Getting started with Bitcoin, blockchains, and cryptoassets

Friends and family often ask me where to begin learning about Bitcoin and blockchains. With the recent rise in prices, these requests are amplifying in lockstep. I imagine many of you have had a similar experience.

I’m always happy to respond because it’s important for people to become educated before investing, but these responses take time and time is scarce. I started compiling a list so that I could respond efficiently.

This list is not meant to be comprehensive, it’s curated. That means I’m leaving out a ton of important content. I’m doing so because newcomers often report feeling initially overwhelmed by the volume of information in this space. I’ve tried to lay it out in a step-by-step format to make it more approachable. It’s a recipe for a base-level foundation of knowledge, from which you can continue to build.

Here’s what I would have done to get started if I were to do it over again…

>>If you have less than one hour…

Video description of blockchains (26 minutes)

Written description of blockchains (16 minutes)

Why ledgers matter (14 minutes)

>>Next three hours

Start with the “Beginner’s Guides” on CoinDesk. There are 43 different topics, but they’re short, <5 minutes each. If you’ve completed the two items above then you can get through these quickly. Read all of them, particularly those from “What is Blockchain Technology?” to the bottom. (2 hours)http://www.coindesk.com/information/

Watch Banking on Bitcoin on Netflix to get some historical context.(1 hour)

>>Next ten hours: Podcasts

Hashpower, by Patrick O’Shaughnessy, is a three segment podcast that contains a wealth of information. It is the highest density podcast on this topic that I have have found and features some of the most knowledgeable people in the space. It is a masterpiece. Listen to all of them. If you have time, listen to them twice. (3 hours)

Listen to this Tim Ferriss podcast. Nick Szabo and Naval Ravikant are two of my favorite thinkers: http://tim.blog/2017/06/04/nick-szabo/ (1.5 hours)

Subscribe to Unchained, a podcast by Laura Shin, and listen to some past episodes. I listened to all of them, and learned something from every single episode. It’s almost impossible to choose a “best of” list, but here are a few that were particularly memorable: (5.5 hours)

Jerry Brito and Peter Van Valkenburgh (Coin Center)

Emin Gun Sirer (Cornell)

Brock Pierce (Blockchain Capital)

Olaf Carlson-Wee (Polychain capital, formerly 1st employee at Coinbase)

Elizabeth Rossiello (BitPesa)

Chris Burniske (Placeholder Ventures)

>>Next ten hours

It’s time to read Satoshi Nakamoto’s seminal whitepaper. (1 hour)

Introduction to forks. The Ethereum Classic fork or Bitcoin Cash fork are examples. (1 hour)

If you wish to purchase bitcoin or ether, open an account at an exchange like Coinbase or Gemini. A couple notes: i) This is not investment advice, invest only what you can afford to lose entirely. ii) Setup two-factor authentication immediately. Do not use text message as the authentication method, apps like Google Authenticator or Authy are safer. By the way, you should really set up 2FA on your Google account too. iii) If you have a meaningful proportion of your wealth invested, you will want to look into a hardware wallet, but that is beyond the scope of this guide. (1 hour)

There are thousands of other blockchain tokens beyond bitcoin. Dive into tokens with Brave New Coin’s gentle introduction. Then, go to Smith + Crown (a token research firm), pick out a couple recent token sales and read the S+C analysis. (2 hours)

Read through Linda Xie’s beginner guides to several prominent projects (3 hours):

Beginner’s guide series on cryptoassets_I put together a list of beginner’s guides that I’ve written on cryptoassets._medium.com

As of this writing, Coinbase trades three cryptoassets: bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), and litecoin (LTC). If you wish to expand beyond these three you can open an account on an exchange like Poloniex or Bittrex to trade many others, but they don’t accept fiat currency like USD, so you have to buy BTC or ETH at an exchange like Coinbase first, and then transfer it to your other account. You’re probably also going to want to download Blockfolio at this point to keep track of everything. (Disclaimer: (i) This is not investment advice, (ii) I am not endorsing these exchanges, just using them as examples, here is a longer list by volume and here are descriptions of a few of them. (iii) Never invest more than you are willing to lose in totality) (1 hour)

