I was reviewing my Repository of Bitcoin-related works, and found a great book for learning the basics of how Bitcoin works, as if you were designing it from scratch: "Inventing Bitcoin", by nostr:npub1fqn4fgzkk8nm2x3wd600n935c9tc7xgg9jhk5dfa0kuvrgvsyv7sgu536l.

Without ever getting too technical, Yan Pritzker expertly demystifies highly complex Bitcoin concepts in ways that are easy for most people to understand. He explains 51% Attacks, Proof of Work, why Bitcoin can never be beaten by a competitor, and much more, all from a technical perspective, but in a way that can be understood by even the newest bitcoiner.

Here are some of the best quotes from "Inventing Bitcoin":

"We don’t need to believe anything Satoshi wrote in his post about how the software works. We can look at the code and verify how it works for ourselves."

"In the Bitcoin code, there is a rule that says whomever has expended the most total energy for all of the blocks in their chain wins. This key rule of Bitcoin that asks us to sum up the total Work in a chain and favor the heaviest cumulative Proof of Work chain is sometimes called Nakamoto Consensus, in honor of Satoshi."

"The difficulty adjustment and Target calculation is possibly the key innovation of Bitcoin, allowing everyone to independently verify lottery numbers based on a Target that they can independently calculate in the same exact way as everyone else."

"A private key has 256 bits, which is 2^256 or about 10^77. Guessing the entire key would be similar to guessing a specific atom from the entire universe, or winning the Powerball Lottery 9 times in a row:

One chance in 115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,853,269,984,665,640,564,039,457,584,007,913,129,639,936"

"Liquidity is a snowball. Holding the most liquid money means other people want it, and this begets more liquidity. By holding anything but the most liquid money, you are actively punishing yourself while waiting for everyone else to do the same. The economic incentives do not align in favor of liquidity shifting overnight to a competitor."

"Inventing Bitcoin" is less than 100 pages long, so it doesn't take long to read, and it won’t seem intimidating to your friends and family when you share it with them -- 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥!

Download your own free copy from nostr:npub1tftc33ttam85wraffce62cgtvvjrmttquqlv6a0agtfm5nl4vues82xar5’s website here: https://www.swanbitcoin.com/inventing-bitcoin/

https://geyser.fund/project/powa