Good summary for hackers, but I wanted to raise one point:
No, seriously, please read it! The Bitcoin white paper should be required reading before anyone is allowed to interact with this technology.
What the fuck no. If you want to build something yeah maybe, but this is exactly what's wrong with cryptocurrencies at the moment - it's somewhere in between a cult and a club for insiders. This is why we have shitty wallet software and lots of existential uncertainty, rather than products that regular people can use with confidence without needing to understand how they work.
You don't require kids to read Adam Smith on the fundamentals of fiat currency before they learn how to buy candy. But when you go to the Bitcoin Website you're offered some 10 different wallets and told to 'educate yourself' with hardly any further help.
This approach is extremely exclusionary. When you write a beginner's guide, your job is not to mint a new cryptocurrency expert, it's to help someone understand why they might want to use cryptocurrency, get a wallet, put something in it, and complete a transaction (eg by getting them started with some low-risk variant like DogeCoin).
I've been following Bitcoin since shortly after it got started and the biggest hurdle to cryptocurrency adoption is the 'secret handshake' mentality that aspires to make a special currency for people in the know for private advantage, rather than offering simple, reliable, and accessible tools to people who need an alternative to the official economy (as much because of poverty or social exclusion as ideology). All people need to know about cryptocurrency theory is that it's secure, whether or not it's private, and how volatile it is.
It's not a good summary for hackers. It tells you sweet nothing about how Bitcoin actually works in practice. Where's the information on SegWit or the block size or in practice how the protocol works? Nowhere.
It's a hash together of what the author has seen on Bitcoin and thinks is cool.
It's an attempt to convince an idiot that's it's really complicated and they should BUY BUY BUY HODL HODL.
It's a terrible article and Bitcoin is a terrible mix of core developers who are innovating crazy solutions on top of crypto with spurious documentation, server farms run on cheap electricity in various places of a disreputable nature and college kids investing their student loans on internet money. Plus, now, a small amount of the general public who read an article or two and are playing the high stakes casino tables with their savings/rainy day money.
Well I'm OK with it for hackers in terms of citing the original white paper and so on. It doesn't promote itself as anything other than introductory piece. But I take your point about it not really meeting anyone's needs well.
No, seriously, please read it! The Bitcoin white paper should be required reading before anyone is allowed to interact with this technology.
What the fuck no. If you want to build something yeah maybe, but this is exactly what's wrong with cryptocurrencies at the moment - it's somewhere in between a cult and a club for insiders. This is why we have shitty wallet software and lots of existential uncertainty, rather than products that regular people can use with confidence without needing to understand how they work.
You don't require kids to read Adam Smith on the fundamentals of fiat currency before they learn how to buy candy. But when you go to the Bitcoin Website you're offered some 10 different wallets and told to 'educate yourself' with hardly any further help.
This approach is extremely exclusionary. When you write a beginner's guide, your job is not to mint a new cryptocurrency expert, it's to help someone understand why they might want to use cryptocurrency, get a wallet, put something in it, and complete a transaction (eg by getting them started with some low-risk variant like DogeCoin).
I've been following Bitcoin since shortly after it got started and the biggest hurdle to cryptocurrency adoption is the 'secret handshake' mentality that aspires to make a special currency for people in the know for private advantage, rather than offering simple, reliable, and accessible tools to people who need an alternative to the official economy (as much because of poverty or social exclusion as ideology). All people need to know about cryptocurrency theory is that it's secure, whether or not it's private, and how volatile it is.