Bitcoin is not the currency for the government, it is the global currency for the people.
There has been a lot of fanfare recently in the world of cryptocurrency – Bitcoin nearly reaching the mammoth $3,000 (As of this writing, it is $2,540.80 but, the currency will slowly and surely reach $10,000); and Ethereum has crossed frigging $200 lately (As of this writing, it is $231.66 but, with all the institutional back up and the community it should be no time for ETH to overtake BTC in market cap). Everybody’s is climbing on the cryptocurrency bandwagon and I was the same. But, I had always been a cautious and rational person. I didn’t want to dive into the water without knowing swimming. I was doing my research on crypto currency and I found a 9 weeks course on Bitcoin and crypto currency technology in Coursera (More on Coursera) by Princeton University. I am an online learner and I have completed countless courses online but, that’s the story I would like to share some other time. The course goes dives deeper in the technology of bitcoin – blockchain and its algorithm.
I will briefly summarize the course has to offer so that you can enroll and deep dive into blockchain technology. To really understand what is special about Bitcoin, you need to understand how it works at a technical level. The course will address the important questions about Bitcoin, such as: How does Bitcoin work? What makes Bitcoin different? How secure are your Bitcoins? How anonymous are Bitcoin users? What determines the price of Bitcoins? Can cryptocurrencies be regulated? What might the future hold? After completing this course, you’ll know everything you need to be able to separate fact from fiction when reading claims about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Here’s the 9 week course syllabus (copied from the coursera) –
- Introduction to Crypto and Cryptocurrencies: Learn about cryptographic building blocks ("primitives") and reason about their security. Work through how these primitives can be used to construct simple cryptocurrencies.
- How Bitcoin Achieves Decentralization: Learn Bitcoin's consensus mechanism and reason about its security. Appreciate how security comes from a combination of technical methods and clever incentive engineering.
- Mechanics of Bitcoin: Learn how the individual components of the Bitcoin protocol make the whole system tick: transactions, script, blocks, and the peer-to-peer network.
- How to Store and Use Bitcoins: This week we'll explore how using Bitcoins works in practice: different ways of storing Bitcoin keys, security measures, and various types of services that allow you to trade and transact with bitcoins.
- Bitcoin Mining: We already know that Bitcoin relies crucially on mining. But who are the miners? How did they get into this? How do they operate? What's the business model like for miners? What impact do they have on the environment?
- Bitcoin and Anonymity: Is Bitcoin anonymous? What does that statement even mean—can we define it rigorously? We'll learn about the various ways to improve Bitcoin's anonymity and privacy and learn about Bitcoin's role in Silk Road and other hidden marketplaces.
- Community, Politics, and Regulation: We'll look at all the ways that the world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technology touches the world of people. We'll discuss the community, politics within Bitcoin and the way that Bitcoin interacts with politics, and law enforcement and regulation issues.
- Alternative Mining Puzzles: Not everyone is happy about how Bitcoin mining works: its energy consumption and the fact that it requires specialized hardware are major sticking points. This week we'll look at how mining can be re-designed in alternative cryptocurrencies.
- Bitcoin as a Platform: One of the most exciting things about Bitcoin technology is its potential to support applications other than currency. We'll study several of these and study the properties of Bitcoin that makes this possible.
If you are new to Coursera or Massive Open Online Course here’s a quick summary of how it works –
- The course has videos, reading materials, assignments and project work;
- The course content is divided into weekly sessions – where you might need to complete watching videos, participate in forums, upload assignments, review assignments of other members, work on projects, etc.;
- After completion, if you will get a certificate of completion (which is not credit transferable). The certification costs around $50 but, you can complete the course for free. You get access to all the viewing and reading materials;
- The courses have strict deadlines that if you miss, you might have to enroll in new sessions if they are offered in the future.
Here’s the detail on taking courses in Coursera -> https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-us/articles/209818603-Enroll-in-a-course
I hope you become interested in what bitcoin has to offer and how it has a huge potential to disrupt. Happy Learning!
Here’s the course link -> https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency#