Arvind Narayanan

This textbook contains an in depth technical discussion of how bitcoin, and blockchains in general, work. It also covers the non-technical challenges associated with cryptocurrency and bitcoin in particular. While introduction to bitcoin articles give some idea of how bitcoin works, it took a deeper treatment like this to feel like I understood the details.

As someone who is mainly interested in blockchain as a technology rather than bitcoin in particular, the discussion of how the incentives for mining interact with the blockchain technology was particularly interesting because a non-currency blockchain is going to necessarily have a different incentive structure than a currency where the blockchain can generate and transfer value to reward mining.

By the way, a draft PDF of the book, which is what I read, is available from the authors: http://bitcoinbook.cs.princeton.edu/… (mere)