> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://bryan-guner.gitbook.io/knowledge/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://bryan-guner.gitbook.io/knowledge/14-pure-education/knowledge-master/cryptocurrencies/bitcoin.md).

# Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a [complete environmental disaster](https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1350869944888664064). [Nano](/knowledge/14-pure-education/knowledge-master/cryptocurrencies/nano.md) is the future of decentralized currency.

## Notes

* [Bitcoin is both trust-minimized (even more than gold) yet quite unlike gold digital & easily transferable in its trust-minimized form. It's an unprecedentedly superior form of money, but like anything else new traded in a free market, its historical journey starts off volatile.](https://twitter.com/NickSzabo4/status/1328759197769502722)
* [At this point, of all the things Bitcoin can do that other financial assets can't (pseudo-anonymous, extremely hard to confiscate, can be moved quasi instantaneously across borders, demonstrably finite supply, can be use as a settlement layer for large players, etc ...) the one aspect that I believe attracts people is "store of value". Many people contest that last property citing high volatility, and they're correct if your window is less than 4 years. But for folks who play the long game, supply and demand tells a very compelling story for Bitcoin.](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25157946)

## Links

* [Mastering Bitcoin](https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook) - Book for developers, although the first two chapters cover bitcoin at a level that is also approachable to non-programmers. ([Web](https://bitcoinbook.info/))
* [Bitcoin for laypeople (2018)](https://mafinto.sh/blog/bitcoin-for-laypeople.html)
* [The Stories We Tell About Money](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONvg9SbauMg)
* [Bitcoin: "Failing to Scale" - Prague 2016](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFOFqNKKns0)
* [Bitcoin Resources](https://lopp.net/bitcoin.html)
* [Bitcore Node](https://github.com/bitpay/bitcore) - Full stack for bitcoin and blockchain-based applications.
* [nix-bitcoin](https://github.com/jonasnick/nix-bitcoin) - Nix packages and nixos modules with profiles for easily installing Bitcoin nodes and higher layer protocols.
* [The History and Future of Bitcoin with Dan Held (2019)](https://overcast.fm/+LDKfCTO4U)
* [Introducing SOPR: spent outputs to predict bitcoin lows and tops (2019)](https://medium.com/unconfiscatable/introducing-sopr-spent-outputs-to-predict-bitcoin-lows-and-tops-ceb4536b3b9)
* [Tokenized](https://tokenized.com/) - Easiest and safest way to issue, manage and trade security and utility tokens on the Bitcoin SV network.
* [Bitcoin Resources](https://dergigi.com/bitcoin/resources/)
* [Mastering the Lightning Network book](https://github.com/lnbook/lnbook)
* [Bitcoin SV](https://bitcoinsvdevelopers.com/) - Bitcoin with the original protocol. It can be used for money, but also as a development platform..
* [btcwallet](https://github.com/btcsuite/btcwallet) - Secure bitcoin wallet daemon written in Go.
* [Blockstream Satellite network](https://blockstream.com/satellite/) - Broadcasts the Bitcoin blockchain around the world 24/7 for free.
* [Blockstream Satellite Receiver](https://github.com/Blockstream/satellite)
* [State of Digital Assets: Keynote by Cathie Wood (2020)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c50TMCKsktA\&t=8s)
* [SatoshiLabs Improvement Proposals](https://github.com/satoshilabs/slips)
* [Polar](https://github.com/jamaljsr/polar) - One-click Bitcoin Lightning networks for local app development & testing.
* [How we recovered over $300K of Bitcoin](https://reperiendi.wordpress.com/2020/04/03/how-i-recovered-over-300k-of-bitcoin/) ([HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22774057))
* [MIT Bitcoin Expo 2020 - Bitcoin Core Devs Panel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKBjhSKxSi0)
* [Rust language bindings for Bitcoin secp256k1 library](https://github.com/rust-bitcoin/rust-secp256k1)
* [Bitcoin Indexer](https://github.com/dpc/rust-bitcoin-indexer) - Powerful & versatile Bitcoin Indexer, in Rust.
