Most people, upon first hearing about Bitcoin, don't really understand it. Is it magical Internet money? Where does it come from? Who controls it? Why is it important? For me, understanding all the things that come together to make Bitcoin work - the physics, math, cryptography, game theory, economics, and computer science - was a profound moment. In this book, I share this knowledge with you in a very simple and easy to understand way. With nothing but a high school level math background, we will walk through inventing bitcoin, step by step.

You've probably heard about Bitcoin on the news or heard it being discussed by your friends or colleagues. How come the price keeps changing? Is Bitcoin a good investment? How does it even have value? Why do people keep talking about it like it's going to change the world?The Little Bitcoin Book tells the story of what's wrong with money today, and why Bitcoin was invented to provide an alternative to the current system. It describes in simple terms what Bitcoin is, how it works, why it's valuable, and how it affects individual freedom and opportunities of people everywhere - from Nigeria to the Philippines to Venezuela to the United States. This book also includes a Q & A section with some of the most frequently asked questions about Bitcoin.If you want to learn more about this new form of money which continues to gain interest and adoption around the world, then this book is for you.

The Lightning Network (LN) is a rapidly growing second-layer payment protocol that works on top of Bitcoin to provide near-instantaneous transactions between two parties. With this practical guide, authors Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Olaoluwa Osuntokun, and Rene Pickhardt explain how this advancement will enable the next level of scale for Bitcoin, increasing speed and privacy while reducing fees. Ideal for developers, systems architects, investors, and entrepreneurs looking to gain a better understanding of LN, this book demonstrates why experts consider LN a critical solution to Bitcoin's scalability problem. You'll learn how LN has the potential to support far more transactions than today's financial networks. This book examines: How the Lightning Network addresses the challenge of blockchain scaling The Basis of Lightning Technology (BOLT) standards documents The five layers of the Lightning Network Protocol Suite LN basics, including wallets, nodes, and how to operate one Lightning payment channels, onion routing, and gossip protocol Finding paths across payment channels to transport Bitcoin off-chain from sender to recipient

"Have you, like the rest of the world, speculated as to the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, anonymous creator of Bitcoin? The world's first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin went online in 2009 and has since revolutionized our concepts of currency and money. Not supported by any government or central bank, completely electronic, Bitcoin is a virtual currency based on advanced cryptographic systems. Like the currency he created, the identity of Bitcoin's creator Satoshi Nakamoto is virtual, existing only online. The Nakamoto persona, which may represent an individual or a group, exists only in the online publications that introduced and explained Bitcoin during its earliest days. Here, collected and professionally published for the first time are the essential writings that detail Bitcoin's creation. Included are: Satoshi Nakamoto Emails and Posts on Computer Forums Presented in Chronological Order; Bitcoin Fundamentals Presented in Layman's Terms; Bitcoin's Potential and Profound Economic Implications; The Seminal Paper Which Started It All. The Book of Satoshi provides a convenient way to parse through what Bitcoin's creator wrote over the span of the two years that constituted his "public life" before he disappeared from the Internet ... at least under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Beginning on November 1st 2009 with the publication of the seminal paper describing Bitcoin, this public life ends at about the time PC World speculated as to a possible link between Bitcoin and WikiLeaks, the infamous website that publishes leaked classified materials. Was there a connection? You be the judge. Nakamoto's true identity may never be known. Therefore the writings reproduced here are probably all the world will ever hear from him concerning Bitcoin's creation, workings, and theoretical basis. Want to learn more about Bitcoin? Go directly to the source - the writings of the creator himself, Satoshi Nakamoto!"--Amazon.com viewed October 1, 2014.

Want to understand the crypto craze? Tired of reading complicated books and articles? A simple guide to Bitcoin, blockchains, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and a decentralized world through simple illustrations and examples.

This book covers Bitcoin's blocksize war, which was waged from August 2015 to November 2017. On the surface the battle was about the amount of data allowed in each Bitcoin block, however it exposed much deeper issues, such as who controls Bitcoin's protocol rules. It is not possible to cover every twist and turn in the labyrinthine conflict or all the arguments, but I have provided a chronology of the most significant events. This book explores some of the major characters in the conflict and includes coverage, from both the front lines and behind the scenes, during some of the most acute phases of the struggle. The account in this book includes discussions with the key players from both sides during the war, exploring their motivations, strategy and thought processes as the exhausting campaign progressed and developed.

Falling down the Bitcoin rabbit hole is a strange experience. Like many others, I feel like I have learned more in the last couple of years studying Bitcoin than I have during two decades of formal education. The following lessons are a distillation of what I've learned. First published as an article series titled "What I've Learned From Bitcoin," what follows can be seen as a third edition of the original series. Like Bitcoin, these lessons aren't a static thing. I plan to work on them periodically, releasing updated versions and additional material in the future.Bitcoin is an inexhaustible teacher, which is why I do not claim that these lessons are all-encompassing or complete. They are a reflection of my personal journey down the rabbit hole. There are many more lessons to be learned, and every person will learn something different from entering the world of Bitcoin. I hope that you will find these lessons useful and that the process of learning them by reading won't be as arduous and painful as learning them firsthand.