Mastering bitcoin unlock digital cryptocurrencies

Название: Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies
Автор: Andreas M. Antonopoulos
Издательство: O’Reilly Media
Год: 2014
Формат: PDF
Размер: 10 Мб
Язык: английский / English

Mastering Bitcoin is essential reading for everyone interested in learning about bitcoin basics, the technical operation of bitcoin, or if you’re building the next great bitcoin killer app or business. From using a bitcoin wallet to buy a cup of coffee, to running a bitcoin marketplace with hundreds of thousands of transactions, or collaboratively building new financial innovations that will transform our understanding of currency and credit, this book will help you engineer money. You’re about to unlock the API to a new economy. This book is your key.

This book will help you learn everything you need to know about decentralized digital money, which is one of the most exciting technical revolutions in decades. Just as the Internet has transformed dozens of industries — from media and entertainment to retailing, travel and many more — decentralized digital money, in the form of crypto-currencies, has the ability to transform the foundations of money, credit and financial services. It also has the power to transform other social activities and institutions that we don’t usually associate directly with money, such as corporations, governance, voting and the law.

As the first successful digital currency, bitcoin is the natural starting point for anyone interested in decentralized digital money, its implications and applications. Mastering Bitcoin describes the technical foundations of bitcoin and other cryptographic currencies, from cryptography basics, such as keys and addresses, to the data structures, network protocols and the consensus mechanism («mining») that underpin bitcoin. Each technical topic is explained with user stories, elegant analogies and examples, and code snippets illustrating the key concepts. The first two chapters offer a broad and accessible introduction to bitcoin that is intended for all audiences, from new non-technical users to investors and business executives seeking to better understand bitcoin.

The remainder of the book dives into the technical details of bitcoin’s operation and is aimed at professional developers, engineers, software and systems architects, systems administrators and technically-minded people interested in the inner workings of bitcoin and comparable crypto-currencies. Mastering Bitcoin is intended to be used as a reference book for technical professionals, as a self-study guide for bitcoin entrepreneurs, and as a textbook for university courses on bitcoin and digital currencies.

Bitcoin is still in its infancy, and yet it has already spawned a multi-billion dollar, global economy that is growing exponentially. Both new and established companies are adding bitcoin as a payment method, and investors are funding a flurry of new bitcoin and related startups. Mastering Bitcoin can help you become part of this vibrant new economy. The time to get started is now.

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Mastering bitcoin unlock digital cryptocurrencies

Code Examples:

Mastering Bitcoin is a book for developers, although the first two chapters cover bitcoin at a level that is also approachable to non-programmers. Anyone with a basic understanding of technology can read the first two chapters to get a great understanding of bitcoin.

This repository contains the complete first edition, second print, published in December 2014, and the complete second edition, third print, published in March 2018, as published by O’Reilly Media in paperback and ebook formats.

Issues, Errors, Comments, Contributions

If you know how to make a pull request to contribute a fix, please write the correction and use a pull request to submit it for consideration against the develop branch. If you are making several changes, please use a separate commit for each to make it easier to cherry-pick or resolve conflicts. Otherwise, please submit an issue, explaining the error or comment. If you would like to contribute extensive changes or new material, please coordinate with the author first; contact information can be found on his website: https://antonopoulos.com/

Reading this book

To read this book, see book.asciidoc. Click on each of the chapters to read in your browser. Other parties may choose to release PDFs of the book online.

Chapter 1: ‘Introduction’
Chapter 2: ‘How Bitcoin Works’
Chapter 3: ‘Bitcoin Core: The Reference Implementation’
Chapter 4: ‘Keys, Addresses’
Chapter 5: ‘Wallets’
Chapter 6: ‘Transactions’
Chapter 7: ‘Advanced Transactions and Scripting’
Chapter 8: ‘The Bitcoin Network’
Chapter 9: ‘The Blockchain’
Chapter 10: ‘Mining and Consensus’
Chapter 11: ‘Bitcoin Security’
Chapter 12: ‘Blockchain Applications’

«Mastering Bitcoin (Second Edition, Second Print): Programming the Open Blockchain» is now available in paperback and ebook formats by many booksellers worldwide:

Mastering Bitcoin (First Edition Second Print) is also published in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese (Simplified) by publishers in the respective countries.

Mastering Bitcoin (Open Edition), based on the First Edition, has been translated by volunteers into more than a dozen languages. Translations are available for free under CC-BY-SA license at: https://bitcoinbook.info

The book’s source code, found in this repository, is kept synchronized with the print and ebook editions.

Mastering Bitcoin — First Edition

The tags Edition1Print1, Edition1Print2 correspond to the two existing prints of Mastering Bitcoin (First Edition) as published by O’Reilly Media.

Mastering Bitcoin — First Edition by Andreas M. Antonopoulos LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This «Free Culture» compliant license was approved by my publisher O’Reilly Media (http://oreilly.com), who understands the value of open source. O’Reilly Media is not just the world’s best publisher of technical books, but is also a strong supporter of this open culture and the sharing of knowledge.

Thank you O’Reilly Media!

