
How the Bitcoin protocol actually works (2013) - dsr12
http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin-protocol-actually-works/
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elcapitan
This is a good addition to the original Bitcoin paper
([https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf](https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf) [pdf]),
which is already very concise and readable. The contribution of the post is
going into the details of how the concepts actually play out in reality and
how stuff just looks like.

It's interesting that there are so many other articles and talks that try to
explain Bitcoin with a high effort of metaphors and examples while avoiding
technical details. You can consume all of them and still have no idea.

But then again this is probably similar in other fields with high levels of
internal complexity (i.e. where you'd have to read recursively all of the
science behind it to get even superficial understanding).

~~~
lohengramm
I found this page: [http://www.righto.com/2014/02/bitcoins-hard-way-using-raw-
bi...](http://www.righto.com/2014/02/bitcoins-hard-way-using-raw-
bitcoin.html?m=1) to be the most technical in the subject.

I appreciate similar links if they exist.

~~~
kens
Thanks, I'm glad you liked my writeup. I also did a similar article on Bitcoin
mining: [http://www.righto.com/2014/02/bitcoin-mining-hard-way-
algori...](http://www.righto.com/2014/02/bitcoin-mining-hard-way-
algorithms.html)

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s_dev
This is the best (concise + clear) explanation of Bitcoin I've come across:
[http://alecb.me/blog/how-bitcoin-works/](http://alecb.me/blog/how-bitcoin-
works/)

It's shorter and simpler than the OPs which seems to be a bit more
comprehensive.