When evaluating a token for the first time, here is a framework to organize your thoughts:

Spend some time investigating various data sources: OnChainFx, CoinMarketCap, CryptoCompare, Brave New Coin, TokenData.io, CoinGecko, Bitcoin Block Explorer. (1 hour)

>Hours 24–50

For a deeper dive, enroll in this MOOC taught by Andreas Antonopoulos and Antonis Polemitis (12 hours): https://digitalcurrency.unic.ac.cy/free-introductory-mooc/

There are several other free courses such as one from Princeton at coursera (broken down into 60 sessions on YouTube), one from Stanford at coursera, and several at udemy.

The regulatory environment is complex and evolving. Coin Center is the master on this topic, read as much of their work as possible. If you have tax questions, here is a place to start that inquiry.

Work through Nick Tomaino’s reading list, especially Nick Szabo’s articles. Dan Romero also has a nice list here that is not too technical.

Read these two books:

1. Cryptoassets by Burniske and Tatar. The book works through cryptoassets from an investor’s perspective and provides some historical perspective.
2. The Internet of Money by Antonopoulos

I’m also looking forward to The Truth Machine by Casey and Vigna

>Bonus section: Academic research

I’d be remiss to conclude without a few cites to academic work in economics on this topic:

Catalini, Christian, and Joshua S. Gans. “Some simple economics of the blockchain.” No. w22952. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016.

Wang, Sha, and Jean-Philippe Vergne. “Buzz Factor or Innovation Potential: What Explains Cryptocurrencies’ Returns?” PloS one 12, 2017.

Yermack, David. “Corporate governance and blockchains.” Review of Finance 21.1 (2017): 7–31.

You’ve only just begun. For a more comprehensive list of resources, check out Jameson Lopp’s page.

Staying up to date

After completing everything above, you will know more than the vast majority of the general public, but your information will quickly become stale if you don’t stay current. Here’s a subset of what I follow:

Twitter. Crypto twitter is very active. Here are a few accounts to start following. Keeping this list short was the most difficult part of the entire post because it omits many important people, I’m doing so for brevity. I tried to choose people with different viewpoints. To see a more comprehensive list, go through my follows. Once you start tracking these accounts you’ll see who else is active and can branch out from there:

Naval (@naval) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Naval (@naval). Present. San Francisco, CA_twitter.com

Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4). Blockchain, cryptocurrency, and smart contracts pioneer. (RT/Fav…_twitter.com

Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin). See https://t.co/iBNSW4KCSO. Earth_twitter.com

Laura Shin (@laurashin) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Laura Shin (@laurashin). @Forbes senior editor: Bitcoin, Ethereum, crypto, ICOs, blockchain…_twitter.com

Spencer Bogart (@CremeDeLaCrypto) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Spencer Bogart (@CremeDeLaCrypto). Crypto and things. Off of Wall Street, into Venture Capital…_twitter.com

Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor). Prof @Cornell, co-director @ https://t.co/hzEhWhTa3j, system…_twitter.com

Meltem Demirors (@Melt_Dem) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Meltem Demirors (@Melt_Dem). i don't sleep, i wait. building @dcgco. teaching @MIT @UniofOxford…_twitter.com

Chris Burniske (@cburniske) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Chris Burniske (@cburniske). partner @placeholdervc, medium @cburniske, formerly led @ARKInvest…_twitter.com

Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees). Toward peace, markets, and Bitcoin. CEO of ShapeShift. Blog at…_twitter.com

elizabeth stark (@starkness) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from elizabeth stark (@starkness). big fan of the internet. like building things. cofounder…_twitter.com

Jimmy Song (@jimmysong) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Jimmy Song (@jimmysong). Bitcoin Developer and Entrepreneur/PGP Fingerprint: C1D7 97BE 7D10 5291…_twitter.com

Nick Tomaino (@NTmoney) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Nick Tomaino (@NTmoney). low extraversion, high conviction. founder @1confirmation. San…_twitter.com

Sizhao Yang (@zaoyang) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Sizhao Yang (@zaoyang). Co-creator of @farmville Angel investor in @WishShopping ICOs…_twitter.com

