Bitcoin Forum

It's really hard to keep up with the cryptocurrency development even for a programmer. Every coin is trying to introduce a lot of new terms to show you how innovative it is. But in many cases it turns out to be just another vaporware. And at the end of the day you see that you've waisted your time for nothing.

How many books did you read / how many courses did you complete before you started investing in Bitcoin? Can you honestly say: do you really have the time to keep up with the crypto world or at some point you just started to believe in tech instead of trying to grasp every single crypto feature?

I just knew only how to sign a address and keep my money not in exchanges when I did buy bitcoin. That's what I heard from everyone and I learned why I should after I invested in bitcoin 2-3 years ago.
For me, bitcointalk and other places is where I mostly learned how to use and understand bitcoin, I used to mostly lurk on here not talking much considering my somewhat poor English and poor knowledge of bitcoin itself.

I can't really keep up with all the new technologies in the crypto world and not even bitcoin itself to be honest. I'm just hoping in the future that more people will use it and understand that the money you hold with bitcoin is your money and not someone elses.

What do you mean wasted your time? At least you have pick up something, because I know programmers are people who love to solve problem, maybe you just got disappointed because of so many projects without any real usage whatsoever.


To be honest, I didn't read any books. I just go around this community and learn everything from ground up. Yeah, its hard to keep with the latest news, but there are a lot of resources outside this forum. You just have to devote some time, imho.

So the first thing I'd say is I agree, it's really hard to keep up with development. It's even harder when you're trying to look at multiple projects. It's hard to get into a project in its early days and be confident in it unless the developers have a reputation or you're a developer yourself and have looked through the code.

It's unrealistic to believe that you can, on your own, learn in depth, keep up with, and provide actual criticism of multiple projects at once. For this reason, it's better to pick one or a few interesting projects (ex, bitcoin and ethereum) and pay close attention to them.

Believing in the tech is easier when experienced developers with reputations have vetted a project and given it the green light. Bitcoin is a great example of a well-vetted project because it's open source and there are developers like Greg Maxwell, Peter Todd, Pieter Wuille, Wladimir, etc who are highly respected and have contributed to it. Just go take a look at the Github to see how meticulous those guys (and others in the community) are. You can trust that the best developers are working on that project, whereas on some small closed source project you really can't be sure.

I honestly didn't understand much when I started, I'd heard of bitcoin over the years, since probably as early as 2011, but in the last year or so I got curious enough to really learn how the technology works.

Well, most of the times I go through the references of the team and if the idea sounds in general something smart of just a whitepaper with technical terms on it. But I don't need the knowledge now since it will be a long time till I invest in something crypto-related.

it becomes easier over time to recognize shitty projects and not waste your time even looking at them. and you don't have to go through their codes to find that out! there are enough signs in their announcement and the general information you can easily find that can tell you that.


you don't need to read a book or have any understanding of the "technology" behind bitcoin to start investing in it. would you also read books on understanding the technology that Apple is using in its product before buying the shares of their company? so why treat bitcoin any differently?

You just cannot go wrong with bitcoin.

When i started with crypto i didnt understand the concept or technology.
The more you read the easier it gets.

We all know that many crypto projects have turned out to be vapourware
and it is hard to know which is good thats why i say stick with the old
reliables.

I have never felt the need to understand how bitcoin works or as you call it understand "bitcoin tech" in order to use it. I only cared to know how it works as a beginner, so I only bothered with the basics of it and didn't confuse myself with anything advanced.
later on, as time went by I became more interested in learning more about bitcoin so I also increased my knowledge which is still don't find "necessary" to use bitcoin. I just learned it because I like to know more.

Truly speaking, when I first heard of bitcoin, I never knew anything about it before investing. What I was told was that it is a new currency that is not controlled by any government. It was exciting and I jumped in. It was after several months then I began actually reading about bitcoin. Even now, I am yet to get the whole gist about bitcoin.

I don't think it's correct to compare Bitcoin with Apple stock. With stocks people generally try to calculate the company's profit to determine the value of a stock, but it obviously does not apply to Bitcoin. Also Bitcoin and crypto are far newer than consumer electronics, so it's important to understand the technical details to avoid at least the most obvious scams and fallacies. For example, there was a FUD recently that said that Bitcoin will succumb to a "death spiral", but anyone with some understanding of mining would see that it's just nonsense.