Mastering Bitcoin — Second Edition

The tags, second_edition_print_1 and second_edition_print2, correspond to the first (June 8th, 2017) and second (July 20th, 2017) print of Mastering Bitcoin (Second Edition), as published by O’Reilly Media.

Mastering Bitcoin — Second Edition by Andreas M. Antonopoulos LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

If you are interested in translating this book, please join our team of volunteers at: https://www.transifex.com/aantonop/mastering-bitcoin

Free copies of «Mastering Bitcoin Open Edition,» translated in many languages, can be downloaded from: https://bitcoinbook.info

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Mastering Bitcoin 2nd Edition — Programming the Open Blockchain

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Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies

Want to join the technological revolution that’s taking the world of finance by storm? Mastering Bitcoin is your guide through the seemingly complex world of bitcoin, providing the requisite knowledge to help you participate in the internet of money. Whether you’re building the next killer app, investing in a startup, or simply curious about the technology, this practical Want to join the technological revolution that’s taking the world of finance by storm? Mastering Bitcoin is your guide through the seemingly complex world of bitcoin, providing the requisite knowledge to help you participate in the internet of money. Whether you’re building the next killer app, investing in a startup, or simply curious about the technology, this practical book is essential reading.

Bitcoin, the first successful decentralized digital currency, is still in its infancy and it’s already spawned a multi-billion dollar global economy. This economy is open to anyone with the knowledge and passion to participate. Mastering Bitcoin provides you with the knowledge you need (passion not included).

This book includes:

A broad introduction to bitcoin—ideal for non-technical users, investors, and business executives
An explanation of the technical foundations of bitcoin and cryptographic currencies for developers, engineers, and software and systems architects
Details of the bitcoin decentralized network, peer-to-peer architecture, transaction lifecycle, and security principles
Offshoots of the bitcoin and blockchain inventions, including alternative chains, currencies, and applications
User stories, analogies, examples, and code snippets illustrating key technical concepts . more

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I read Cryptocurrency by Paul Vigna and Michael Casey and I loved it. I was so mesmerized that I immediately sat down and wrote an eight page stream-of-consciousness account of what it left me thinking Bitcoin was. And in doing so I realized that I did not have a full grasp of the detail. Worse still, I also realized that when it comes to cryptocurrency the devil truly is in the detail.

My friends all said “buy some and you’ll soon understand better”

I’m a loser, so I read another book instead. Th I read Cryptocurrency by Paul Vigna and Michael Casey and I loved it. I was so mesmerized that I immediately sat down and wrote an eight page stream-of-consciousness account of what it left me thinking Bitcoin was. And in doing so I realized that I did not have a full grasp of the detail. Worse still, I also realized that when it comes to cryptocurrency the devil truly is in the detail.

My friends all said “buy some and you’ll soon understand better”

I’m a loser, so I read another book instead. This book.

I am beyond satisfied with my choice. Immensely satisfied. I say I loved Vigna and Casey’s book, but I liked Mastering Bitcoin more. It went through all the little nagging issues I had and one by one gave me the answers. And it gave answers to questions that had never occurred to me but in retrospect are very relevant.

So if you were wondering
• where exactly the public key is used
• what the difference is between the public key and the wallet address
• why a transaction hash is double the size of a bitcoin hash
• what exact puzzle the proof of work solves
• who awards Bitcoin to the successful miner
• what a 51% attack is
this book not only supplies the necessary computer code (and I could not possibly comment on whether it’s correct or not, I can’t code to save my life) but also fully motivates the reader to understand. And it takes you to places you’ve never been before, from Elliptic Curves all the way to Alt Coins.

Much as I don’t think it would cut it as a first introduction, I can’t recommend this book enough. Now I feel ready to go get my hands on some Bitcoin
. more

Side note. Andreas is too much in love with bitcoin and there were so much hype in the area that everyone forgot 1) this technology is free to access and improve for anyone, and 2) that Bitcoin economic concepts are amateurish and as a consequence — creating procyclical behavior. Way better and useful in practice things for me currently are smart contracts, DApps and private blockchains. And bitcoin. bitcoin is dead here, too slow to move to the next (censorship resistant, like Andreas This one

As example, few days ago in one morning created a simple image uploader to Interplanetary File System (IPFS) app that demonstrates how such solutions should work on the user side without various cumbersome half disk taking and slow blockchain downloads, registrations and human processing times. Add payment here and you get new hosting company that achieves 100% uptime w/o much cheaper than you can buy on Amazon on Google cloud. Not including, no one knows where your fiels are. Sorry, but technology is somewhat better than bitcoin’s. . more

The first book I read on the subject was Antony Lewis’ The basics of bitcoins and blockchains, which is an excellent book, and one that I highly recommend. Next, I wanted to read something with more technical details about the various constructs and operations (transaction, block, blockchain formats, hashes, Merkel trees, Bloom filters, etc.), with a view towards acquiring a working skill set for related applications, and I found Imran Bashir’s Mastering Blockchain. I went over half of Imran’s b The first book I read on the subject was Antony Lewis’ The basics of bitcoins and blockchains, which is an excellent book, and one that I highly recommend. Next, I wanted to read something with more technical details about the various constructs and operations (transaction, block, blockchain formats, hashes, Merkel trees, Bloom filters, etc.), with a view towards acquiring a working skill set for related applications, and I found Imran Bashir’s Mastering Blockchain. I went over half of Imran’s book, but felt that that is not quite the right technical book to start with. It is better as a reference book as Imran has tried to be fairly comprehensive about the main constructs and operations and other options and alternatives. Then I stumbled upon Anrdreas’ two books: this one, and Mastering Ethereum.

