Elon Musk vs Alexander Pushkin on Bitcoin: The Role of Random Numbers in Cryptography | Anatoly Klepov & Anatoly Aronov

16 Oct, 2025
| Salome K

Musk and A. Pushkin on Bitcoin

Elon Musk wrote a tweet: “Bitcoin is based on energy: it is possible to release fake fiat money, and every government in history has done this, but it is impossible to fake energy.”

When I write about modern cryptography I always recall the genius words of A. S. Pushkin:

Oh how many wondrous discoveries we have

The spirit of enlightenment prepares

And experience, the son of difficult mistakes,

And genius, the friend of paradoxes,

And chance, the god inventor

Chance is a random number. A random number is the foundation of cryptography. More than 90% of all ciphers were deciphered because the encryption keys were not random.

I personally decrypted several top-secret Soviet machines for this reason. Why did A. S. Pushkin call a random number God? I described this in detail in my book “Espionage and Radio Intelligence. The Shield and Sword of the Information World”. A.S. Pushkin, when he served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, and at that time the Ministry of Foreign Affairs performed the function of Russia’s foreign intelligence (E. Primakov) decrypted foreign ciphergrams together with Pavel Schilling. Pavel Schilling headed the ciphers (cryptographic) department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A. S. Pushkin performed the function of a linguist for the French language. It is impossible to decipher a foreign ciphergram without excellent knowledge of the language of that country. A. S. Pushkin was one of the best experts in the French language, which for correspondence in the 19th century was used by the majority of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of European states. In the archive, I read the correspondence of P. Schilling with the Emperor of Russia Nicholas I. It was written in French. In the list of books of A. S. Pushkin’s library, I found a book on probability theory – the science of random numbers.

Random numbers play a fundamental role in Bitcoin, are used for verifying new blocks, creating unique transaction identifiers, and generating private keys for user wallets.

During Bitcoin mining, miners by trial and error use a random number (“nonce”) to find a specific hash value corresponding to the given network difficulty.

For users, reliable random numbers are critically important for security, for example, when creating seed phrases or generating new public addresses to increase privacy.

Miners repeatedly hash the block data and the random number (nonce) until they find a hash starting with a specific number of zeros. This process requires large computational resources and is the “work” in proof-of-work, ensuring network security and preventing double-spending.

The correct nonce, corresponding to the given difficulty, is the key to adding a new block to the blockchain, and it is the random number that the miners are trying to find.

For user security and privacy

Private and public keys: When a user creates a new wallet, a strong random number generator is used to create a private key, which is kept secret. The corresponding public key is used to generate the user’s Bitcoin address, which can be published.

Seed-phrase is a sequence of random words that can be used to recover a wallet. The security of the wallet largely depends on the randomness of these words.

To increase privacy, users are recommended to generate a new address for each transaction. This is achieved through strong random number generation, which helps to break the link between addresses in the public ledger.

The internal random number generator of Bitcoin Core uses multiple sources of entropy, including operating system randomness and hardware sources, to ensure high randomness.

Cryptographic security: Weak or predictable random numbers can be used by malicious actors, therefore it is extremely important to use cryptographically strong generators that generate unpredictable results.

Hardware randomness: for applications requiring an extremely high level of randomness, such as key generation for hardware wallets, quantum random number generators (QRNG) are integrated, which use quantum phenomena, such as radioactive decay.

And now let us turn to the famous words of the outstanding mathematician of the 20th century: “Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.” – von Neumann. Von Neumann, John (1951). “Various Techniques Used in Connection with Random Digits”. Applied Mathematics Series, National Bureau of Standards. 12: 36–38.

Thus, within the framework of solving the problem of generating random numbers using arithmetical methods (often by software means) it is impossible to obtain a random number!

And with the help of hardware means? Including quantum phenomena? The fact is that in this case the random number sensor must fully comply with the TEMPEST standard.

Such a sensor can be produced only by Russia and the USA. And only for state organizations. The export of cryptographic equipment that complies with the TEMPEST standard is officially prohibited by US law. Thus, to buy or acquire a random number generator that complies with the TEMPEST standard is impossible!!!

So the statement of Elon Musk that Bitcoin is based on energy is fundamentally incorrect! A. S. Pushkin understood this much better.

As is known, Elon Musk was born in South Africa. At the time when he was a child I gave lectures on cryptography to the technical intelligence of South Africa and my company together with the government of South Africa created the best crypto telephone with crypto fax in the world, which was successfully used by several dozen countries at the highest level. The hardware key generator, which fully complies with the TEMPEST standard, was created by my company.

S. In the photographs, the certificate of the South African government on the testing of my crypto algorithm. Signed by the head of the South African special service (analogous to the NSA in the USA). The crypto telephone with fax is a joint development of the South African government and my company.