I'm not going to lie, I didn't know a damn thing! I had thought it was the new E-Gold, so I check out Mt. Gox and seen what I thought was a stock exchange happening. Boy was I wrong, I even considered purchasing when they were $10 but, I was young and stupid, still in school. My brother had told me, you will always lose money chasing women, but will never lose women while chasing money. It would be several years before his statement really clicked.
   Two or so years pass, and bam, the next time I take a gander,  the price was $100 or so. Man I was pissed  >:(.
Eventual an American exchange called Coinbase would come along, by that time, It was inching closer to $500-$600
So I decided to join the forum. I didn't post most, just lurked around as a newbie. I still remeber when everyone was talking about Etheruem was coming, and I still didn't invest.
   Learned a valuable lesson though, your're window of opportunity is usually a small one, which will close unexpectedly.

i think knowing all things about the object that will you invest to is the good way, its mean that you can try to learn about the bitcoin and investing media, the 3rd media, and anything else, because knowing before make an action is a good way

I don't think you need to understand the technical features of btc to invest in it or buy it. Most of the time people just need to have a basic understanding about how the whole thing works. Although, nowadays, most people only see bitcoin as a store of value, or a digital asset that can give you a ROI in the long run. People no longer care about the tech behind a crypto, it's all about making money.

In my case, I didn't understand the tech behind bitcoin back in the day, all I knew was that it was a decentralized cryptocurrency where you can send money while remaining anonymous, that alone caught my attention to put money in it, as time went by, I started reading a bit more about the tech, then I stopped doing that since I don't need to know every technical aspect of bitcoin in order for me to use it or HODL it.

i really didnt understand bitcoin fully but i had a friend who told me so many things about bitcoin and i also read some articles too online. though i was not grounded on bitcoin information then but i believed in the ideology which moved me to invest

Right, when Bitcoin price started from $.01 to $1, people started to realized that they can make a lot of money and didn't learn the technology behind. That's why you will see a lot of newbies commenting on countries embracing Blockchain Technology that it will bring or affect the market price positively. But they didn't know that adopting this technology doesn't always equate to price moving up.


I guess everyone started this way as well, but if you're that interested at least in my case I try to understand the technology behind but reading fin tech articles and of course the whitepaper.

The first time I invested in Bitcoin in the fall of 2017. I earned a lot and lost a lot. I did not study the blockchain technology, but I read a lot about the opinions of famous people

In 2014, I just have a very simple and basic grasp of how bitcoin and the blockchain works. I bought bitcoins for the first time without the intent of being rich, just thought of getting my paycheck into something other than the banks. I became interested into diving deeper on bitcoin more of an asset when more and more services began opening their doors for the said cryptocurrency in 2015. Right now, I'm more interested on how the whole system and protocol works in a deeper level, not just in general, since the thought of getting rich with bitcoin has already passed for me.

I was even below average and i didn't have any kind of knowledge regarding cryptocurrencies or about there core technology which is blockchain technology but for anything there is a start but I think specially today for newbies who are willing to invest in the bitcoin market should have a sound understanding about bitcoin and its technology because unlike in the past using the technology is becoming tricky due to many hackers and a simple mistake can make a huge loss for an individual

Most people learn through experience and i think that is a god way to learn because you don't just know the facts but you feel them when you have come across in the past and that is the main reason why most experienced investors or traders doesn't fall most of the time when the market goes in the wrong direction but such experience comes with patience and continues learning for a considerable period of time but once someone master like that nothing can drop him

Honestly, i don't read anything or maybe don't really know technology about bitcoin or other crypto. That is why when bitcoin up in past, i already very happy and sell my coins immediately.

I am not a programmer, and I didn't take any courses. However, I never bought btc, only received it from friends and as payment. I watched tons of videos read many articles throughout the years, of course, but when I started I only knew how to buy and send btc and a small amount of info about blockchain. Keeping up with the general trends is not hard now, because most of coins are useless and something worth looking into is rare. However, I cannot analyze the technical details, so I only read relevant articles on reputable websites and watch videos on Youtube. I am not sure that being a good investor requires knowing what you're investing at, though. Are stock traders specialists on the companies the shares of which they buy or sell? Or do they simply know the market and follow trends, regardless to what the product is like? I think it's the latter. For usage, you should know at least basics and keep up with new developments. For investment - IDK if that's necessary.

I must admit I was not good at knowing Bitcoin at all before investing. The truth is that I invested first a bit of Bitcoin and back then I knew the very basics of it. After that I read more about it. Always learn as much as you can before investing is the lesson I learned.

I knew basic concept and how the system works. Even though I have technical backgroung, I had difficulties to get details. Because you have to spend a lot time, which I don't have, to learn enough for beeing at the level of an expert.

When I heard about bitcoin firstly, I started learning the technology blockchain and bitcoin. So I am from the smallest group who knew about bitcoin a lot of before investing in it. It was several years ago, there wasn't enough literature.

im just like the other's here . i only knew the basics on how bitcoin and blockchain works and on how to operate it but even if im slightly interesteed to learn its technical side , i still find it hard to understand it because i dont have an educational background on this kind of field  . im also busy on more other important stuffs so i cant dedicate enough time .  yet , we dont need to be good in bitcoin tech before we invest on it  .

