Sunday, February 16, 2014

Understand Bitcoin in 30 Minutes

As more people hear about Bitcoin in the media, more people ask themselves, "What the heck is a Bitcoin?"

I think it could be one of the most important and disruptive inventions of my (and your) lifetime.

If I'm right (or maybe only partly right), maybe you should invest some time into learning about it now. How about 30 minutes? That's not too long, right? We'll start slow. Ready?

Let's start with this post from successcouncil copied and reposted by sumBTC in the Bitcoin subreddit:
I say... the Internet makes everything better right? Email is better than sending letters, Google is better than card catalogs at a library. But we didn’t have real Internet money until recently. It turns out there was a really good reason: How do I know you didn't copy your Internet money and send it to someone else before you sent it to me? Meaning, you used the same money twice. Well this long standing problem only got solved a few years back by some unknown genius and now we have real Internet money. Soon the whole world will be using it, just like Email and Google.
So... Internet money. Cool. But it's more than that... if you're a visual / audio learner, hit up this 4 minute intro video:


Here's another great read which will eat up 6 minutes: Explain Bitcoin Like I’m Five.

At this point, you have the basics. And we're only 10 minutes in!

OK, now we're moving past the kid's stuff. Time to put on your big boy pants. This is the original and best description of the entire system. The original Bitcoin Paper by Satoshi Nakamoto (whoever that is). Go ahead and give it a read. It will take about 20 minutes. If you're more of an audible learner, you can listen to Stefan Monyluex read it to you here.

I started learning about Bitcoin over a year ago and unfortunately did not read the Bitcoin Paper early on. I opened it up, saw academic looking diagrams, scary math symbols and such and quickly closed it. Please, try to give it a read. It's only 8 pages. If you can get through it, you'll understand more about Bitcoin than many of the reporters I've seen commenting on it over the last year.

30 minutes isn't too much of an investment for understanding this incredible system. The next time someone mentions Bitcoin, tell them you've read the original paper. They will be impressed.

If this post saved you some time, feel free to send a portion of that saved time to me as bitcoin. You can use your normal average hourly rate :) 1KkCSkdjsjQyxfTbrZrrnsY31XZziWzhzN

 Did that do it for you? Do you get it now? Please leave a comment and let me know. Also, please share your favorite resources explaining Bitcoin.

 Some other posts I've done you may enjoy:

Posted by Unknown at 3:10 PM 6 comments
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