This book is a delight to read. The level of depth is just appropriate: neither too much, nor too little. The code examples are few and can be skipped, if so desired. Most of all I liked it for clarity of presentation. . more

Hardly a review (no rating), because what I’ve read is just an alpha (raw & unedited) version of this book, but it already looks quite promising:
* there’s quite a reasonable description of what bitcoin is and how do you cope with it (in functional terms)
* everything has its example
* there’s a brief (but reasonably sufficient) description of bitcoin tooling

What do I miss for now?
1.) Mathematical model is completely put aside — treated like magic noone would understand
2.) Book clearly is missing e Hardly a review (no rating), because what I’ve read is just an alpha (raw & unedited) version of this book, but it already looks quite promising:
* there’s quite a reasonable description of what bitcoin is and how do you cope with it (in functional terms)
* everything has its example
* there’s a brief (but reasonably sufficient) description of bitcoin tooling

What do I miss for now?
1.) Mathematical model is completely put aside — treated like magic noone would understand
2.) Book clearly is missing editor’s hand 🙂 But it’s understandable at this stage
3.) I had several moments when I started to doubt — how will this particular thingie work in future, won’t it cause a problem when bitcoin gains more popularity, etc. — unfortunately author doesn’t perform any deep analysis on his own, he doesn’t consider any risks — hopefully this will get fixed as the book gets completed

Quite a promising start. . more

As good a technical manual as anyone could ask for. The contents of this book are a treat for those curious and with a little bit of background in computer science. Cryptography, bloom filters, peer-to-peer networks, decentralized trust — it just doesn’t get much better than this.

Antonopoulos is a skilled tutor and, for having picked up English as a second (or third) language, does a commendable job of making things that are conceptually murky quite clear. The prose is to the point but not with As good a technical manual as anyone could ask for. The contents of this book are a treat for those curious and with a little bit of background in computer science. Cryptography, bloom filters, peer-to-peer networks, decentralized trust — it just doesn’t get much better than this.

If you’re curious, don’t hesitate. . more

For those who are interested in blockchain development:

— you will acquire basic terminology (mempool, proof-of-work, proof-of-stake, . )
— you will learn the basics: elliptic curve cryptography (ECC)
— you will find answers to such questions as:
a) why it takes

10 minutes to generate a block?
b) who sets the target complexity for the new block?

Feel free to skip some chapters, which are no interest to you (e.g. «using a wallet app»)

My overall recommendation: read it For those who are interested in blockchain development:

10 minutes to generate a block?
b) who sets the target complexity for the new block?

Feel free to skip some chapters, which are no interest to you (e.g. «using a wallet app»)

My overall recommendation: read it . more

Best book for technical people

If you are like grandma that does not understand technical words you may want to try something else. The thing is that bitcoin is hard to understand at the beginning and also at the end 😉 this book has cleared my mind with many things I didn’t understand. Awesome book very clear to explain such a difficult topic in depth Best book for technical people

It’s not often that a promising technology and hype coalesce. Most recently, that occurred with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency; while still relatively new, it has created a new global economy. In the second edition of Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain, author Andreas Antonopoulos creates a first-class Bitcoin reference. It provides the reader with a comprehensive understanding of what Bitcoin is, how it works, and how to use it.

Antonopoulos provides the rea It’s not often that a promising technology and hype coalesce. Most recently, that occurred with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency; while still relatively new, it has created a new global economy. In the second edition of Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain, author Andreas Antonopoulos creates a first-class Bitcoin reference. It provides the reader with a comprehensive understanding of what Bitcoin is, how it works, and how to use it.

Antonopoulos provides the reader with a deep technical dive and does a good job of explaining the difference between Bitcoin (a digital currency) and blockchain (its public transaction ledger). People confuse the two, thinking they are the same.

The book is written for end users who want to understand the technology and programmers who want to create technologies and software to operate within the Bitcoin ecosystem. There is a good amount of software code in the book. Those who lack the programming background can simply skip those sections.

Bitcoin’s operation is not like that of a conventional currency. It lacks any central authority, and, in fact, decentralization is a core element. Combined with its peer-to-peer architecture, it nonetheless can provide near-complete transaction anonymity and highly effective security. The core areas of the Bitcoin ecosystem are discussed here—from wallets, transactions, and blockchain to the underlying security and cryptography that make Bitcoin a trusted and secure digital currency.

Anyone who is curious about what Bitcoin is and wants to gain a thorough understanding of it will find this a most rewarding book. Ironically, if you want to purchase the book using Bitcoin, you might have to read the book first to understand how to do that. . more

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