Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies [draft]

Description

There’s a lot of excitement about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Optimists claim that Bitcoin willfundamentally alter payments, economics, and even politics around the world. Pessimists claimBitcoin is inherently broken and will suffer an inevitable and spectacular collapse.Underlying these differing views is significant confusion about what Bitcoin is and how it works. Wewrote 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 technicallevel. Bitcoin truly is a new technology and we can only get so far by explaining it through simpleanalogies to past technologies.We’ll assume that you have a basic understanding of computer science — how computers work, datastructures and algorithms, and some programming experience. If you’re an undergraduate orgraduate student of computer science, a software developer, an entrepreneur, or a technologyhobbyist, this textbook is for you.In this book we’ll address the important questions about Bitcoin. How does Bitcoin work? Whatmakes it different? How secure are your bitcoins? How anonymous are Bitcoin users? Whatapplications can we build using Bitcoin as a platform? Can cryptocurrencies be regulated? If we weredesigning 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 whenreading claims about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. You’ll have the conceptual foundations youneed to engineer secure software that interacts with the Bitcoin network. And you’ll be able tointegrate ideas from Bitcoin into your own projects.