The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains: An Introduction to Cryptocurrencies and the Technology that Powers Them
by Antony Lewis
13 popular highlights from this book
Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains: An Introduction to Cryptocurrencies and the Technology that Powers Them:
Ethereum’s blockchain is a list of transactions involving the cryptocurrency Ether, a multitude of other tokens (including those representing CryptoKitties) and other related data, all of which is recorded on Ethereum.
Money solving the inefficiencies of barter is a myth popularised in 1776 by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations.
The play contains the first known example of Gresham’s Law, that bad money drives out good.
Stockholms Banco issued Europe’s first banknotes but got carried away and issued more than could be redeemed, a money creation technique known as fractional reserve banking.
Gold specie standard. Coins are made of gold and are a certain weight and purity in convenient standard units instead of random shapes, sizes, and weights. This is called a gold specie standard. Specie is a Latin word for ‘the actual form’. This is commodity money.
Gold bullion standard. Notes (bits of paper) are redeemable or convertible at the issuer (usually the central bank) for gold—usually in the form of gold bullion (this means bars of gold of certain standard weights and purities). This is called a gold bullion standard. This is representative money.
Non-convertible gold bullion standard. This is where the issuer declares that their currency is worth a certain amount of gold, but doesn’t allow you to redeem your money for gold. This is starting to blur the lines between representative and fiat money.
digress just for a bit of fun. This was a difficult political period that coincided with the birth of populism in the US. Indeed, L. Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is regarded by some as a clever political satire, a parable on populism, and a commentary on monetary policy. References are numerous. Yellow brick road? Gold. Ruby slippers? In the book, they were silver, and a reference to a populist demand for ‘free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold’ at the 16:1 ratio. Scarecrow? Farmers who weren’t as dim as first thought. Tin Man? Industrial workers. Flying monkeys? Plains Indians. The Cowardly Lion? William Jennings Bryan, Nebraska representative in Congress and later the democratic presidential candidate. Emerald City, where the Wizard lives? Washington DC. The Wizard, an old man whose power is achieved through acts of deception? Well, pick any politician in Washington. Now can you guess what ‘Oz’ is a reference to? Yes, the unit for precious metals. These parallels are discussed in more detail by Quentin P. Taylor, Professor of History, Rogers State College in a fascinating essay “Money and Politics in the Land of Oz.
a solution to the double coincidence of wants. Indeed, David Graeber details the existence of debt and credit systems before money, which itself appeared before barter, in his fascinating and influential book Debt: The First 5,000 Years21.
signed with the private key to produce a digital signature which is small, irrespective of the size of the data being signed. There is a good summary on Microsoft’s Technet website72:
According to the Bitcoin Obituary website,16 Bitcoin has been declared dead over 300 times! But it lives on...
the creation of the very first Bitcoin on 3 January 2009,
PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is a scheme originally developed in the 1990’s for encrypting, decrypting and digitally signing messages such as emails. This scheme was so powerful that the US Government didn’t like it and had it classified as Munitions, an ‘Auxiliary Military Equipment,’ meaning that anyone found exporting it from the US would be in deep trouble.
