Mastering Bitcoin

by Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Riccardo Masutti (Translator)

Unisciti alla rivoluzione tecnologica che sta conquistando il mondo della finanza! Mastering Bitcoin è la tua guida che spiega e semplifica il mondo apparentemente complesso di Bitcoin, fornendoti le conoscenze necessarie per partecipare all'internet of money e comprendere pienamente cos'è la blockchain, cos'è bitcoin, come utilizzarlo e la programmazione che ne è alla base.Che tu stia costruendo la prossima killer app relativa a Bitcoin, investendo in una startup blockchain e/o fintech, o sei semplicemente curioso riguardo questa tecnologia rivoluzionaria e open source questo libro è una lettura essenziale e la miglior scelta per iniziare col piede giusto.La traduzione in italiana è stata curata da Riccardo Masutti, noto membro nella comunità italiana e mondiale di Bitcoin.
Bitcoin, la prima moneta digitale decentralizzata di successo è ancora agli albori eppure ha già creato un'economia globale da centinaia di miliardi di dollari. Questa new economy è aperta a chiunque abbia la conoscenza, la voglia e la passione per parteciparvi. Mastering Bitcoin fornisce la conoscenze, sia tecniche che teoriche di cui hai bisogno, tu ci metti semplicemente la passione.

La seconda edizione include: Una migliore traduzione e formattazione Un'ampia introduzione al bitcoin e alla blockchain che ne è alla base, ideale per utenti non tecnici, investitori e dirigenti aziendali Una spiegazione delle basi tecniche di bitcoin, della crittografia e delle valute virtuali; adatto sia a sviluppatori, ingegneri e architetti di sistemi e software Dettagli sulla rete decentralizzata di bitcoin, la blockchain, dell'architettura peer-to-peer (p2p), il ciclo di vita della transazione e i principi di sicurezza Oltre 30% di contenuti in più tra cui nuovi sviluppi come Segregated Witness, Canali di pagamento e Lightning Network Spiegazione migliorata di chiavi, indirizzi e portafogli Storie degli utilizzatori, eleganti analogie, esempi e frammenti di codice ad illustrazione dei concetti chiave
Andreas M. Antonopoulos è un noto tecnologo e imprenditore che è diventato una delle figure più conosciute e rispettate nell'ambito bitcoin. Divulgatore, scrittore e insegnante. Andreas è consulente di molteplici start up tecnologiche e tiene regolarmente conferenze ed eventi pubblici in tutto il mondo.

Genres: Finance, Technology, Nonfiction, Computer Science, Economics, Programming, Business

411 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2014

About the author

Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a technologist and serial entrepreneur who has become one of the most well-known and well-respected figures in bitcoin. He is the author of two books: “Mastering Bitcoin”, published by O’Reilly Media and considered the best technical guide to bitcoin and “The Internet of Money”, a book about why bitcoin matters.

As an engaging public speaker, teacher and writer, Andreas makes complex subjects accessible and easy to understand. As an advisor, he helps startups recognize, evaluate, and navigate security and business risks. Andreas was also one of the first to use the phrase “The Internet of Money”, as early as 2013, to describe bitcoin as part of his speaking business.

As a bitcoin entrepreneur, Andreas has founded a number of bitcoin businesses and launched several community open-source projects. He is a widely published author of articles and blog posts on bitcoin, is a permanent host on the popular Let’s Talk Bitcoin Podcast, and a frequent speaker at technology and security conferences worldwide.

Andreas offers strategic consulting to a small number of crypto-currency companies that are aligned with his interests. He also offers expert witness testimony as an expert in the security, technical details and use of crypto-currencies, worldwide.

Reviews

[Athan Tolis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Cryptocurrency by Paul Vigna and Michael Casey and I loved it. I was so mesmerized that I immediately sat down and wrote an eight page stream-of-consciousness account of what it left me thinking Bitcoin was. And in doing so I realized that I did not have a full grasp of the detail. Worse still, I also realized that when it comes to cryptocurrency the devil truly is in the detail.

