Research conducted by Adi Shamir, one of the pioneers of the RSA algorithm for public-key cryptography which forms the basis of online security today indicates that bitcoin markets indicated that all the large bitcoin transactions over the past few years seem to have the same originating source, related to a single large transaction that took place in November 2010.

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The certificate itself contains the issuer's name (for example, Chase Manhattan), a serial number, a signature algorithm ID, an expiration date, an employee's public key and unique identifiers for both the issuer and the employee.

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