Preface
This book will teach you the technology of Bitcoin at a fundamental level. It doesn’t cover the monetary, economic, or social dynamics of Bitcoin, but knowing how Bitcoin works under the hood should give you greater insight into what’s possible. There’s a tendency to hype Bitcoin and blockchain without really understanding what’s going on; this book is meant to be an antidote to that tendency.
After all, there are lots of books about Bitcoin, covering the history and the economic aspects and giving technical descriptions. The aim of this book is to get you to understand Bitcoin by coding all of the components necessary for a Bitcoin library. The library is not meant to be exhaustive or efficient. The aim of the library is to help you learn.
Who Is This Book For?
This book is for programmers who want to learn how Bitcoin works by coding it themselves. You will learn Bitcoin by coding the “bare metal” stuff in a Bitcoin library you will create from scratch. This is not a reference book where you can look up the specification for a particular feature.
The material from this book has been largely taken from my two-day seminar where I teach developers all about Bitcoin. The material has been refined extensively, as I’ve taught this course more than 20 times, to over 400 people as of this writing.
By the time you’re done with the book, you’ll not only be able to create transactions, but also get all the data you need from peers and send the transactions over the network. It ...
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