* [Bitcoin Halving 2020](https://messari.io/bitcoin-halving-2020) ([HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23146024))
* [PoX: Proof of Transfer Mining with Bitcoin (2020)](https://blockstack.org/pox.pdf)
* [Bitcoin for the Open-Minded Skeptic (2020)](https://www.paradigm.xyz/Bitcoin_For_The_Open_Minded_Skeptic.pdf)
* [Neutrino](https://github.com/lightninglabs/neutrino) - Privacy-Preserving Bitcoin Light Client.
* [bwt](https://github.com/shesek/bwt) - Lightweight HD wallet indexer for Bitcoin, available as an Electrum RPC server and a modern HTTP REST API.
* [Prism: Scaling Bitcoin by 10,000x](https://github.com/yangl1996/prism-rust) - Rust implementation.
* [Bitcoin From Scratch (2020)](https://monokh.com/posts/bitcoin-from-scratch-part-1) ([HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23728228))
* [Bitcoin is more like ham radio than the early internet (2020)](http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2020/07/bitcoin-is-more-like-ham-radio-than.html) ([HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23823304))
* [Bitcoin Information & Educational Resources](https://www.lopp.net/bitcoin-information.html)
* [c-lightning](https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning) - Lightning Network implementation in C. ([Rust bindings](https://github.com/laanwj/rust-clightning-rpc)) ([Go bindings](https://github.com/niftynei/glightning))
* [Bitcoin Summer School 2016](https://bitcoinschool.gr/) ([Consensus](https://bitcoinschool.gr/slides/session3.pdf))
* [Vapor](https://vapor.network/) - Decentralized Web over Bitcoinized HTTP. ([HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24708161))
* [Takeaways from MicroStrategy CEO 425 million investment into bitcoin (2020)](https://twitter.com/woonomic/status/1306853254685364225)
* [Building on Bitcoin #1 — Isaac Morehouse (2020)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F4kWu_6vVE)
* [What Comes Next. Building Bit.sv. (2020)](https://bit.sv/post/499dec5108b14e99d28b48b0c0dfcd5fe06edef43ad738d41f18264151aaf30d)
* [This Month In Bitcoin Privacy](https://enegnei.github.io/This-Month-In-Bitcoin-Privacy/)
* [RaspiBlitz](https://github.com/rootzoll/raspiblitz) - Build your own Lightning Node on a RaspberryPi with a nice Display.
* [Blockstream.info](https://blockstream.info/) - Bitcoin Explorer. ([Code](https://github.com/Blockstream/esplora))
* [Electrum Server in Rust](https://github.com/romanz/electrs)
* [Esplora](https://github.com/Blockstream/electrs) - Block chain index engine and HTTP API written in Rust based on romanz/electrs.
* [What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)](https://www.coindesk.com/what-bitcoins-white-paper-got-right-wrong-and-what-we-still-dont-know) ([HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24951616))
* [Bitbo](https://bitbo.io/) - Real-Time Bitcoin Dashboard.
* [Bitcoin at 12 (2020)](https://medium.com/@nic__carter/bitcoin-at-12-f6fce39cb9bb)
* [Blockstream](https://blockstream.com/) - Bitcoin and digital asset infrastructure.
* [Awesome Lightning Network](https://github.com/bcongdon/awesome-lightning-network)
* [Specter Desktop](https://github.com/cryptoadvance/specter-desktop) - Desktop GUI for Bitcoin Core optimised to work with hardware wallets.
* [Merkle trees in Git and Bitcoin (2020)](https://initialcommit.com/blog/git-bitcoin-merkle-tree)
* [Chaincode Labs](https://chaincode.com/) - Exists to support Bitcoin.
* [Notes and ideas for development work on Bitcoin Core](https://github.com/jonatack/bitcoin-development)
* [HN: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record (2020)](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25255606)
* [Scripts, tools & info for doing Bitcoin Core development and code review](https://github.com/fanquake/core-review)
* [hal](https://github.com/stevenroose/hal) - Bitcoin companion. Command line tool that provides all kinds of Bitcoin-related utilities.
