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Advice on working with Bitcoin
4 points by pattle on Nov 9, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 6 comments
I'm interested in developing applications that use Bitcoin and other digital currencies but I'm unsure where to start.

Can anyone recommend any good resources online, tutorials, API's that can get me started?

Thanks




The book 'Mastering Bitcoin' from O'Reilly is an AWESOME read if you're going to develop stuff with Bitcoin. It's extremely insightful into how Bitcoin really works and shows you how to program stuff as well.


Thanks I'll check it out


There is a Coursera course from Princeton on the subject

https://www.coursera.org/course/bitcointech


Do not work with it, why?

1. average electricity spending in total much higher than value of bitcoin. Basically bitcoin causes more co2 emission.

2. In its current form, bitcoin is not feasible in the future to mine, are tou going to download 10Tb of chain into your PC? if no than after 10-20years other average person will think alike. other solution is centralizing some of the data, than its not P2P.

3. Satoshi left the community, who knows maybe he is/they are working with their real name, but anyway they probably found some issues with it and its not leaving without reason.

Why learn? Its amazing piece of technology, logic and how human brain create such solutions.


1) Yea it uses power, but so do all the millions of machines that are used for banking. In fact, if you compare them, Bitcoin is extremely efficient.

2) Well, first of all you're just talking about the current state of the blockchain. Perhaps in the future we can 'archive' transactions so they don't have to be downloaded any more. Furthermore, you're talking about 10~20 years time from now. By then 10TB will be irrelevantly small. Nowadays you can already buy a 4TB hard drive for like $100.

3) Eh what? First of all this point doesn't even make sense, but Satoshi isn't even needed any more. The work is fully open source and it's now being led by the community.

Anyway, I really don't see what you post has to do with OP's question. You're not answering him, but just repeating some old refuted fallacies.


The banking system handles millions of times more transactions than Bitcoin. The entire Bitcoin network has less transaction throughput than a raspberry pi in a shoebox.




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