Bitcoin Forum

 I am currently an economics major and have zero experience is programming or software development or network security. If I wanted to be an expert in blockchain technology with the ultimate goal of creating a blockchain unicorn sometime down the line, how does one chart the course?

I suppose by reading satoshi's whitepaper¹, then browse the bitcoin wiki² and this forum³... Maybe by cloning an altcoin and creating your own alt just to learn the inner workings

references:
1) https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
2) https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page
3) https://bitcointalk.org

There are a few courses available on Udemy, but I can't comment on the quality of them and I'm not sure if any of them really cover the inner workings of Bitcoin and the blockchain.
Take a look here:
https://www.udemy.com/courses/search/?ref=home&src=ukw&q=bitcoin&lang=en

I think you might need to start catching up on the math behind the cryptography as well such as SHA256, RIPEMD etc.

i have a useful documentation for your request, some courses & ebooks:

• Coursera - Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies (2016) 12 hours
• Introduction to Bitcoin and Decentralized Technology  Duration: 3.5 Hours
• The Bitcoin Basics Duration: 7 Hours
• The Bitcoin Guidebook: How to Obtain, Invest, and Spend the World's First Decentralized Cryptocurrency 356 pages | EPUB/PDF/MOBI
• Bitcoin and Mobile Payments: Constructing a European Union Framework 314 pages | pdf

PM me if interested

Thank you and thanks to all that have contributed prior. I realize i do have my work cut out for me. If I were to dedicate about 10 hours daily, 5 days weekly for this quest, when in a reasonable amount of time can I master all these learning. Also, is there something like a blockchain university or something, or a certification. How would I gain industry credibility?

technology is changing constantly, you will always have something to learn.
and the time needed to become a dev, specially a good one, depends on you. there are people who learn really fast and people who need more time so that depends.

specific certification i never saw, if you want credibility you will need to show some work done, but of course a graduation in this area(IT) is a plus and certification in correlated areas are good too(like a certification in the aimed programming language).

Quite stumbling question!

Actually blockchain and bitcoin are very different things.

Blockchain is a technology which is used to make first invention and revolution in form of Bitcoin with help of cryptography.

can you pls put a time line. let's say i'm a reasonable fast learner how long in months? being a developer would definitely mean i'm at least conversant with programming right

Read the guide, reference, and examples from https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-documentation. These go extremely in depth into the inner workings of Bitcoin and work with everything on the byte level showing you exactly what each byte of every data structure is.

How's your management skills? You don't need to be a tech genius. All you have to do is recruit the right people. There are plenty of people who know a lot who'll never have the initiative to create a business.

This sounds nice but won't at least a fundamental knowledge be necessary.

First you have to go through what actually cryptography is and than go through what is inside blockchain technology. How bitcoin ledger is maintained, how network is secured with nodes worldwide, how mining works, meaning of POW, POS etc are few terms and systems you have to learn first before you learn programing behind blockchain.

Yes. An overview of its capabilities is important but no one person can ever create a unicorn from scratch. Sniff out some possibilities, check whether it's achievable with the right people and away you go.

If I can help, I'm doing consultancy in several thing, amongst which cryptography and security, and I'm in the process of setting up a web site.

http://entrop-x.com/index.php/en/

There's much more than what I managed to put up there, but it can be of some help. 

There are many way , let see if you are interest on hardware , you can try to visit hardware detail on this forum or
Maybe you can check out https://www.blockchain.com/careers/
You will see some requirement / skill that may fit to you , you can try to send your portofolio if you want to get accept.

to become "expert" you have to use bitcoins for a long time, so you will know a lot about bitcoins, how they work and so on, so then you will be expert

Right But just use of bitcoin cannot educate that much as already existence of bitcoin have much more higher than it.

Firstly have understand basic about bitcoin as what is bitcoin ?

How they invented ?

How they generated ?
How to use then ?
What are possibilities ?
What are benefits ?

What are drawbacks ?
What is security ?
What are future and features etc... and much more.

After getting such information one must have to be able to believe in it. And after that person can become master.
But its not an easy process. It could take long time.

There are a lot of videos on youtube that can help you out if you don't want to bother reading atm.

It takes a long to to become an expert in blockchain/bitcoin but if you are very active here you can learn a lot in bitcoin also in blockchain just always start a thread about it and become expert someday..

thats true, it is a sophisticated technology that requires a lot of time if you actually want to understand it completely

Thanks for the tips, it will be useful for me too.

