Technical
Mastering Bitcoin presents an introduction to the Bitcoin network and the bitcoin digital currency that is accessible to a non-technical audience. If you want to understand in depth how this technology works, this is the best book you can start with.
The author, Andreas Antonopoulos, also has a series of YouTube instruction videos that make a great counterpart to this text.
The Lightning Network is a Layer 2 technology that sits on top of the Bitcoin network and provides speed and scale.
It promises to exponentially grow the usage of the Bitcoin network and radically alter the global financial payments system.
This book takes a deep dive into how the Lightning Network works and is accessible to a non-technical audience.
For those who have a technical background and have interest in learning to code in Bitcoin, this book is for you.
The book covers the following (source: Amazon):
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Parse, validate, and create bitcoin transactions
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Learn Script, the smart contract language behind Bitcoin
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Do exercises in each chapter to build a Bitcoin library from scratch
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Understand how proof-of-work secures the blockchain
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Program Bitcoin using Python 3
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Understand how simplified payment verification and light wallets work
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Work with public-key cryptography and cryptographic primitives
Between August 2015 and November 2017 a 'war' was waged between those who wanted to keep the amount of data included in each bitcoin 'block' the same, and those who wanted to increase it.
This battle in the bitcoin community shone a light on debates around who can and should control the network. It tested bitcoin's ability to survive human intervention and the desire to control. Find out who and what ultimately prevailed in this surprisingly gripping book that marries technical concepts with human psychology.