My friends all said “buy some and you’ll soon understand better”

I’m a loser, so I read another book instead. This book.

I am beyond satisfied with my choice. Immensely satisfied. I say I loved Vigna and Casey’s book, but I liked Mastering Bitcoin more. It went through all the little nagging issues I had and one by one gave me the answers. And it gave answers to questions that had never occurred to me but in retrospect are very relevant.

So if you were wondering
• where exactly the public key is used
• what the difference is between the public key and the wallet address
• why a transaction hash is double the size of a bitcoin hash
• what exact puzzle the proof of work solves
• who awards Bitcoin to the successful miner
• what a 51% attack is
this book not only supplies the necessary computer code (and I could not possibly comment on whether it’s correct or not, I can’t code to save my life) but also fully motivates the reader to understand. And it takes you to places you’ve never been before, from Elliptic Curves all the way to Alt Coins.

Much as I don’t think it would cut it as a first introduction, I can’t recommend this book enough. Now I feel ready to go get my hands on some Bitcoin

[Juvoni · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a technologist and investor in Bitcoin, coming from a value investing background, I felt uncomfortable getting lucky investing in Bitcoin based on speculation as it was hard to wrap my mind around the utility and potential of Bitcoin.
Reading Mastering Bitcoin has significantly improved my understanding of the Protocol where I finally feel like I’m starting to get it. The book goes over the technicals of how Bitcoin works from keys, addresses, wallets & transactions, the scripting language, the blockchain, the bitcoin network, mining, bitcoin security and more. This is a technical book, and the examples take some understanding of Computer Science, high-level cryptography, Networking, statistics, and mathematics to follow through as Andreas drills down into the underlying technical implementations behind the core features of the protocol.
The book is still approachable if you don’t know how to code, but can understand technical abstractions. It was fascinating to journey through the layering of the technology and evolution to solve complex decentralization and security problems. The book has a lot of additional references and graphs to bring additional context to the what, where, how and why certain things are done in Bitcoin which made the material easier to absorb

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent overview of Bitcoin that simultaneously presents the big picture in a very readable way while also providing very specific details of how the protocol works, complete with examples. Technical writing, as it should be.

[Tadas Talaikis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one

Side note. Andreas is too much in love with bitcoin and there were so much hype in the area that everyone forgot 1) this technology is free to access and improve for anyone, and 2) that Bitcoin economic concepts are amateurish and as a consequence - creating procyclical behavior. Way better and useful in practice things for me currently are smart contracts, DApps and private blockchains. And bitcoin... bitcoin is dead here, too slow to move to the next (censorship resistant, like Andreas says, and user friendly) level.

As example, few days ago in one morning created a simple image uploader to Interplanetary File System (IPFS) app that demonstrates how such solutions should work on the user side without various cumbersome half disk taking and slow blockchain downloads, registrations and human processing times. Add payment here and you get new hosting company that achieves 100% uptime w/o much cheaper than you can buy on Amazon on Google cloud. Not including, no one knows where your fiels are. Sorry, but technology is somewhat better than bitcoin's.

[Dalan Mendonca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great peek into the technical aspects of bitcoin/the blockchain. Having read more high level descriptions, I was always curious about the implementation details. This book provides quite a satisfactory introduction to this universe.

[Eugene]

History of bitcoin and a very detailed description of bitcoin and blockchain functionality accompanied with source code snippets to see how it is coded in real life applications. Good introduction into blockchgain for techie people.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

First couple chapters are a nice, basic description of Bitcoin protocol, how it works. The rest is technical. Clear.