* [btcd](https://github.com/btcsuite/btcd) - Alternative full node bitcoin implementation written in Go.
* [Rust Bitcoin Library](https://github.com/rust-bitcoin/rust-bitcoin) - Library with support for de/serialization, parsing and executing on data structures and network messages related to Bitcoin.
* [Michael Flaxman Research](https://www.michaelflaxman.com/)
* [Lightning Node Management](https://openoms.gitbook.io/lightning-node-management/) - Beginner friendly resources to manage a routing node on the Lightning Network. ([Code](https://github.com/openoms/lightning-node-management))
* [Bitcoin Tutorials](https://openoms.github.io/bitcoin-tutorials/) - Guides for the RaspiBlitz and Linux desktop. ([Code](https://github.com/openoms/bitcoin-tutorials))
* [Bitcoin RPC Proxy](https://github.com/Kixunil/btc-rpc-proxy) - Finer-grained permission management for bitcoind.
* [Brink](https://brink.dev/) - Exists to strengthen the Bitcoin protocol and network through fundamental research and development.
* [Study Groups for bitcoin protocol developers](https://github.com/chaincodelabs/study-groups)
* [Bitcoin Protocol Development Curriculum](https://github.com/chaincodelabs/bitcoin-curriculum)
* [Lightning Network Curriculum](https://github.com/chaincodelabs/lightning-curriculum)
* [Satoshi Nakamoto Institute](https://nakamotoinstitute.org/) ([Forum Posts](https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/))
* [Bitcoin.org Website Code](https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/Bitcoin.org)
* [Bitcoin Improvement Proposals](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips)
* [CLIFlix](https://github.com/fabiospampinato/cliflix) - Watch anything instantaneously, just write its name.
* [Bitcoin Cash](https://www.bitcoincash.org/) - Experimental digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. ([Code](https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc))
* [What does BCH offer that Ethereum don't already offer? (2020)](https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/keu3nw/what_does_bch_offer_that_ethereum_dont_already/)
* [Teleport Transactions](https://github.com/bitcoin-teleport/teleport-transactions) - Software aiming to improve the privacy of bitcoin.
* [Bitcoin Archive](http://towardsliberty.com/bitcoin)
* [Data on how people rely on Bitcoin to escape high inflation, extortionate remittances, frozen accounts, sanctions, financial isolation (2020)](https://twitter.com/gladstein/status/1340835463620259841)
* [Misconceptions about Bitcoin, and Where to Buy (2020)](https://www.lynalden.com/misconceptions-about-bitcoin/) ([Tweet](https://twitter.com/LynAldenContact/status/1326682327582433280))
* [BlueWallet](https://bluewallet.io/) - Bitcoin wallet and Lightning wallet for iOS and Android. ([Code](https://github.com/BlueWallet/BlueWallet))
* [LndHub](https://github.com/BlueWallet/LndHub) - Wrapper for Lightning Network Daemon. It provides separate accounts with minimum trust for end users. ([Web](http://lndhub.io/))
* [Umbrel](https://github.com/getumbrel/umbrel) - Personal Bitcoin and Lightning node designed for everyone. ([Web](https://getumbrel.com/))
* [Bisq](https://bisq.network/) - Safe, private and decentralized way to exchange bitcoin for national currencies and other digital assets. ([Code](https://github.com/bisq-network/bisq))
* [Bitcoin is a disaster (2020)](https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2020-December/036510.html) ([HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25597891)) ([Lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/egqq29/bitcoin_is_disaster))
* [Putting $400M of Bitcoin on your company balance sheet (2020)](https://www.singlelunch.com/2020/10/21/badeconomics-putting-400m-of-bitcoin-on-your-company-balance-sheet/) ([HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25632757))
* [Modeling Bitcoin Value with Scarcity (2019)](https://medium.com/@100trillionUSD/modeling-bitcoins-value-with-scarcity-91fa0fc03e25)
* [Bitcoin Stock-to-Flow Cross Asset Model (2020)](https://medium.com/@100trillionUSD/bitcoin-stock-to-flow-cross-asset-model-50d260feed12)
* [Bitcoin Disrupting Payment Clearing Houses w/ Jack Mallers (2021)](https://overcast.fm/+I6zHE4hug)
* [Strike](https://beta.strike.me/) - Send money instantly, with no fees, anywhere in the world.
