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The author of the white paper, Robin Linus, based BitVM’s architecture on Ethereum’s optimistic rollups with fraud proofs and recent Merkle tree developments. A Bitcoin developer has proposed a new way to bring more expressive off-chain smart contracts to Bitcoin (BTC) without needing a soft fork. Announced in an Oct.9 white paper titled “BitVM: Compute Anything on Bitcoin” by ZeroSync’s project lead Robin Linus, BitVM enables Turing-complete Bitcoin contracts without altering Bitcoin’s consensus rules. "Any computable function can be verified on Bitcoin"https://t.co/Itf9UHos0C pic.twitter.com/CLQv49Ydsg — яobin linus (@robin_linus) October 9, 2023 A Turing Complete system is one which can theoretically provide an answer to any computational problem. The “logic” of Bitcoin contracts is executed off-chain but is then verified on Bitcoin — similar to Ethereum’s optimistic rollups. BitVM’s architecture is based on fraud proofs and a challenge-response model where a “p...

The IMF's Kristalina Georgieva said wholesale CBDCs, on the other hand, have “fairly little space for undesirable surprises.” A myriad of unforeseeable “consequences” will be brought about by retail central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) claimed. The IMF's Kristalina Georgieva erred on the side of caution regarding retail CBDCs in a May 1 interview at the Milken Institute’s 2023 Global Conference. Georgieva explained the IMF considers retail CBDCs to have far more room for error than wholesale CBDCs. “We think that wholesale CBDCs can be put in place with fairly little space for undesirable surprises, whereas retail CBDCs completely transform the financial system in a way that we don’t quite know what consequences it could bring.” Retail CBDCs are state-backed virtual currencies issued by central Banks for use by consumers and businesses. Wholesale CBDCs are similarly central bank-issued but are designed to allow...