Mastering Bitcoin

What Hacker News says

1. csomarJul 2025
   Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas A. is the best book you can read on the subject.
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2. max_Feb 2024
   I think "Specifying Systems" by Leslie Lamport should be on the list.

   Along with "Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain Book" by Andreas Antonopoulos

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3. csomarJan 2023
   1. Functional programing

   It took me a while, but once it clicked, everything changed. Programming became a process of data consumption, transformation and then presentation. It was if/then/loops/classes/libraries/languages before that.

   2. Entropy

   The example of the messy room that gets messier with time is probably the worst. Entropy is everywhere (in real life or in IT); and it’s actually the reverse of that example. For me now, entropy is life.

   3. Bitcoin

   I was quite a crypto/bitcoin skeptic back until 2014-2015. The whole thing seemed like a ponzi/pump&dumb scheme. Until I read the book “Mastering Bitcoin”. It goes into the details of how Bitcoin works. That’s when Bitcoin (as a cool technology) clicked to me. I still see the trading activity as suspicious but I made my peace with it as humans doing what humans always do: speculation.

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4. G3rn0tiDec 2022
   Well, the details are more convoluted than two sentences on a public forum can convey. If you are seriously interested in how digital money works, I suggest you to read „Mastering Bitcoin“ which I found quite accessible even without a strong background in cryptography. Once you understood the BTC network you get a good grasp of what ETH is doing.

   The former also employs an execution stack for running transactions but it is much more limited and I believe Turing incomplete (as a conscious choice).

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5. RustyConsulFeb 2022
   Read the Polkdadot Wiki at https://wiki.polkadot.network/. It explains most of the concepts involved in blockchain.

   Also some other books: Mastering Bitcoin Mastering Eth The Sovereign individual

   Then i would read the first 10 chapters of the rust book, then dive into substrate.

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6. reginoldDec 2021
   This seems like a massive question outside the scope of what this thread can deliver. Recommend reading "Mastering Bitcoin" by Andreas Antonopoulos!
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