* [bitcoin-p2p](https://github.com/stevenroose/rust-bitcoin-p2p) - Rust implementation of Bitcoin p2p protocol.
* [Lightning Bitcoin Core](https://github.com/lbtcio/lbtc-core) - Fully decentralized Internet-of-value protocol for global payments.
* [BRD](https://brd.com/) - Bitcoin wallet. ([Code](https://github.com/breadwallet/breadwallet-ios))
* [Stacks](https://www.stacks.co/) - Makes Bitcoin programmable, enabling decentralized apps and smart contracts that inherit all of Bitcoin’s powers.
* [Smart contracts on Bitcoin (2021)](https://avc.com/2021/01/smart-contracts-on-bitcoin/) ([HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25781645))
* [Bitcoin Layer 2: Lightning Network Resources](https://www.lopp.net/lightning-information.html)
* [Clarity Smart Contract Language](https://clarity-lang.org/) - Lisp-like Smart Contracts on Bitcoin. ([GitHub](https://github.com/clarity-lang))
* [Revault](https://github.com/re-vault/revault-demo) - Multi-party Bitcoin vault architecture.
* [Environmental cost of bitcoin (2021)](https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1350869944888664064) ([HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25814795)) ([Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/kzr9ef/the_nano_community_will_enjoy_this_twitter_thread/))
* [Bitcoin Treasuries](https://bitcointreasuries.org/)
* [Is Bitcoin a Scam? (2021)](https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2021/jan/19/is-bitcoin-a-scam) ([HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25831562))
* [LNP/BP Standards Association](https://www.lnp-bp.org/) - Specifications, proposals and libraries for things which are not a part of Bitcoin Core / BIPs. ([GitHub](https://github.com/LNP-BP)) ([Intro](https://www.alzashop.com/lnp-bp-lightning-netowrk-and-bitcoin-protocols)) ([FAQ](https://github.com/LNP-BP/FAQ))
* [LNP/BP Common Standards](https://github.com/LNP-BP/LNPBPs)
* [RGB Con 0 - Day 1 (2020)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjFZuF_ZPMg)
* [Bitcoin Pro](https://github.com/pandoracore/bitcoin-pro) - Professional bitcoin accounts & assets management.
* [Pandora Core](https://pandoracore.com/) - Building Layer 2 and 3 technologies enabling scalable smart contracts and AI for Internet of value on top of Lightning Network and Bitcoin protocol. ([GitHub](https://github.com/pandoracore))
* [lnp-node](https://github.com/LNP-BP/lnp-node) - Lightning Network Protocol Node.
* [Descriptor wallet library](https://github.com/LNP-BP/descriptor-wallet) - Library for building descriptor-based bitcoin wallets.
* [The widening gyre (2021)](https://laanwj.github.io/2021/01/21/decentralize.html) ([HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25880727))
* [Nakamoto](https://github.com/cloudhead/nakamoto) - Bitcoin light-client implementation in Rust.
* [Bitcoin Resources](https://bitcoin-resources.com/)
* [21 Lessons - What I've Learned from Falling Down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole](https://21lessons.com/)
* [Mempool](https://mempool.space/) - Bitcoin block explorer, mempool visualizer, transaction tracker, and fee estimator. ([Code](https://github.com/mempool/mempool))
* [Bitcoin and Pollution – The Definitive Answer (2021)](https://simon.medium.com/bitcoin-and-pollution-the-definitive-answer-a010b0826f2a) ([HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26099530))
* [End Bitcoin FUD](https://www.bitcoinwillnotboiltheocean.com/) ([Tweet](https://twitter.com/Melt_Dem/status/1361315412445720578?s=20))
* [Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)](http://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and-paper.html) ([HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26146026))