Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technologies

Notes on the 2018 edition of the Coursera MOOC Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies by Princeton University.

About this course:

To really understand what is special about Bitcoin, we need to understand how it works at a technical level. We’ll address the important questions about Bitcoin, such as:

How does Bitcoin work? What makes Bitcoin different? How secure are your Bitcoins? How anonymous are Bitcoin users? What determines the price of Bitcoins? Can cryptocurrencies be regulated? What might the future hold?

After this course, you’ll know everything you need to be able to separate fact from fiction when reading claims about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. You’ll have the conceptual foundations you need to engineer secure software that interacts with the Bitcoin network. And you’ll be able to integrate ideas from Bitcoin in your own projects. Course Lecturers: Arvind Narayanan, Princeton University

Lessons:

  1. Cryptographic hash functions
  2. Digital signature
  3. Hash pointers
  4. Centralization and decentralization
  5. Distributed consensus