Ari Paul (@AriDavidPaul) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Ari Paul (@AriDavidPaul). CIO of BlockTower Capital. https://t.co/K7E7qzx4sD_twitter.com

Kyle Samani (@KyleSamani) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Kyle Samani (@KyleSamani). Perpetually fooled by randomness. Managing Partner @multicoincap…_twitter.com

Preston J. Byrne (@prestonjbyrne) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Preston J. Byrne (@prestonjbyrne). Marmot superfan. English solicitor. Fellow @ASI. Blockchain…_twitter.com

CoinDesk (@coindesk) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from CoinDesk (@coindesk). The latest news, prices, charts, guides and analysis from the world leader…_twitter.com

Coin Center (@coincenter) | Twitter_The latest Tweets from Coin Center (@coincenter). Protecting open blockchain networks and innovators' rights to use…_twitter.com

Medium. Home of longer format articles. These are a few people that influence my thinking. Again, this list is absurdly short, but it’s a start:

Balaji S. Srinivasan — Medium_Read writing from Balaji S. Srinivasan on Medium. CEO of Earn.com and Board Partner at a16z.com. Every day, Balaji S…_medium.com

Linda Xie — Medium_Read writing from Linda Xie on Medium. Co-founder @ScalarCapital. Previously Product Manager @Coinbase. Advisor…_medium.com

Chris Burniske - Medium_As the cryptoasset markets develop we'll see many booms and busts as enthusiasm waxes and wanes. Waxing and waning is…_medium.com

Jimmy Song - Medium_Read writing from Jimmy Song on Medium. Bitcoin Developer and Entrepreneur/PGP Fingerprint: C1D7 97BE 7D10 5291 228C…_medium.com

Preethi Kasireddy - Medium_Read writing from Preethi Kasireddy on Medium. Blockchain Engineer. I have a passion for understanding things at a…_medium.com

martin green - Medium_Read writing from martin green on Medium. tech investor. blockchain curious, meebo (google), cnet (cbs). husband. dad…_medium.com

Lou Kerner - Medium_Read writing from Lou Kerner on Medium. Partner at CryptoOracle.io. Believer that Crypto (blockchain, cryptocurrency…_medium.com

Fred Ehrsam - Medium_In a prior post I proposed funding protocol development through inflation as a powerful tool to evolve blockchains…_medium.com

Jill Carlson — Medium_Can Bitcoin Markets Add and Subtract? I find it fitting that the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics for 2017…_medium.com

TwoBitIdiot - Medium_Read writing from TwoBitIdiot on Medium. Entrepreneur & Angel. Founder, Messari & EiR, ConsenSys. Founding team of…_medium.com

Jake Brukhman - Medium_Read writing from Jake Brukhman on Medium. Co-Founder @ CoinFund. Blockchain research, advisory & cryptoasset…_medium.com

Podcasts. Listen to them regularly. Here are a few:

Unchained_Unchained: Big Ideas From The Worlds Of Blockchain And Fintech_www.forbes.com

Podcast_Welcome to Invest Like the Best. In each episode, I speak with the most interesting people I can find, whose stories…_investorfieldguide.com

The Bitcoin Podcast Network_Guest: Kevin Owocki from Gitcoin and Mark Beylin from Bounties Network. Both are ConsenSys formations How can projects…_thebitcoinpodcast.com

Slack. Join the CoinFund slack channel and subscribe to a few of the subchannels that look interesting to you. It’s a repository of dialogue on numerous cryptoassets. https://coinfund.slack.com/

Many token projects maintain their own slack channels. The best way to find them is to simply google “[project name] slack” like this.

Newsletters. Delivered straight to your inbox. Here are my favorites:

Token Economy, Week in Ethereum, Multicoin Capital, CoinDesk, DAR

Reddit. So many subreddits that I won’t even try to list them all. Just start here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/ or here.

I’ll update this post with new content occasionally.

Enjoy your trip down the rabbit hole!

Blockchain - Hacker Noon_A blockchain is a digitized, decentralized, public ledger of all cryptocurrency transactions. Blockchain has been…_hackernoon.com