A Beginner’s Guide to Bitcoin: Full Table of Contents

Overview

  • Bitcoin vs Money
    • Bitcoin Overview
      • Basics
      • Processing Payments
      • The Distributed Ledger
    • Money Overview
      • Definitions
      • Properties
    • Is Bitcoin Money?
  • Why the Excitement?
    • Bitcoin is a New Form of Money
    • Bitcoin is an Unusual Payment Computer System
    • Bitcoin has No-One Running It or Resolving Disputes
    • New World Order
  • Why Does Bitcoin Have Any Value?
  • Problems with Bitcoin
    • Technical Problems
      • Can We Fix It?
    • Other Problems

Technical Description of Bitcoin

  • Introduction
  • One Big Book
    • A Big Paper Book
    • A Big Electronic Book
  • But One Big Book Isn’t Enough…
    • Lots of Big Books
    • The Distributed Ledger
    • Peer-to-Peer Networking
      • What is Peer-to-Peer?
      • Key Features for Bitcoin
      • Peer Discovery in Bitcoin
    • Public Book, Private Payments
    • Paying Amounts Other Than One Bitcoin
  • Paying For Bitcoin’s Computers
    • Printing Money: the Block Reward
    • Inflation
    • Only Valid Blocks Get Paid
    • Transaction Fees
  • The Blockchain
    • Description
    • Immutability, or Not
    • Distributed Ledger = Blockchain
    • Terminology
  • Being Consistent
    • The Problem
      • Network Latency
      • Inconsistent Data
      • Double Spend
    • Possible Solutions and Why They Don’t Work
    • Bitcoin’s Crazy Solution
      • Multiple Versions of the Book
      • Which Book Is The Right Book?
      • How This Works in Practice
    • Did Our Solution Make Things Worse?
      • General Chaos
      • We Can’t Tell If A Payment Is Processed
      • It May Be Possible To Manipulate The Ledger
  • Mining Basics
    • Recap
    • Slow It Down
    • Effects of Slowness
    • How To Slow It Down: Puzzles!
    • Puzzle Features
    • So They Called It ‘Mining’…
  • Mining Puzzles
    • Basic Puzzle
    • Hashing
    • Mining
    • Checking The Puzzle Was Solved
    • Summary: Proof of Work
  • Mining: Have We Solved The Problem?
    • General Operation
      • Why We Don’t Get So Many Versions of the Ledger
      • Two Versions of the Ledger are Still Possible
    • Confirmation of Payment
    • Double Spend
    • Manipulating the Ledger
    • 51% Attacks
      • Ledger Manipulation
      • Double Spend
      • Mitigation
  • Anonymity
    • Bitcoin Doesn’t Know Who You Are
    • Random Names
    • What We Call The Name
    • Signature Information Is All You Need
    • Wallets
  • Summary

Bitcoin Problems Analyzed

  • Introduction
  • Speed
    • Throughput
    • Time to Process an Individual Payment
    • Optimizations
    • The Block Size Debate
      • Changing Bitcoin Code is Difficult
    • Do We Need To Mine?  Proof of Stake
  • Electricity
    • Paying People To Run The Network
    • How Much Gets Paid
    • Modern Mining
    • How Much Electricity?
    • A Country’s Worth
    • Take A Step Back
  • Centralization

Beyond Bitcoin

  • Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers
    • Introduction
    • Terminology: Blockchain, Distributed Ledger
    • Private Blockchains
      • Public Blockchain vs Private Blockchain
      • Private Blockchains
      • Consequences
      • Solutions
      • An Old Solution
      • Value
  • Other Forms of Electronic Money