
Mastering Bitcoin - markmassie
https://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032281.do
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clarkm
Here's a 40% off discount code: WCYAZ

It brings the price down from $29.99 to $17.99, but also takes away free
shipping so YMMV.

And if you're interested in some more details about the book, here an outline
that was posted a while ago:

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KKV_VEmGPsPr74rFhhpqmdkF...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KKV_VEmGPsPr74rFhhpqmdkFPuLRh6tSEQvsXdOcoZA)

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userbinator
It would be great if they started accepting Bitcoin to buy this book.

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bsirkia
I've never read an O'Reilly book but have obviously heard of them, are they
generally effective at communicating more than general principles?

If I regularly read blog posts and essays written about Bitcoin, would this
book be worthwhile? If not, what audience is this book targeting?

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waterlesscloud
I'm generally happy with the O'Reilly books I've bought. What they cover
depends on the book.

Some, particularly some of the language or OS books, are reference-oriented.
Not the kind of thing you'd necessarily read straight through.

Some, the "intro" books, are just what that sounds like. Enough material to
get started.

I don't know if I have any O'Reilly books I'd consider "deep", exactly, but I
don't think they really aim at that.

In general, my experience is the books are what the titles say they are.

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bsirkia
Right (and thanks for the response), so I would expect "Mastering Bitcoin" to
go in to great detail...

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pearjuice
Ah, a friendly reminder than in a gold rush it is best to sell shovels.

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FatalLogic
Or, a reminder that if you want change, you have to educate.

Actually, in a gold rush, the very best thing for most individuals is to be
among the first to start digging. Profits from shovel selling (and book
publishing) are marginal.

~~~
droope
[http://www.leighdrogen.com/selling-shovels-in-a-gold-
rush/](http://www.leighdrogen.com/selling-shovels-in-a-gold-rush/)

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mriou
I'm really glad Andreas is writing this book, should be a great way for more
developers to get involved. Crypto-currencies are unfortunately still a little
too arcane and books like these help maturation.

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msvan
Table of contents, possibly out of date but should give you a general idea of
what's in it: [http://pastebin.com/w9isSyer](http://pastebin.com/w9isSyer).

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kordless
I have another good title for the second in the series: "Biting Mastercoin"

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hmsimha
You'd think there would be a bitcoin pay option, but I guess they don't have
the option since it's published through o'reilly

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ericb
I went to order. Does $7.50 for the lowest shipping option seem high? Am I
just sheltered living in the world of free shipping?

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mwilcox
$7.50? Try living in New Zealand where the only option is $49.50 shipping:
[http://i.imgur.com/PR6V6SN.png](http://i.imgur.com/PR6V6SN.png)

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ninguem2
You are probably better off with the ebook. They are DRM free so you can print
it if you like.

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enko
> Ships via DHL International Express ($49.50)

Uh, no thanks. And there's no cheaper option.

Is it possible to get early access to the ebook?

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nroose
I find it hard to tell what will happen with Bitcoin tomorrow, much less in 5
months... I am under the impression that there's a decent chance that by
August, the Bitcoin story will be a great story to write a novel about. I
guess there is also the chance that it will evolve and achieve some level of
legitimacy. But for that to happen, a lot needs to happen between now and
then, and I find it hard to believe that a book announced now will include
that part of the story.

I used O'Reilly books extensively 10-25 years ago, but I have found them (and
pretty much all other printed technical books) out of date too quickly in the
last 5-10 years for them to be useful for technical stuff, and Bitcoin is
evolving faster than even most things in the tech world.

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joeblau
Are there any Bitcoin for dummies books?

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iso8859-1
no, but what specifically are you looking for? it's on Khan Academy.

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joeblau
Oh I was just kidding. I have a background in crypto and I already understand
how the system works--It's brilliant.

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tlrobinson
Andreas is the man. One of the best voices in the Bitcoin community. Looking
forward to this.

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sarreph
I'm waiting for _Mastering Dogecoin_.

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victormx
Great, I thought that there would not be a good option but seeing the content
and author it's a must have

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jabits
Mastering Dollars...why not?

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thomasjames
This is an irrelevant comment, but I miss the classic O'Reilly font.

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sandGorgon
why is the ebook is not available for pre-order ? seems strange

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sillysaurus3
_If you 're interested in learning more about the technical operation of
bitcoin, or if you're building the next great bitcoin killer­app or business,
you will find this book essential reading. From the basic use of a bitcoin
wallet to buy a cup of coffee, to running a bitcoin marketplace with hundreds
of thousands of transactions, or collaboratively building new financial
innovations that will transform our understanding of currency and credit, this
book will help you engineer money. You're about to unlock the API to a new
economy. This book is your key._

I hope this book has a very thorough section on securing your app, because
that's probably the biggest problem that you'll face.

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Adlai
Andreas is the CSO of Blockchain.info, a site which takes client security
seriously enough that they never touch their client's private keys, rather
than "handing out IOUs to their users"; maybe we'll see a rise in adoption of
this approach.

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maaku
They've had some pretty horrible mistakes with respect to security though
(before Andreas' time though, so no reflection on him), and the basic model of
a web wallet is inherently broken...

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nwh
20 rounds of PBKDF2, there's tears in my eyes.

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novaleaf
what's so wrong with 20 rounds of pbkdf2? I don't know of any attacks that can
defeat it in realistic time spans.

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nwh
A KDF is meant to slow down dictionary attacks by introducing a lot of
computation. Normal values might be in the hundreds of thousands, even
millions to bring the computation time down to less than a few a second on
extremely high powered GPUs. 20 rounds has so little impact it's astonishing
they even bothered to load the KDF library. Attacking encrypted files like
this would be very fast for a motivated person, and when we know there's magic
internet money involved there's a lot of motivated people.

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novaleaf
doing 20 rounds in a browser represents a non-trivial amount of work. that's
much better than nothing, as it helps defeat existing rainbow tables. iirc,
1000 rounds will take a

however as you suggest, on the server side, I would expect them to use a much
higher 10k or so round count.

