Bitcoin Learning Resources
Useful links for learning about Bitcoin.
There are many great articles deep-diving into various aspects of Bitcoin. This post will contain links to ones that I found helpful to understanding the nature of Bitcoin. It will grow more populated and organized, in time.
Inspired by Jameson Lopp's Bitcoin Information & Resources website.
My Articles
Introduction to Bitcoin
- "Introduction to the Internet of Money" an 18 minute video of a talk by Andreas Antonopolous, speaking at web developer conference in Sweden in 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc744Z9IjhY
- "The Internet of Money" book by Andreas Antonopolous:
- Printed book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31869077-the-internet-of-money
- PDF format: http://www.nodramasproductions.com/Lezioni_Inglese/The_Internet_of_Money.pdf
- Audio, Volume 1: https://archive.org/details/TheInternetOfMoney-Volume1
- Audio, Volume 2: https://archive.org/details/TheInternetOfMoney-Volume2
- "The Bitcoin Standard" a 20 minute video of a talk by Saifedean Ammous at conference in 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QVCVL60bQE
- "What is Bitcoin?" by Jimmy Song: https://medium.com/hackernoon/what-is-bitcoin-part-1-1755b81984e8
- "Shelling Out: The Origins of Money" by Nick Szabo: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/"Shelling Out" is a foundational essay that imparts the civilizational-scale project that Bitcoin is tackling. It is noteworthy that it was published in 2002, seven years before Bitcoin's debut. Very smart people were thinking about this stuff long before the technology was implemented in code. There are many other foundational papers listed in the literature section of the Nakamoto Institute website.
- "Planting Bitcoin" Bitcoin's origin story by Dan Held (4 part series): https://medium.com/@danhedl/planting-bitcoin-56bd1459cb23
- "Why It’s Hard to “Get” Bitcoin: The Blockchain Spectrum" by Dhruv Bansal: https://www.unchained-capital.com/blog/blockchain-spectrum/Imagine yourself to be a University Dean in the position of creating a new course on blockchains. To which department would such a course belong? Computer Science or Business? Mathematics or Economics? Sociology? Political Science? Finance? Philosophy? In fact, any of these departments would be appropriate.
- "Bitcoin 101" A 9-part series on Bitcoin by Cryptobriefing: https://cryptobriefing.com/bitcoin-101/
- "Unpacking Bitcoin’s Assurances" by Nic Carter: https://medium.com/@nic__carter/unpacking-bitcoins-assurances-a3c98824d3f0"In this post I will try and define the various guarantees that Bitcoin users can expect by taking advantage of the system’s features over the entire usage lifecycle — from acquisition to exit. Censorship resistance is central to these but not sufficiently comprehensive. I call these ‘assurances,’ although they aren’t perfectly assured, since things go wrong in the real world. (I’ve been a fan of ‘assurances’ in this context since reading this post.) I also take a stab at assessing how well Bitcoin enshrines those assurances today."
- "Bitcoin Governance" by Pierre Rochard - https://medium.com/@pierre_rochard/bitcoin-governance-37e86299470f
Proof of Work, Mining, and Energy Consumption
- "Blockchain Proof-of-Work Is a Decentralized Clock" by Gregory Trubetskoy: https://grisha.org/blog/2018/01/23/explaining-proof-of-work/This is an excellent essay to understand why Bitcoin's "Proof-of-Work" system is so revolutionary and essential.
- "Proof of Work is Efficient" by Dan Held https://medium.com/@danhedl/pow-is-efficient-aa3d442754d3
This article puts Bitcoin mining's electricity use in perspective. - "Beware of Lazy Research: Let’s Talk Electricity Waste & How Bitcoin Mining Can Power A Renewable Energy Renaissance" by Christopher Bendiksen of Coinshares: https://medium.com/coinshares/beware-of-lazy-research-c828c900b7d5
Coinshares' research exposes one consistent error in almost all studies, even by legitimate professional researchers, that seek to evaluate the carbon footprint of Bitcoin mining: they make the rediculous assumption that wherever mining takes place, the "average energy mix" is used as a source of electricity. That would be economically idiotic of bitcoin miners, when the clear incentive is to use the cheapest possible energy source to maximize profit, which is usually hydroelectric or other renewable sources. And after 2 years of serious investigation, Coinshares found that is exactly what miners use, to the tune of almost 80% on the conservative side of the estimate.