I'm a software dev who absolutely hates black boxes - I needed to understand everything I used on a daily basis. So I learned cryptography in 2010.
Unfortunately I only learned about bitcoin in 2013, so I'm not fully retired. But once I learned about it I bought a ton of it.
Truthfully understanding the cryptography behind it doesn't matter. But to understand the value proposition, you have to have a good graps of the economics of the system.

Of course. I have a lot of time for update the development of the crypto world. especially when I trade. even for investment too. we must know the market chart before. and you have to join several crypto investor communities to find out the coin journey that will be created.

At least we have to be able to do Bitcoin transactions and other coins to exchangers, or other wallets. Because if we invest in Bitcoin, we will become a coin trader who sometimes also needs to do Arbit to make a profit on another exchangers. And don't forget to save all login data and private keys in a safe place.

When I started, I didn't knew much about Bitcoin. Before starting I thought that's something like rocket science. I didn't read any books or something, I just tried to search for information to understand basic things at least. I used websites like Bitcoin.org, some forums, various articles and etc. And even today I can't call myself as crypto expert. I'm not tech savvy guy, so it's difficult to understand some things about Bitcoin and cryptography in general. And honestly, I'm not trying to go too deep into details, because there is just too much technical details which aren't that easy to understand for everyone.

Maybe most people find it very difficult to keep up with cryptocurrency development every year, which doesn't mean we can't balance it, because every year more and more users want to know bitcoin, because everyone switches to using Cryptocurrency, maybe a few years ago it was very easy to find work which is very good to invest without having to choose it, if at the moment if it is compared it is very difficult to choose a long-term investment and very often fraud occurs that makes some investors get a considerable loss ...

No. I dont have much time to keep up with every crypto currency that will come out.
The very least I could do is keep up with bitcoin news which is really my priority.

With investing though, I havent got books or took any courses.
Just this forum will give you a lot of knowledge about it. Videos also helps or audios which I listen everyday whenever I am at my day job.

Being lazy will gain nothing so better multi task when you have the time.

I am not understand about programming or creating a node but i am understand that bitcoin is transparant distribution ledger and its hard to hack on transaction data. Its almost impossible to duplicate the transaction and i think its good for long term.

Well for me i didn't. Just read a few articles and forums and then managed to stumble upon btc talk back in the days, got in a signature campaign and pretty much learned most i know now. I'll admit i still have a lot to learn but i'm pretty aware of what bitcoin is, and what it aims to do, and where it is now, and where it's going. Not really interested in all the confusing technicalities.

@stuffokator, the principle is quite simple.

There is nothing like a safe boat for someone offboarder. Get into the boat and you'll keep sailing to your destination no matter how deep the sea might be.

You learn while you belong and participate in forum like this. There is nothing like mistake-free in the tech-world
So no matter how many book's & lesson you might take. Their are certain mistake which are unavoidable.

Atleast, they make you a PRO!!  8) 8)


Thanks

I got to know bitcoin through crowdworking programme in 2013. When it was introduced as a one of the payment options. To me I do not know much before investing while I started but what I have always do right from the first day i registered on this platform is always monitor and read to understanding any post written by legendary members. In fact there are still many of them that I always visit their profiles and check there posts on investing. Later I started reading whitepapers and also ask questions directly from dev to know exactly what the project is all about before investing.

Investors don't need to know about the tech behind it, just the movements in price. There is new tech coming out all the time like lightning network, segwit, and now mimblewimble which can change everything.

I understand Bitcoin is only limited to progress that can replace money, besides that I consider it a tool for profit. then I decided to invest.

LOL, no idea haha. Was just like lets go "moooon".

I don't think it is necessary to know all aspects of an asset in order to invest. Having basic knowledge and seeing recent trend might be enough. This is not only the case for the crypto-currency markets, but in the traditional markets, investors often make their decisions in this way.

I have been trading with other assets before and faced with it and as time goes by, I learn more as I try. I guess if you have been engaged in trading in the past, you should not work hard with courses(especially Forex). In fact crypto trade is easier and more profitable because of price volatility, unless huge risks are taken.

I personally didn't take numerous courses or training before I started investing in the bitcoin,but I did take tutorials from a cryptocurrency expert for quite a few weeks who educated me on the dos and don't,but it didn't take me too long either to get into the network,and with time I got more experience little by little till I got to this stage

I think to get involved in the crypto world you don't have to understand the details of what Bitcoin is and so on. I think that just enough with you, understanding the basics is enough to help you start plunging into the world of cryptocurrency because, in my opinion, your knowledge will increase when you have decided to jump in and join the crypto world because a valuable lesson is our experience in doing something the real one.

one of the advantages bitcoin has over other investment vehicle is that,  you don't have to be an expert for you to invest in bitcoin. With little or no knowledge you can start investing in bitcoin. I had very little knowledge when I first invest in bitcoin. Only know how to send and receive bitcoin.