[Makmild · Rating 5 out of 5]

หนังสือบอกราก (วิธีการทำงาน) ของบิทคอยน์แบบละเอียด และวิธีการเล่าก็ง่าย เห็นภาพ แอนเดรียสอธิบายการทำงานนามธรรมให้เป็นรูปธรรมได้เข้าใจง่ายสุดๆ ไปเลย

[Akbar Madan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book discusses the formation of this virtual world, and in a beautiful and simple language, you will understand all the processes related to cryptocurrency, some of which are specialized and difficult to understand, but will surround these modern formations and their relationship to the virtual world, which gives us many models. Bitcoin has a history that we must understand in order to understand how it works and understand transfers. The financial situation that occurs based on very modern applications that are based mainly on the decentralization standard in all operations, including Mining, and the blockchain system, which is one of the most wonderful systems that has a very high level of security, international financial policies are trying to keep pace with this world and engage in it in a very cautious way because it will It is shifting from centralization to decentralization, which is the most dangerous idea that politicians can imagine as a real reality that includes the global financial system.

[Bilal · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first book I read on the subject was Antony Lewis' The basics of bitcoins and blockchains, which is an excellent book, and one that I highly recommend. Next, I wanted to read something with more technical details about the various constructs and operations (transaction, block, blockchain formats, hashes, Merkel trees, Bloom filters, etc.), with a view towards acquiring a working skill set for related applications, and I found Imran Bashir's Mastering Blockchain. I went over half of Imran's book, but felt that that is not quite the right technical book to start with. It is better as a reference book as Imran has tried to be fairly comprehensive about the main constructs and operations and other options and alternatives. Then I stumbled upon Anrdreas' two books: this one, and Mastering Ethereum.

This book is a delight to read. The level of depth is just appropriate: neither too much, nor too little. The code examples are few and can be skipped, if so desired. Most of all I liked it for clarity of presentation.

[Sebastian Gebski]

Hardly a review (no rating), because what I've read is just an alpha (raw & unedited) version of this book, but it already looks quite promising:
* there's quite a reasonable description of what bitcoin is and how do you cope with it (in functional terms)
* everything has its example
* there's a brief (but reasonably sufficient) description of bitcoin tooling

What do I miss for now?
1.) Mathematical model is completely put aside - treated like magic noone would understand
2.) Book clearly is missing editor's hand :) But it's understandable at this stage
3.) I had several moments when I started to doubt - how will this particular thingie work in future, won't it cause a problem when bitcoin gains more popularity, etc. - unfortunately author doesn't perform any deep analysis on his own, he doesn't consider any risks - hopefully this will get fixed as the book gets completed

Quite a promising start.

[Dalton Sweeney · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for anyone with a STEM background who wants to do their due diligence on bitcoin and understand its technical underpinnings. The book does an excellent job of dispelling the vast majority of FUD seen in the media. That being said, there is valid criticism against the underlying technology (e.g. 51% attack, slow transaction confirmation, etc.) and the book doesn't shy away from discussing that either, so I would say it is a fair presentation of the benefits and drawbacks of the bitcoin network.

[Ryan West · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great technical overview of the inner workings of Bitcoin. It gave a good introduction for any intelligent audience, but then dove into all of the technical details. I had to pause to look up some concepts at times, but adding more detail would have made the book too long. This book did not fully cover the economic or business implications of Bitcoin, and was instead intended for developers.

[Matthias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally the kind of comprehensive treatment on blockchains I was looking for. Incredibly dense with information, might have to reread it in parts. Some glaring structural and pacing issues (I didn't really need to know all the bloody details of multisig wallets before even knowing how blocks are assembled)

[Boyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best (technical) books I have read recently! It provides a lot of information about cryptocurrencies and bitcoin in particular. I like the balance between technical and non-technical information in the book. Plus, the technical one is described in an interesting way (this is often a big challenge). It gave me a good in-depth knowledge about bitcoin.

[Gergely Szabo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andreas is definitely my favorite person in the cryptocurrency world. He makes this deep and complex topic fairly accessible to laymen. The basics of cryptography are explained, however I still recommend reading some introductory material in the field before starting. I will definitely refer back to the book as It includes the hottest topics in the field, like the Lightning Network.

[Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The ultimate guide to understanding how bitcoin and blockchain technology works under the hood, explained in an easy to read manner, with references and in an ordered way.
Andreas has outdone himself in this one.

