Bitcoin for the Befuddled
Conrad Barski
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 1593275730
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Unless you've been living under a rock for the last couple of years, you've probably heard of Bitcoin—the game-changing digital currency used by millions worldwide.
But Bitcoin isn't just another way to buy stuff. It's an anonymous, revolutionary, cryptographically secure currency that functions without the oversight of a central authority or government. If you want to get into the Bitcoin game but find yourself a little confused, Bitcoin for the Befuddled may be just what you're looking for. Learn what Bitcoin is; how it works; and how to acquire, store, and spend bitcoins safely and securely.
You'll also learn:
- Bitcoin's underlying cryptographic principles, and how bitcoins are created
- The history of Bitcoin and its potential impact on trade and commerce
- All about the blockchain, the public ledger of Bitcoin transactions
- How to choose a bitcoin wallet that's safe and easy to use
- How to accept bitcoins as payment in your physical store or on your website
- Advanced topics, including Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin programming
With its non-technical language and patient, step-by-step approach to this fascinating currency, Bitcoin for the Befuddled is your ticket to getting started with Bitcoin. Get out from under the rock and get in the Bitcoin game. Just make sure not to lose your shirt.
see your fortune on the website. Welcome to the future! You’ve just made your first Bitcoin transaction! Electrum’s History section shows you the transactions you’ve made in the past. Transactions that display the word pending are not yet recorded on the Bitcoin public ledger (which typically occurs about 10 minutes after a transaction is sent). If you’re not interested in your fortune but want to practice sending bitcoins, you’ll be pleased to know that many charities and nonprofit organizations
valuable if you have reason to believe the price will soon increase. However, market orders have several important shortcomings. First, because you’re specifying that you’ll take any price to obtain your bitcoins quickly, there is always a rare chance the Bitcoin price might exhibit a momentary spike, forcing you to pay a much higher price than expected. Second, if a commodity (any commodity, in fact) is traded at a low volume, it usually will also have a large spread, which is a large gap
function. It is just as computationally difficult to calculate the public key (knowing the private key) as it is to guess the private key (knowing the public key). For the small number of points we were using in this chapter, it’s fine to use our bruteforce approach, but for practical applications, more efficient schemes for point multiplication need to be used. We leave this as an exercise for the reader. The Cryptography Behind Bitcoin 159 8 Bitcoin Mining New bitcoins are created
to be in the same category as private currencies, hundreds of which have existed in various forms in the past.2 Private currencies, whether issued by a person, a company, or a nonstate organization, are centrally controlled and run the risk of collapse due to bankruptcy or other economic failure. Bitcoin is not a company, nor does a single person or organization issue or control bitcoins; therefore, it has no central point of failure. For this reason, nobody can inflate the currency supply and
advanced hardware setup to be profitable at mining. In this case, more advanced hardware means hardware that consumes less electricity for every joule of energy it consumes. 12. Well, let’s just assume that’s the case for now. 178 Chapter 8 Figure 8-5: Profitability threshold curves for comparing hardware efficiency, electricity cost, and network hash rate on the Bitcoin network. Given your current electricity cost, a curve can be drawn that relates the efficiency needed by your mining