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
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
Useful Links
- Understanding Change Addresses - [4]
- Wikipedia Page on Bitcoin