There’s a lot of excitement about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
Optimists claim that Bitcoin will fundamentally alter payments,
economics, and even politics around the world. Pessimists claim
Bitcoin is inherently broken and will suffer an inevitable and
Underlying these differing views is significant confusion about
what Bitcoin is and how it works. We wrote this book to help cut
through the hype and get to the core of what makes Bitcoin unique.
To really understand what is special about Bitcoin, we need to
understand how it works at a technical level. Bitcoin truly is a new
technology, and we can only get so far by explaining it through simple
analogies to past technologies.
We assume that you have a basic understanding of computer
science—how computers work, data structures and algorithms, and
some programming experience. If you’re an undergraduate or
graduate student of computer science, a software developer, an
entrepreneur, or a technology hobbyist, this textbook is for you.
In this book, we address the important questions about Bitcoin.
How does Bitcoin work? What makes it different? How secure are
your bitcoins? How anonymous are Bitcoin users? What applications
can we build using Bitcoin as a platform? Can cryptocurrencies be
regulated? If we were designing a new cryptocurrency today, what
would we change? What might the future hold?
After reading this book, you’ll know everything you need to be
able to separate fact from fiction when reading claims about Bitcoin
and other cryptocurrencies. You’ll have the conceptual foundations
you need to engineer secure software that interacts with the Bitcoin
network. And you’ll be able to integrate ideas from Bitcoin into your
The online supplementary materi