Over the last 3-4 years, I’ve been learning more about the inner workings of Bitcoin and all the tech & finance surrounding it. In this post, I’d like to share the resources I used to get a better understanding of how Bitcoin works, its strengths and weaknesses.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, if you have resources you prefer I’d love to learn about them!
Note: some of these links contain affiliate references, I will get paid if you purchase any of these books.
Books
These books show the history of money, its importance in todays society and how Bitcoin can play a potential role.
Non-technical
These books focus on the concepts of money, its origins, its use in our every day life etc.
I never thought I’d become interested in seemingly simple questions like “where does money come from", but it’s opened a whole new world for me just reading about this.
- The Internet of Money by Andreas Antonopoulos
- The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous
- The Little Bitcoin Book by Timi Ajiboye, Luis Buenaventura, Alexander Lloyd, Jimmy Song, Alena Vranova, Alex Gladstein
I recommend these wholeheartedly.
Technical
These books focus on the technology of Bitcoin, which is mind-bogglingly fascinating and extremely complicated.
- Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain by Andreas Antonopoulos
These let you answer questions like “what is a Bitcoin?", “how does value get transmitted” and “how can you build smart money (‘smart contracts’)".
Podcasts
In no particular order, these are the podcasts I enjoy on the topic. Not every episode is equally good, but the good thing about podcasts is you can just pick the ones whose topic appeals to you.
Non-technical
These help with a variety of topics: the current economic state, the influence government has over money, the role Bitcoin already plays in other countries, …
- What Bitcoin Did Podcast by Peter McCormack
- The Pomp Podcast by Anthony Pompliano
- What Grinds My Gears by Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson
Technical
Audio isn’t always the best form to learn, especially for complex technologies like Bitcoin, but most of these episodes do a really good job at explaining in audio-form.
- The Stephan Livera Podcast
- Flippening by Clay Collins (semi-technical)
Would love to add tech-podcasts to the lists, but they’re hard to find.
Newsletters
Well I do love newsletters. :-)
There’s really only 1 that I can recommend: Bitcoin Optech. They feature summaries of new merges, BIPs (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) & tech for Bitcoin Core. It’s highly technical.
They did a series to explain bech32 spread over a couple of weeks that really helped see the implementation details, gaining a little more understanding every week.
Online content
These alone could keep you occupied for weeks:
- Jameson Lopp’s collection of resources
- Andreas M. Antonopoulos: his site is full of videos & explainers
What else would you recommend?