An interactive, exercise-heavy approach to learning Bitcoin | Hacker News Reader

An interactive, exercise-heavy approach to learning Bitcoin

bitcoindevs.xyz

48 pointsjrakibi11 comments

Say what you want about the ultimate merits of cryptocurrency (and I'd really like to avoid that debate here), but the actual technology behind Bitcoin is fascinating. If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading the original whitepaper. It is elegant, in the mathematical sense.

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Indeed, as a technology, there's a lot to learn from Bitcoin.

The possibility that a fully decentralized platform can exist without peer trust still blows my mind.

Absolutely. Now if it only could exist without all the energy consumption, grifting and money laundering that would be even more mind blowing.

We already have money that doesn't take any energy to create and look where that got us.

Gold is proof of work and look at how that has stood the test of time.

Ultimately, money is a high-level form of energy. It's only natural that it takes energy of equal value to create it.

That is a common misconception and, it would appear, one that’s purposefully cultivated. You need to trust at least three things: that the math doesn’t have some sort of loophole, that the code you are running does what it sais on the tin and does so flawlessly and that the network works they way it is supposed to with no party gaining sufficient leverage. None of this can be taken for granted. I’m not arguing that you _can’t_ trust these things, I’m saying you must trust them to be true.

For a layman, the model really is no different than trusting a bank: they have no capability to validate the math and the software just comes from some central source along with the network governance. In addition, they’d need to trust the exchange they use and there’s little practical difference left with just sticking with money. But, hey, it’s technology so it must be good, right?

The point is that you don't need to trust anyone in particular i.e. trust is not enforced (never a good thing). You get to choose who you trust. You can choose not trust anyone and create and run a bitcoin node with first-hand knowledge of every single component and machine code instruction if you like.

Throughout history, fiat currencies have corrupted societies and failed over and over and over again because you simply can't trust humans not to counterfeit it albeit "legally" through QE, bank loans etc.

I'm kind of surprised about how simple a lot of the core concepts are.

I think one of the most insightful pieces of the Bitcoin systems is the realization that with proper incentives, human behavior (ie, the miners) can be reliable enough that you can use it as a component in an engineered system.

It's really changed how I think about social structures/governments/society as a whole.

A couple of years ago, I completed the “Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies” course on Coursera and I quite enjoyer it, especially the graded programming exercises.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency

(Not affiliated)

pretty good, this development environment changes very slowly, which some here might find to be a breath of fresh air

using bitcoin at the native level is almost a lost art but also very powerful, which is something else people might enjoy

Is there something similar but for Ethernum?

the Ethereum white paper is decent, and look up more literature on the "EVM", since that has captured most developer mindshare over the half decade

its primarily EVM or solidity "smart contract development", as the account system is far simpler than Bitcoin's UTXO system

Reply on news.ycombinator.com