Bitcoin Forum

I've been spending a lot of time the past month trying to learn more and more about bitcoin with each week my efforts increasing even more than the previous week. I started to look at the understanding path as having four main levels.

1. Know nothing, or have only heard about bitcoin
2. Understand bitcoin from a user perspective
3. Understand in theory the full architecture and design of bitcoin
4. Understand bitcoin down to the code level

I feel hopeful about bitcoin in that getting from level 1 to level 2 only took me a short time, maybe a week thinking about it here and there, then finally starting to use it to buy a few things. I believe level 1 will be where 99.99% of users will be once bitcoin is mainstream. Now I feel like I'm somewhere in the middle of level 3, I have a good grasp of the theory of how the mechanics of the system work, however this step has taken a lot of time for me. I've literally watched hours of youtube videos on various encryption, networking and programming subjects, this was a big effort but I feel good that it's understandable now. I want to continue on and really understand how the code is functioning, how the protocol is working, etc, eventually I'd like to contribute in some way, even if that way is explaining bitcoin to folks in a new, maybe easier way.

Isn't this how everyone who has ever known about anything ever knows things to different levels.

1. Some have no clue
2. Some have a bit of a clue
3. Some know a lot
4. Some know everything

ha yeah I like that!

Step 3 takes a long time.  There are lots of nuances.  Almost two years I am learning new things and fixing misconceptions I had about the protocol.

Really it's hard for me to imagine how someone could have come up with such a concept and implemented without all the knowledge which we now have, really pretty amazing. I think it's better that we don't know who he is now, but I'd be happy if he wrote a book anonymously so we can get an idea of what he was thinking.

this pretty much explains everything you need to know unless you want to start digging into the code yourself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx9zgZCMqXE

Thanks for this share.  Cool video.

Yes! I've watched that one about 4 times now all the way through!

Hopefully not. Or else the latest updates in the code have been made by people not knowing what they were doing ...

wow, thanks for posting,
this is the most detailed explanation of btc i've seen so far.
put on documentary thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=268955.0

yes this is the resource that really made it "click" for me. it was like a puzzle and all the pieces were close to the right places and you could see what the picture was supposed to be but after this video it all fell into place.

same experience, i had a lot of terms flying around in my brain, but only a slight glimpse in the whole system and suddenly everything is connected together.
Now I feel like finally seeing the wood for the trees, this is really an eye-opener.  :)

if you have more vids or interesting talks like this in stock, feel free to post on my thread.

I'm 2 - 3, I definitely understand the idea behind Bitcoin and have general knowledge on it, but I'd have a lot of trouble learning the technical stuff behind it because the only coding I've ever done is for games.