Learning Bitcoin电子书

Learning Bitcoin

Table of Contents

Learning Bitcoin

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgments

About the Reviewers

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Free access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Setting up a Wallet

A brief history of money

Buying your first bitcoin in 15 minutes

Signing up for a wallet – five minutes

Adding a funding source – ten minutes

Buying bitcoin – less than a minute

Looking at your Bitcoin balance

Explaining Bitcoin addresses

Sending and receiving bitcoins

Sending bitcoins

Receiving bitcoins

Private keys and wallets

Transactions and confirmations

Transactions

Confirmations

Comparing Bitcoin wallets

Online wallets

Desktop wallets

Mobile wallets

Hardware wallets

Summary

2. Buying and Selling Bitcoins

Understanding Bitcoin's price volatility

Exchange rates

Bitcoin's price history

Price bubbles

Theft

Seizure

Following exchange rates and news

Price tickers

Detailed price tracking

Candlestick charts

Market orders

Trading techniques

News sources

Comparing Bitcoin exchanges

Volume and liquidity

Fees and commissions

Transfer limits

Jurisdiction and regulations

Service uptime

Trading Bitcoins on an exchange

Setting up an account

Depositing funds

Using Coinbase Exchange

Funding and orders

Order book and history

Price charts

Physical Bitcoins

Summary

3. Protecting Your Bitcoins

Storing your bitcoins

Bitcoin savings

Paper wallets

One time use paper wallets

Creating a paper wallet

Verifying your wallet's balance

Importing versus sweeping

Importing your paper wallet

Paper wallet guidelines

Paper wallet services

Brainwallets

Creating a brainwallet

Increasing brainwallet security

Deterministic wallets

Creating a deterministic wallet

Spending from a deterministic wallet

Type 2 Hierarchical Deterministic wallets

Installing a HD wallet

Bitcoins in cold storage

Cold storage with Electrum

Verifying access to a private key

Good housekeeping with Bitcoin

Summary

4. Understanding the Blockchain

The Genesis block

Satoshi Nakamoto

The whitepaper

The blockchain

Keys, transactions, and blocks

Creating a transaction

Digital signatures

Public key encryption

Signing a document

Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Bitcoin addresses

Cryptographic hashes

Generating a Bitcoin address

Signing a transaction

Decentralized network

Broadcasting the transaction

The blockchain

Blocks

Forks

The Bitcoin supply

Proof of work

Confirmation

Difficulty level

Mining

Solving a difficult problem

Transaction fees

Network attacks

51 percent attacks

Race attacks

Finney attacks

Alternative coins

Summary

5. Installing a Bitcoin Node

Understanding a Bitcoin node

Bitcoin Core

Internals of a node

Node discovery

Messaging

Maintaining a Blockchain

Transaction relaying

Bitcoin wallets

Installing the client

Requirements

Starting the client

Connecting to the network

Downloading the blockchain

Using the client

Encrypting your wallet

Backing up your wallet

Balance and history

Receiving transactions

Sending transactions

Executing Bitcoin operations

Opening the console

Working with an encrypted wallet

Working with Bitcoin addresses

Creating and sending a transaction

Generating a destination address

Selecting a funding source

Specifying a change address

Including a transaction fee

Defining the transaction in JSON

Encoding and signing the transaction

Reviewing the transaction

Broadcasting the transaction

Summary

6. Understanding the Mining Process

Digital gold

Bitcoin mining

Exploring the mining ecosystem

Validating transactions

Proof-of-Work

SHA-256

Scrypt

Mining rewards

Difficulty metrics

Mining hardware

Mining conditions

Mining pools

Mining shares

Fees and Payout

Cloud mining

Estimating profitability

Hardware efficiency

Factoring in the difficulty level

Selecting a currency

Exchange rates

Setting up a mining client

Requirements

Capital

Hardware

Facilities

Choosing the equipment

Choosing the software

Connecting to a mining pool

The payout method

The pool fees

The pool speed

Additional features

Avoiding large pools

Running the client

Summary

7. Programming Bitcoin

Programmable money

Decentralized applications

Blockchains

Public Blockchains

Permissioned Blockchains

Smart contracts

Installing BitcoinJS

Requirements

Beginning the installation

Editing the source code

Programming common Bitcoin operations

Checking your balance

Generating addresses for a website

Sending transactions

Simple transactions

Building an Escrow contract

Generating the keys

Generating the Escrow address

Creating a withdraw script

Signing the transaction

Broadcasting the transaction

Refunding

Summary

8. Exploring Alternative Coins

Open source money

The rise of the alt-coin

Namecoin

Decentralized domain name service

Merged mining

Litecoin

Block rate

Scrypt mining

Peercoin

Proof-of-stake

Primecoin

Prime numbers

Mining prime numbers

Evaluating an alt-coin

Developer activity

Launching of the alt-coin

The legitimate feature set

Protocols built on the Bitcoin Blockchain

Digital assets

Building a voting system with Counterparty

The XCP alt-coin

Creating a voting system

Creating a wallet

Funding the wallet

Creating the tokens

Sending tokens

Casting votes

Verifying the results

Finishing up

The future of finance

Index