a guide to learning about Bitcoin
Welcome! This website serves as a compiled guide to learning about Bitcoin. It is not an exhaustive list of resources, but rather a curated list of materials that were formative for me. I am by no means a subject matter expert on Bitcoin, nor am I advocating for investing in Bitcoin. This website is purely educational.
There is a lot of material here. If you are completely new to Bitcoin it may take significant effort on your part to wrap your head around the subject, and that is completely normal! A proper understanding of Bitcoin requires bringing together concepts from computer programming, cryptography, money, economics, economic incentives, and game theory.
My goal is that by the end of this guide you will understand, in detail, the following descriptions of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is an open, public, borderless, neutral, and censorship resistant network based on decentralized trust.
Bitcoin uses public-key cryptography, peer-to-peer networking, and proof-of-work to process and verify payments. Bitcoins are sent (or signed over) from one address to another with each user potentially having many, many addresses. Each payment transaction is broadcast to the network and included in the blockchain so that the included bitcoins cannot be spent twice. After an hour or two, each transaction is locked in time by the massive amount of processing power that continues to extend the blockchain.
The topic of the actual Bitcoin protocol does not appear until a few sections into this guide. This is because there is some background and history that will help put Bitcoin into context for you. That being said, if you are feeling a bit impatient and want a quick primer on what Bitcoin is before going further, I recommend watching the video below by 3Blue1Brown. This is the video that sent me down the Bitcoin rabbit hole back in 2017. I think it does a fantastic job directly describing what Bitcoin is without introducing confusing analogies or focusing on price.