<oembed><type>rich</type><version>1.0</version><title>Motivating The Math wrote</title><author_name>Motivating The Math (npub1hp…6tzy4)</author_name><author_url>https://yabu.me/npub1hpzy3w20jkwh7a7z45ev58vkc3370xva0q78rs0c0npww5smeltsc6tzy4</author_url><provider_name>njump</provider_name><provider_url>https://yabu.me</provider_url><html>Did you know that the points on an elliptic curve form an Abelian group?&#xA;&#xA;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!&#xA;&#xA;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:&#xA;&#xA;1) closure under point addition (adding any two points gives us a point that is definitely on the curve)&#xA;&#xA;2) infinity point is the identity (always wondered what that point meant in the coding books like nostr:npub10vlhsqm4qar0g42p8g3plqyktmktd8hnprew45w638xzezgja95qapsp42 Programming Bitcoin)&#xA;&#xA;3) order of addition doesn’t matter (P1+P2) = (P2+P1)&#xA;&#xA;So the points being an abelian group makes all of the arithmetic around adding points nice.   VERY NICE!</html></oembed>