Bitcoin Forum

Hi, I am a junior in University studying CS/Statistics.  I'm currently in a graduate cryptography course so I have a  decent foundation. I want to work on some personal projects, but I'm not really sure how to get started. I prefer to completely understand everything; hence, I do not necessarily just want to use some API's to abstract everything away, but I actually want to get dirty and really learn how bitcoin works. Any recommandations on some tutorials to follow or what exactly might be beneficial? I've watched/read plenty of videos about how bitcoin works, but I still feel that I couldn't really implement anything based on this knowledge.

Thanks!

Have you read the whitepaper (see bitcoin.org)? If not, that's your first stop. Afterwards, you could consider taking a peek into the Bitcoin Core source (on GitHub) to see how things work behind the scenes. After that, I guess it's mostly a question of what you want to do.

Bitcoin.org, start at the whitepaper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx9zgZCMqXE is a great 25 minute video that gets into the meat of it.


Then go to reddit.com/r/bitcoin for crowd sourced information.

If you're taking Cryptography courses already, really want to know how Bitcoin works, want to develop, and implement it, you might as well go "All in":

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032281.do

http://orm-other.s3.amazonaws.com/masteringbitcoin_splash/masteringbitcoin_cover.jpg

NO better way to learn, than from the master himself, Andreas Antonopolous.  Wrote the literal book on Bitcoin.

If you want an appetizer on what he's all about, you watch this clip first:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUNGFZDO8mM

try checking out satoshi's whitepaper as others have said. along with that, try checking out the bitcoin github as well as the bitcoin wiki. both of those places seem to have solid resources for learning about bit coin.

@Chuckbuck is right. If you really want to get the filet mignon of Bitcoin education, it's this book.

As others have suggested, "Mastering Bitcoin" is excellent.

Since you are a computer science major you might also want to check out " Blockchain Programming in C#" by Nicolas Dorier. Here is a link to the pdf:
 https://aois.blob.core.windows.net/public/Blockchain Programming in CSharp.pdf (https://aois.blob.core.windows.net/public/Blockchain Programming in CSharp.pdf)

What would you like to do? Would you like to create your own coin or just start some little side project. It will be best if you can find some people with knowledge of the subject and stick to them. It will be better than reading books or watching videos in my opinion.

There's a developer subforum in here, im sure they will assist you with anything you need.

Sure, there are a plethora of information and sites dedicated to the core principles and inner workings, but a book really often is something that's been written with a lot of dedication! It often is far superior to some websites, really! And learning from Mr. Antonopoulos is something you can't go wrong with!

the best teacher is experience
since you are graduate cryptography, which is is so helpfully to learn more about crypto
so i recomend you to practice from what you learn, like trading and mining
from trading you can read how the chart work, and from mining you can learn how to make profit from mining

Start with the paper. Every developer gets hooked into whitecoin after reading the whitepaper. Andrea's book happened because he readed it, before reading it he thought Bitcoin was a joke.

Read the whitepaper and then the FAQs here and on bitcoin.org.

I agree 200% is the best source to start and and covers most of the Bitcoin topics, may require some programing level in C++/Python.

HT

This IS indeed good source but you should start with original WHITEPAPER!

https://bitcoin.org/en/faq
i recommended you to build faucet for start your btc project. Good luck ;)

When you are done reading up on everything that has been posted here, you can visit this thread : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=929100.0;topicseen To choose an online wallet service, i.e. if you are looking for such an option.

As mentioned, yes read the whitepaper. Almost everything else you see here are wild guesses, misinformation, paranoid conspiracy theory, etc. Definitely more misunderstanding than understanding.