The Simple Bitcoin Course 2021

Explore how block chain and bitcoin address trust with cryptography, open-source transparency, and no middlemen, then break down the block chain components, how they change, and real-world bitcoin blocks.

Explore how sha-256 cryptographic hashes secure bitcoin transactions, acting as a fingerprint of data with fixed-length hexadecimal outputs and supporting ssl/https protection for online safety.

A block combines data, a block number, and the Norns value to produce a hash that starts with zeros, with mining achieving proof of work.

Understand how tokens drive transactions in a blockchain, with blocks, hashes, and mining that resist changes, and learn why tracking account balances via Coinbase matters for Bitcoin transfers.

Discover how mining issues bitcoins as block rewards on a blockchain, via coinbase, with 50 coins per block, using previous hashes and proof-of-work to prevent double spending and counterfeiting.

Explore how Bitcoin's blockchain records transactions from the genesis block, reveals the mining reward of 50 bitcoins, and demonstrates the proof-of-work process used to generate new blocks.

Explore how the first bitcoin blocks formed a blockchain in a peer-to-peer network, from Satoshi to Hal Finney, with mining, a bitcoin address, and 50 bitcoins.

Explore blockchain's transparency and real-world use cases, contrasting centralized block chains with distributed, decentralized platforms where creators and viewers transact directly, bypassing middlemen like ads and gatekeepers.

Explore electronic payments that rely on cryptographic proof instead of trust. See how a peer-to-peer timestamped system proves transaction order and helps prevent double spending and non-reversible transactions.

A time stamp server hashes a block of items, posts the hash in a newspaper or Usenet post, and links time stamps to the previous time stamp, forming a chain.

Learn how Bitcoin nodes broadcast transactions, assemble them into blocks via proof of work, and converge on the longest chain with fork handling and dropped-message tolerance.

Reclaim disk space by discarding old transactions after enough blocks, using a Merkle tree to include only the route in the block hash, and compact blocks by omitting interior hashes.

Combine and split value in Bitcoin transactions by using a single input or multiple inputs, with at most two outputs for payment and change, and avoid extracting a transaction history.

Explore how bitcoin privacy uses anonymous public keys to show transaction amounts and recipients without linking to individuals, and why using a new key pair per transaction reduces traceability.

Explore how cryptography underpins bitcoin security, how wallets, private keys, and seed phrases guard funds, and why losing them means permanent loss of bitcoins.

Discover a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that operates without a trusted third party, prevents double spending with hash-based proof-of-work and digital signatures, and uses the longest chain as proof.

The lecture questions whether transferable proof of work tokens can scale to provide monetary value, requiring a BitTorrent-like large network to detect and reject double spending quickly, given bandwidth.

Explains how simplified payment verification checks for double spending using a chain of block headers, and examines bandwidth needs, node roles, and transaction sizes as the bitcoin network grows.

Explain the social and political problems with Bitcoin and show how simplified payment verification relies on issuers and users to validate transfers, deter double spending, and withstand government sponsored attacks.

Analyze why the Bitcoin market lacks intrinsic value, faces 35 percent annual inflation from faster computers, and has no demand curve and no taxation or legal tender support.

Explore how a layer of account money atop bitcoins enables cheap, several transactions per second for file sharing, introducing Bitcoin Apink.

Explore how the bitcoin network relies on the collective cpu power of many small mining farms, turning them into honest nodes that deter attackers.

Defeating political problems requires more than cryptography; it shifts the arms race toward freedom by enabling resilient peer-to-peer networks that governments struggle to disable, like Tor.

Increase hardware speed adjusts mining difficulty with a moving average to steady blocks per hour over time. A planned money supply keeps production constant; deflation may occur if demand lags.

Examine proposed system flaws as James' pessimism questions tracking ownership by seniority and inflation, noting inflation that gets jiggered around from time to time to transfer wealth between voting blocks.

Explore how Bitcoin maintains a globally shared view of past transactions to prevent double spend, using proof-of-work to synchronize nodes and resolve conflicting transactions.

See how transaction fees address inflation by making outputs one cent less than input. The client could write one cent more than the payment, and proof-of-work block fees shape incentives.

Discover how irreversible payments arise within an hour as the network resolves double spend races, confirming transactions from unconfirmed to invalid through blocks that form roughly every 10 minutes.

Examine how to achieve a globally shared view of ownership in a distributed system, addressing incentives, knowledge layers, consensus, finality, and resilience to attacks using hash-based verification.

The lecture explains how a proof-of-work chain solves the Byzantine generals problem by requiring majority participation, using attack time announcements, and switching to the longest chain to achieve distributed synchronization.

Announces bitcoin’s first release as a decentralized electronic cash system with no central authority, detailing mining, 21 million cap, halving every four years, and peer-to-peer transfers.

Examine the alpha Bitcoin release, the capped supply and rising minting effort, and weigh a world wealth benchmark, 20 million coins at about ten million dollars each.

Examine initial use cases for Bitcoin as a non-trust based digital currency, including reward points, donation tokens, game currency, micro payments, and pay to send email.