At the initial stage when I join Cryptocurrency, the whole thing was confusing, the terminologies, the blockchain and a whole host of other things.
Luckily for me, my friend that joined before me took it upon himself to put me through .
I also did the udemy course as well.
After that Istarted coming to terms with the whole Cryptocurrency stuff.

Ok, be honest.. How many books did you read and how many courses did you complete, before you invested into Gold or Silver or shares in Amazon? Most investors just follow the financial advice that are given in the media and they look at investment trends in general. I would say with a high degree of certainty that most Bitcoin investors just followed the trend too, when they decided to invest.

Monkey see, Monkey do behavior is very common and this is fueled by the "Keeping Up with the Joneses" mindset. If I have to explain this, then I would say that most people heard about Bitcoin from some family member that made some good profits in 2017 and prior to that and they wanted the same kind of returns on their investment and they decided to buy some bitcoins too.  ::)  

Haha to be honest, when I first decided to start investing in cryptocurrency, I only knew that this is an online currency that is growing every day, and all my friends also invest in it. I remember these carefree days with a smile! I really did not know anything about cryptocurrency, but I'm glad I started it.

you are right . crypto is really a currency that grows due to massive demand but not all times because there were other times that the value drops due to some people are selling thier coin for profit  .  

im not an investor and i didnt know that bitcoin is volatile but i did join the bitcoin community because i want to earn a piece of it  .  i see that there are so many ways to earn a btc compared to other payment methods like paypal  before when i was hunting for online jobs  .

I never read any books but I read many article from the internet :D

I think I still not good for understanding bitcoin although I read many articles and I think I need to learn more and more so I can get more information. To understanding the blockchain technology is not as simple as we think, we need to learn in every day, find and read many articles from many sources. But the important is we don't have to feel bored if somehow we cannot do like other people because maybe they are started before us and they can collect enough information than us. So we need to study more about bitcoin and the blockchain technology.

Bitcoin is suggested by my friend and he helps me by giving information that can add some knowledge to me about bitcoin. I didn't try to read books because i don't know what specific book i should read so i have decided to ask my friend and read some information in the internet. When i think that the knowledge i have is already enough then that is the time that I decided to invest because it makes me feel that i finally understand how bitcoin works and different info about it.

Right before you start in any kind of business you need knowledge of it, entering in investing is easy but if you don't have knowledge it may cause to lose your investment in a seconds. It's better to study first make some research and learn more before you join for your own good.

Today 90% of projects are hype. Most of the projects' goal is still not implemented, prices gain value from ''the air''.
In my opinion, spending as much time as you can, at least for learning more, helps you to trade easily when prices get better. Also, some of the books you read may be relevant to trade, so "trade is trade".

When I start the Cryptocurrency then totally I haven't understand everything.but day by day I fell something underestand and keep some knowledge.
My some friends everything help me for the understanding crypto market,then I always try more and more articles,videos for the Cryptocurrency market.so when I have something underestand,then I start invest then nest trade.even finally I have clear underestand in the bitcointalk and lot of topics.

Well I realized if i decide to learn everything before I might join at the long run since you cant achieve that within a week or month so i decided to start with less than 10% knowledge in cryptocurrency.

You're right with what you said because 90% of the new project in town are technically base on the hype and dont worth invest and the best thing to do if ones is yet to understand the market is to make use of bot trading or watching the market closely while take the advantage of any down of the market till when understand the trading of crypto currency very well.

I did not take a course, I only saw videos and read a lot in investopedia ... But I saw videos about the basic operation of bitcoin and what were its strengths and weaknesses and whether it was good investment or not. I did not go deep in the technical aspect. I believe the following:

A good project is one that offers solutions to the real world. something that can help make life easier for people.

There are many altcoins, but most of these altcoins do not play a relevant role in the real world. For this reason they are only used only to make trade on exchange  and only increase prices due to pump and dump

surely that is because knowledge is very important to do any work and as a key to running well, so my advice before investing is better to increase knowledge and keep learning to gain knowledge

Personally, I know everything superficially, I gave my money to trust management, to my friend - a trader who has good experience and skills to engage in trade. So far, thank God everything is fine, I am pleased with his work. But unfortunately not everyone has such opportunities, so before making an investment it is worthwhile to get a good understanding and study.

understanding bitcoin tech was not easy for me initially. I was only interested in making profit from bitcoin beacuse i heard people made money from it. it was later on i took out time to really read books about bitcoin tech so i can fully understand how it works

You don't need to understand the whole technical things to invest in bitcoin, when I decided to invest in crypto I only got a little knowledge, I just know bitcoin is a good investment for the future because it offers unique features, and now I don't really have the time to understand each of the alt coin developments, I only going to dig deep if I found out the coin got the potential to growth