin mining
Approximate Bitcoin mining:
http://rakeshk.crhc.illinois.edu/dac_16_cam.pdf
The Unreasonable Fundamental Incertitudes behind Bitcoin Mining:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.7935
https://www.ualberta.ca/folio/2020/02/new-computing-technique-could-help-make-bitcoin-mining-faster-and-greener.html (using SAT to accelerate the calculations in the mining process)
Re-purposing Bitcoin ASICS for useful SHA-256 computations
https://web.archive.org/web/20180917223621/http://mightydevices.com/?p=615
Datasheet: https://file12.bitmain.com/shop-product/firmware/BM1380_Datasheet_v1.0.pdf
Use the mining rigs to work with the Hashcash protocol to defend spam.
Use https://docs.braiins.com/os/open-source-en/Development/2_build.html#getting-started as the base of the modified firmware
https://github.com/orgs/braiins/repositories
Use the consensus mechanism of the cryptocurrency protocols to build distributed voting tools for the people based on proof-of-work or proof-of-stake, depending on the decision at stake.
Caveat
It is entirely possible to change smart contracts: https://www.heise.de/news/Kryptowaehrungen-Gericht-laesst-Smart-Contract-umprogrammieren-7533982.html?seite=all
https://www.blockworksresearch.com/research/we-do-a-little-counter-exploit
https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2023/340
The blockchain itself can also be manipulated by forcing the adoption of changes in the client software: https://www.heise.de/news/Bitcoin-Programmierer-muessen-vielleicht-die-Blockchain-manipulieren-7489900.html?seite=all (article in German)
This could open up the possibility of removing malicious content injecting into the blockchain, therefore making sure it remains an efficient mechanism and does not remain tainted when such illicit events occur.
InterPlanetary File System is already using the Bitcoin block chain as a way to provide distributed content-adressable storage.
Nonces are meant to be used once. If they are recycled, this can result in the leakage of the private key used to sign a transaction: https://research.kudelskisecurity.com/2023/03/06/polynonce-a-tale-of-a-novel-ecdsa-attack-and-bitcoin-tears/
Bitcoin Computing Daemon
If inputs on the network are treated as Gödel numbers for the encoding of programmable state machines, together with the majority voting mechanism the nodes on the Bitcoin network could form a powerful distributed computer. Individual nodes must agree, as per their common protocol version, on how to treat given nonces, i.e. how to interpret them to execute a particular instruction on the global distributed computing system they form.