Bitcoin

Basics

• The First Decentralized Cryptocurrency
• May not be the best, but it is widely in use compared to other cryptocurrencies
• Part of the Open Source Currency Construction Set

Seminal Books

• Andreas Antonopoulos - Mastering Bitcoin - [1]
• Top 3 books by Investopedia - [2]
• Article on Medium - follow this thread - simple nontechnical examples for aha moments - [3]

Notes

• The wallet is a public-private key pair
• Hardware wallet or paper copy is safest - ledger nano s, or https://trezor.io/
• The hardware wallet should have a display. The display is used to generate your key pair if you lose - you can recreate your key pair by 20 words that you write down or remember.
• Exchanges typically store your private key.
• Private key is what is used to access your wallet
• Miners - ant miners pay for themselves in a few month.

Hardware Wallets

• About - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardware_wallet

Lex Comments

Saw your post about skycoin...

I would say *any* crypto currencies that relies on CPU intensive mining is not "appropriate" technology. It's wasteful and dumb :-)

Even the 2nd most popular crypto currency, Ethereum, is very actively looking to move away from wasteful mining and actually already is pushing out a new Proof-of-Stake algorithm:

https://www.coindesk.com/ethereums-big-switch-the-new-roadmap-to-proof-of-stake/

Basically, look for anything other than PoW (Proof-of-Work).

Here is a short primer on the various other census algorithms:

https://www.coindesk.com/short-guide-blockchain-consensus-protocols/

Eric's Comments

In regards to wasteful mining, that is why i find FairCoin more appealing than bitcoin. Really worth a look. I mainly added this page because bitcoin is really common, and it was the first major cryptocurrency to take off.

See Also

• Open Source Currency Construction Set
• Open Source Bitcoin Mining Rig

Useful Links

• Bitcoin Whitepaper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
• Understanding Change Addresses - [4]
• Wikipedia Page on Bitcoin