What this book covers

Chapter 1, Setting Up a Wallet, introduces the reader to Bitcoin and how to purchase some within 15 minutes. It covers the basics of Bitcoin, which includes addresses, keys, and wallets.

Chapter 2, Buying and Selling Bitcoins, covers more advanced ways of buying and selling bitcoin. Market trading and the tools involved are introduced.

Chapter 3, Protecting Your Bitcoins, educates you about how to become your own bank. Different approaches to safeguarding bitcoin are introduced and discussed.

Chapter 4, Understanding the Blockchain, gets into the nuts and bolts of Bitcoin's underlying technology. Its various technologies and algorithms are illustrated and explained.

Chapter 5, Installing a Bitcoin Node, is a step-by-step tutorial on setting up a Bitcoin node, which allows you to participate in the network. Some basic Bitcoin programming is introduced.

Chapter 6, Understanding the Mining Process, guides you through the various options available for mining bitcoin. The chapter focuses on the expenses involved and helps you to evaluate profitability.

Chapter 7, Programming Bitcoin, dives into the potential of Bitcoin as "programmable money". The chapter describes an example of how to build a simple Bitcoin escrow service using JavaScript.

Chapter 8, Exploring Alternative Coins, takes a tour around four innovative alternative coins based on Bitcoin's original source code. It ends with an example of how to set up a voting ballot secured by cryptographic proof.