Mastering Bitcoin

Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos
Publisher: EarninBtc
Final Release Date: December 2014
Pages: 298


Want to join the technological revolution that’s taking the world of finance by storm? Mastering Bitcoin is your guide through the seemingly complex world of bitcoin, providing the requisite knowledge to help you participate in the internet of money. Whether you’re building the next killer app, investing in a startup, or simply curious about the technology, this practical book is essential reading.

Bitcoin, the first successful decentralized digital currency, is still in its infancy and it’s already spawned a multi-billion dollar global economy. This economy is open to anyone with the knowledge and passion to participate. Mastering Bitcoin provides you with the knowledge you need (passion not included).

This book includes:

• A broad introduction to bitcoin—ideal for non-technical users, investors, and business executives.
• An explanation of the technical foundations of bitcoin and cryptographic currencies for developers, engineers, and software and systems architects.
• Details of the bitcoin decentralized network, peer-to-peer architecture, transaction lifecycle, and security principles.
• Offshoots of the bitcoin and blockchain inventions, including alternative chains, currencies, and applications.
• User stories, analogies, examples, and code snippets illustrating key technical concepts.

Table of Contents

1. Chapter 1: Introduction

   1. What Is Bitcoin?

   2. History of Bitcoin

   3. Bitcoin Uses, Users, and Their Stories

   4. Getting Started

2. Chapter 2: How Bitcoin Works

   1. Transactions, Blocks, Mining, and the Blockchain

   2. Bitcoin Transactions

   3. Constructing a Transaction

   4. Bitcoin Mining

   5. Mining Transactions in Blocks

   6. Spending the Transaction

3. Chapter 3: The Bitcoin Client

   1. Bitcoin Core: The Reference Implementation

   2. Using Bitcoin Core’s JSON-RPC API from the Command Line

   3. Alternative Clients, Libraries, and Toolkits

4. Chapter 4: Keys, Addresses, Wallets

   1. Introduction

   2. Bitcoin Addresses

   3. Implementing Keys and Addresses in Python

   4. Wallets

   5. Advanced Keys and Addresses

5. Chapter 5: Transactions

   1. Introduction

   2. Transaction Lifecycle

   3. Transaction Structure

   4. Transaction Outputs and Inputs

   5. Transaction Chaining and Orphan Transactions

   6. Transaction Scripts and Script Language

   7. Standard Transactions

6. Chapter 6: The Bitcoin Network

   1. Peer-to-Peer Network Architecture

   2. Nodes Types and Roles

   3. The Extended Bitcoin Network

   4. Network Discovery

   5. Full Nodes

   6. Exchanging “Inventory”

   7. Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) Nodes

   8. Bloom Filters

   9. Bloom Filters and Inventory Updates

   10. Transaction Pools

   11. Alert Messages

7. Chapter 7: The Blockchain

   1. Introduction

   2. Structure of a Block

   3. Block Header

   4. Block Identifiers: Block Header Hash and Block Height

   5. The Genesis Block

   6. Linking Blocks in the Blockchain

   7. Merkle Trees

   8. Merkle Trees and Simplified Payment Verification (SPV)

8. Chapter 8: Mining and Consensus

   1. Introduction

   2. Decentralized Consensus

   3. Independent Verification of Transactions

   4. Mining Nodes

   5. Aggregating Transactions into Blocks

   6. Constructing the Block Header

   7. Mining the Block

   8. Successfully Mining the Block

   9. Validating a New Block

   10. Assembling and Selecting Chains of Blocks

   11. Mining and the Hashing Race

   12. Consensus Attacks

9. Chapter 9: Alternative Chains, Currencies, and Applications

   1. A Taxonomy of Alternative Currencies and Chains

   2. Meta Coin Platforms

   3. Alt Coins

   4. Noncurrency Alt Chains

   5. Future of Currencies

10. Chapter 10: Bitcoin Security

    1. Security Principles

    2. User Security Best Practices

    3. Conclusion

11. Appendix Transaction Script Language Operators, Constants, and Symbols

12. Appendix Bitcoin Improvement Proposals

13. Appendix pycoin, ku, and tx

14. Appendix Available Commands with sx Tools