Thank you all for the tips. it's been very enlightening

There are different parts to Bitcon so it's difficult to become an expert. For example, there is an economics and monetary component that exists. You said you're an economics major so you may be comfortable with that part. However, the largest area of learning for Bitcoin is in the math and technology. Some people just don't like math and technology. They do just enough to get by and no more. If you're a person like this you'll never be a Bitcoin expert. On the contrary, if you're the opposite, someone that absolutely loves math and technical things you have a very good chance at becoming an expert as long as you put in the time to learn.

You might want to start with the book Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos. It's a freely open source book which can be seen here:

https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook and it's also available from Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking-Digital-Crypto-Currencies/dp/1449374042

You can try out Lynda. It's a library where you will get lots of stuff from programming to cryptocurrencies, from beginner to advanced stuff that will help you to learn whatever you want, at your own time.

The best way to learn something is by using it.  You can spend all day reading white papers and studying the technology and you will still feel like you know nothing.

The blockchain is the core technology that allows cryptocurrencies to exist, and Bitcoin is the first implementation.  It really depends what you want to do with it.  You should at least have a basic understanding of how the software works and there's a lot of great youtube videos out there which do a great job explaining.  But you don't need to have a working knowledge of the programming itself.  As a Econ major think about how the currency applies as a unit of trade and consider the implications of a fully digitized economy.

After that, you'll need direct experience if you want to be an expert.  Use the software, launch startups related to the industry and you will learn or fail trying :).  It is a constant process and not one you'll ever stop.  There will be maybe a few days where you feel like you understand everything and then weeks where you feel lost and behind the curve. Just. Keep. Learning.  From all sources. 

Experts are made by dedication, not certification programs.  I'm very grateful BTC doesn't have anything like that and I sincerely hope it never does.  Cert programs just mean that a particular body calls you an expert, it doesn't automatically make you one.

I would suggest getting active with bitcoin by buying some and trying it out by spending and trading it. You might also want to try mining just to get a feel for the importance of mining (you're probably not going to make money at it).

I don't have an answer for you, but I like your thinking.

re: How do I become a Bitcoin/Blockchain Expert

Here's how:

Step 1. Create a Twitter Account
Step 2. Set your description to "Distributed Ledger Technology Expert"
Step 3. ? ? ? ? ?
Step 4. You're an Expert

If you want to become a Bitcoin/Blockchain Expert you must gather some data from the professional to that field, gather opinion and advice to professional to this forum, and dont become shy to asked questions.

First, you will have to understand that you will have to learn a substantial amount of programming and cryptography. All the blockchain is is encrypted data.

you can become a bitcoin / blockchang expert through regular practice because practice make man perfect, i think becoming a bitcoin expert is not such a difficult job, you can become expert in bitcoin just in few days.

you will not become an expert by taking a Lynda's or any other course,however good it may be
a friend of mine,who is a teacher with 22 years of experience,once said that if you cannot explain the subject to a 6 year old so that he understands it,you are not an expert in that field
an expert is someone who not only read all the technical info and has a very indeep understanding of it,but also applied his knowledge on practice and is also able to explain how bitcoin works to a 6 year old :)
experts don't have to refer to manuals to tell you how this or that works,they create the said manuals themselves

Iam reading this book, http://blockchainprogramming.azurewebsites.net/
its about how to be a blockchain programmer actually it start from the basic like what is bitcoin address,public and private key untill how to create a private key and many usefull tips out there about blockchain programming.
If you op is interested just click the link above.

i think you need to give good time to bitcoin/blockcahin and only then you can become an expert in bitocin/blockchain.

There are a lot of courses offered on block chain technologies. If you want to become more familiar with bitcoins technology, there is a good course on Coursera offered by Princeton university. Check that out.

Satoshi's white paper is quite technical and complicated. It's inappropriate for a beginner.

Becoming a bit coin expert is a long time process. There are different parts to Bitcoin so it's difficult to become an expert. For example, there is an economics and monetary component that exists. You can try out Lynda. It's a library where you will get lots of stuff from programming to cryptoccurrences, from beginner to advanced stuff that will help you to learn whatever you requires. The best way to learn something is by using it. You can spend all day reading white papers and studying the technology and you will still feel like you know nothing.