[Jeremy Zhang · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to read a book detailing the opportunities and landscape of the industry. But this book delves deep into the technical implementations of Bitcoin. Wasn't exactly what I was looking for.

[Hayal şensoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished recently but I have a quite strong feeling to read it again...

[Simon Eskildsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wanted to understand more about the underlying tech. Decent walk-through at a technical level, but found myself somewhat puzzled by how the author went through some explanations.

[Reynard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Questo è il libro migliore per capire in profondità come funziona bitcoin, non ci sono confronti con i vari libriccini che promettono di spiegare tutto ma che poi si rivelano sempre molto superficiali. Se volete capire il bitcoin leggete questo testo saltando la parte tecnica (poco utile per quasi tutti), la potrete sempre affrontare in un secondo momento se ne sentirete la necessità. Il mio voto: 4 stelle.

[Mia Reynolds · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me rethink Bitcoin:
It's not a bubble, nor a myth, but an open technology that will change the world.
Understanding its technical logic reveals its future role in cross-border payments, value storage, and free finance.
In summary, *Mastering Bitcoin* is a book that transforms you from a "speculator" into an "understander." It may not make you invest immediately, but it will give you a deeper and more solid understanding of the entire crypto world.

[Hussein Elsayed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice book. It covers the fundamentals of the bitcoin and blockchain ecosystem in great detail. It starts with a decent introduction to Bitcoin history and the high-level building blocks it; Then dives into each of its components.

[Francisco Segundo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Único material que eu encontrei com uma abordagem mais técnica e aprofundada do assunto, cobrindo desde o zero até um nível suficiente para o entendimento de bitcoin e blockchain.

[Duman Kd · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent overview of how Bitcoin works. Doesn't go too much into technical details than necessary, yet explains everything in a easy-to-follow way.

[Zaki Ulfauzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book to know what is the technology behind cryptocurrency

[Rohit]

This book has a lot of technical stuff most of which went way over my head. Still, I learned a lot from this book.

[Hairold Gelderkorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, I mean, where do I even begin?? I dove into the book with limited technical understanding of the topic, figuring I’d have to bow out after 50-100pgs due to my perceived incoherence of content. I, however, was pleasantly surprised to find that, while some areas (eg the code snippets) were tough, the book covered so many different topics and helped me cumulatively build a knowledge base, which made the read fun as all hell! I repeatedly found myself asking questions only to find that they were explicitly answered by the author a few pages later; a very gratifying reader experience.

Did I at times find myself browsing Bitcoin Stack Exchange for even more simplified explanations? Yes! Did I have to incessantly bother Core devs [you know who you are :)], driving them sour with disappointment? Oh yes, mamacita! But, all worth it in the end, no?

If you’re passionate about Bitcoin, I would definitely recommend, regardless of your degree of understanding and technical knowledge.

I’m told the author and his signature widow’s peak has garnered fangirldom over the years; after reading this book, consider me one of them!!!

[Jamesob · Rating 5 out of 5]

As good a technical manual as anyone could ask for. The contents of this book are a treat for those curious and with a little bit of background in computer science. Cryptography, bloom filters, peer-to-peer networks, decentralized trust -- it just doesn't get much better than this.

Antonopoulos is a skilled tutor and, for having picked up English as a second (or third) language, does a commendable job of making things that are conceptually murky quite clear. The prose is to the point but not without character; again, about the best you can ask for in technical readings.

If you're curious, don't hesitate.

[Anton · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those who are interested in blockchain development:

- you will acquire basic terminology (mempool, proof-of-work, proof-of-stake, ...)
- you will learn the basics: elliptic curve cryptography (ECC)
- you will find answers to such questions as:
a) why it takes ~10 minutes to generate a block?
b) who sets the target complexity for the new block?

Feel free to skip some chapters, which are no interest to you (e.g. "using a wallet app")

My overall recommendation: read it