Did you know that the points on an elliptic curve form an Abelian group? Now I’m glad we suffered through 2 podcasts to explain what groups are and how we don’t know why but it’s important to know something is a group! We (on this podcast) still don’t know why this fact matters for elliptic curves yet - but it seems plausible in the context of what we discussed that we like: 1) closure under point addition (adding any two points gives us a point that is definitely on the curve) 2) infinity point is the identity (always wondered what that point meant in the coding books like @jimmysong Programming Bitcoin) 3) order of addition doesn’t matter (P1+P2) = (P2+P1) So the points being an abelian group makes all of the arithmetic around adding points nice. VERY NICE!

EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW IS RIGGED TO LOOK A CERTAIN WAY THROUGH A CAREFULLY CONTROLLED MEDIUM. EXCEPT MATH They can’t rig math. They can rig how it’s used and what it says and they can demoralize you into not learning it or seeing for yourself what is knowable. They can co-opt its applications. But they cannot undo Euclid, Euler, or Gauss. Learn math and learn who these men were if you want to have a fighting chance against those who can rig everything you think you know.