Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. I am not a financial advisor. What follows is my personal, subjective, biased opinion.
One of my favorite places on the internet is the subreddit ‘Today I Learned.’ You can pick up seemingly random, yet astounding facts, a lot of which you’ll find yourself coming back to at a later point in life in an entirely different context.
For example, while I did a presentation about The Great Gatsby in high school, I didn’t know he died before being recognized for his work. It was only after the book was shipped to WWII soldiers overseas that it started selling and became a classic, which still sells 500,000 copies a year today. I used that fact on a book list I compiled two years ago, which turned into an article, which grew into a feature piece summarizing my biggest learnings yesterday.
In that sense, facts are like atoms: you never know how random collisions might one day turn out. Welcome to the bonus section of Bitcoin for Beginners! So far, we’ve learned why Bitcoin is important, how it might change money, how it works on a high level, why people are investing, and where that market stands right now. We’ve talked about market predictions, mass adoptions, and how regulation might work out.
Bitcoin for Beginners
1. Why Should You Care About Bitcoin?
2. 7 Ways Bitcoin Will Make You Rethink Money Forever
3. How Does Bitcoin Work?
4. Why Is Everyone Investing in Bitcoin?
5. Why Market Predictions Are Almost Always Wrong
6. Where Is Bitcoin in the History of the World’s Greatest Bubbles?
7. 7 Big Obstacles to Mass Adoption of Blockchain Technology
8. 3 Potential Paths Cryptocurrency Regulations Could Take (and Which One’s Most Likely)
9. The 15 Best Resources To Learn More About Bitcoin
10. Granny’s Bitcoin Cheat Sheet
But there’s so much more! And while I can’t provide all the answers, I’d like to give you a few starting points to fire up your particle accelerator. Here are the 15 best Bitcoin resources for beginners, sorted in order of usefulness and the time it takes to consume them.
1. What Is Bitcoin? (1 min)
The official explainer video from Bitcoin.org, a community funded public resources to inform people about the currency.
2. Understand The Blockchain In Two Minutes (2 min)
Another explainer from the Institute for the Future’s Blockchain Lab. Nicely rounds out the video above to help you mentally begin separating blockchain the technology from Bitcoin the currency.
3. Crypto TimeLine (10 min)
Adam Hadar has a knack for coding side projects. Crypto TimeLine is one of my favorites, as it’s a short, clean overview of the most important events in Bitcoin’s 10-year history. Should take you about ten minutes to get the gist.
4. Explain Bitcoin Like I’m Five (6 min)
Using apples as an example, Nik Custodio breaks down how blockchain facilitates real-world transactions, using everyday metaphors.
5. Why Blockchain Matters More Than You Think (15 min)
This video opens you up to the possibilities of blockchain some more. It branches away from Bitcoin to Ethereum and other blockchain uses cases and potential applications. Dagogo Altraide does a great job at narration.
6. Anders’s Blockchain Demo (20 min)
With the potential and high-level functions in the clear, it’s time to learn how the technology actually works. This is a crucial part of understanding and if you ever want to get serious about investing, building, or working in and around blockchain, you cannot skip it. It’ll take a while, but thanks to Anders Brownworth, you can learn about this complex technology in simple ways.
7. Sean’s Coin Demo (10 min)
Once you’ve seen a blockchain in action, you can top this new knowledge off by re-building a few Bitcoin blocks of your own at the click of a button. Sean Han has built a neat web app that lets you understand how transactions, mining, and the addition of new blocks work. He’s included a walkthrough and an article to go along with it.
8. Blockchain Charts (5 min)
After this deep dive, it’s time for a breather by looking at some fun stats and numbers you now also understand. Blockchain.info has a great collection of charts and graphs to help you get a grasp of the size of the Bitcoin ecosystem.
9. Bitcoin Vocabulary (5 min)
Next, you can catch up on any terms you might’ve missed or at least briefly skim through this list, mainly as prep for the next, very important resource.
10. The Original Bitcoin Whitepaper (30 min)
Every person in crypto should read at least parts of this at some point. It’s neither too technical, nor too complex in language, and only nine pages. Not just relevant from a tech perspective, but also regarding Bitcoin’s history and Satoshi’s vision, whoever he was.
11. How Bitcoin Works Under The Hood (22 min)
This is the most technology-focused breakdown of the Bitcoin network I know. It not only explains all nuances of the algorithm, mining, and cryptography, it also explains how these parts work together to make the network secure, decentralized, and permissionless.
12. The Bitcoin Wiki (∞ min)
Use this to pause the video above and read up on whatever terms you don’t understand. Once you’ve gotten into the details of proof-of-work, mining and hashing, you’ll find you’ll often end up here, anyway. Even if you stop halfway through an article, because you’ve reached the level of depth you needed.
13. Banking on Bitcoin (83 min)
This Netflix documentary is a great recap of the history of Bitcoin, shines a spotlight on some of its pioneers, and transitions from the tech more into the politics of the system and what its implications for society at large are. Highly recommended and a nice, light break from the above.
14. Bitcoin’s Final Boss (11 min)
Daniel Jeffries has written a whole bunch of great articles about crypto, but this one spoke a lot to me, as it addresses the core ideology of what Bitcoin is about. It rounds out the big picture of everything you should have by now.
15. Jameson Lopp’s Bitcoin Resources (? min)
Finally, here’s a massive springboard to jump even deeper down the rabbit hole. I only found out about this list recently, but it includes a lot of the above and more, such as trading resources, wallets, exchanges, data tracking sites, and so on. Jameson Lopp has done a fantastic job here.
Bonus: Andreas’s Bitcoin for Beginners (5–6 hrs)
Andreas M. Antonopoulos is one of the kindest people in crypto, having been around from the very beginning to explain the tech, the philosophy, and the idea to everyone who’s willing to listen. This playlist includes some of his best talks and answers to common questions.
I first heard about Bitcoin in 2013. James Altucher was selling his book Choose Yourself exclusively in the new currency at first. For some reason, I didn’t look further into it. I dismissed it. Maybe because I hadn’t discovered ‘Today I Learned’ back then. Not just the place, but the idea. Because no matter how smart you are, you can never know too many interesting things.
I’m sure before you’re halfway down this list, you’ll long be gone to new, fascinating places. Regardless of where you end up, remember to always have a good answer to the question:
What did you learn today?
