How important is cryptography?

[Usasauki2004]

During the process of undergoing research partaining bitcoin. I came across the word cryptography. Though have checked what the word entails and it talk about public and private key. I am soliciting for the forum members to enlighten me more and broaden my knowledge about cryptography.

I am an enthusiast of bitcoin and am willing to know every bit of it because I believe is the future. Anything is acceptable so far it will aid my learning about bitcoin be it links, books, videos, pdf and pictures.

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[albert0bsd]

During the process of undergoing research partaining bitcoin. I came across the word cryptography. Though have checked what the word entails and it talk about public and private key. I am soliciting for the forum members to enlighten me more and broaden my knowledge about cryptography.

If you are still in the research process why you don't continue to search about cryptograpy on internet, directly? Wikipedia, Google, even chatGPT are good starting points.

What stop you to continue by your self?

If i can recomend you some place to start is https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mastering-bitcoin/9781491902639/ch04.html

also search the full book.

[joniboini]

Though have checked what the word entails and it talk about public and private key. I am soliciting for the forum members to enlighten me more and broaden my knowledge about cryptography.

Not sure what your question is if you already know about it. Private key is required to access your funds so you should've realized that cryptography is really important just from this point alone. How much do you know about Bitcoin exactly? If you're that enthusiastic about learning Bitcoin, I'd assume you've spent some time reading here and there.

Maybe your question is not "how important", but "what is cryptography"? I second the suggestion to do yourself some favor and do some research on Google to help you learn faster. It is easier and quicker compared to waiting for people to give links on this thread.

[digaran]

Do you want to join the hunt for puzzle keys? First get in line and start with endomorphism, permutation and square root. Just kidding.
You should ask all your questions here, if people know the answers, they will provide.
Cryptography, public/private key pair, works like a gun with fingerprint scanner, without the private key(fingerprint) you can't shoot, bullets(public keys), are there but the trigger(signature) won't work if the gun(network) can't verify the signature(trigger) was activated by private key(fingerprint), so you would use the private key to actually shoot the bullets (coins).

Fun fact, there are 2^96 fingerprints*(private keys) able to activate the trigger and spend from 1 round(address).

*= out of 2^256 private keys.
Simply put, it's all smoke and mirrors, private keys are normal but large numbers, that's it, the crypto part is used because everything is public, by using cryptography tricks you can make sure nothing is leaked even though everything happens in public.  Like traditional magic tricks, cryptography is a mathematical magic trick.

[Usasauki2004]

Though have checked what the word entails and it talk about public and private key. I am soliciting for the forum members to enlighten me more and broaden my knowledge about cryptography.

Not sure what your question is if you already know about it. Private key is required to access your funds so you should've realized that cryptography is really important just from this point alone. How much do you know about Bitcoin exactly? If you're that enthusiastic about learning Bitcoin, I'd assume you've spent some time reading here and there.

Maybe your question is not "how important", but "what is cryptography"? I second the suggestion to do yourself some favor and do some research on Google to help you learn faster. It is easier and quicker compared to waiting for people to give links on this thread.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[Alphakilo]

Anything is acceptable so far it will aid my learning about bitcoin be it links, books, videos, pdf and pictures.

Since you said anything is acceptable, I did a little illustration to aid your learning. I truly hope you find it useful.

Please pardon my crappy handwriting  .

[NotATether]

Cryptography is more vast and important than just securing money or finding the solution to a treasure hunt puzzle. It is literally the way your privacy is enabled online.

Without cryptography, there would not be any HTTPS, SSL, or any of that stuff, passwords would be stored in plain text, and access control would simply cease to exist.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Good books for Bitcoin:

• Mastering Bitcoin 2nd Edition - Programming the Open Blockchain.
• Programming Bitcoin.
• Mastering the Lightning Network (LN).

Good links for learning more about cryptography:

• General course around cryptography: https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/courses/OnlineCrypto/
• Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm, used to verify Bitcoin transaction signatures: https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/ecdsa

Good places to ask question about both:

• https://crypto.stackexchange.com/
• https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/
• this forum.

[Pmalek]

If you want, you can also read two online courses on cryptography from The Sovereign University website.
Crypto301 is the introductory course to cryptography.
Crypto302 goes into more detail.

The videos won't help you much unless you know French.

[Winterfrost]

During the process of undergoing research partaining bitcoin. I came across the word cryptography. Though have checked what the word entails and it talk about public and private key. I am soliciting for the forum members to enlighten me more and broaden my knowledge about cryptography.

Cryptography is the technical ability of hiding secrets using algorithms, transforming a plain-text into cypher-text. It will involve good knowledge of algebra and other mathematical functions. Nothing is impossible to learn as long as you give it your time and attention.

You can learn cryptography and also get a certificate from this website - https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=cryptography

There are various courses from professionals and well know universities good with technologies around the world. If you take a complete course there then you will surely fulfill your desire.

[so98nn]

Good books for Bitcoin:

• Mastering Bitcoin 2nd Edition - Programming the Open Blockchain.
• Programming Bitcoin.
• Mastering the Lightning Network (LN).

Good links for learning more about cryptography:

• General course around cryptography: https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/courses/OnlineCrypto/
• Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm, used to verify Bitcoin transaction signatures: https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/ecdsa

Good places to ask question about both:

• https://crypto.stackexchange.com/
• https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/
• this forum.

Those are definitely heavy readings. I am really not sure if OP should start with them. I was thinking little less sophisticated or basic stuff before they could start on detailed studies. Though these books will start with basic information but sometimes they tend to pick the technical data quickly and start talking about it. I did this with one book that I bought from Amazon. Initially I thought I would start reading it swiftly adding more nice chapters in my brain but it seems that book failed to teach me. OP you can actually start with general outline, the Merkel tree, the history of cryptography that’s where it all started to be frank. Going for modern blockchain can complicate you immediately based on your understanding and inspeldde of programming.

[karabiber]

Cryptography takes a plaintext (also known as clear text) and turns it into something that can only be understood by the intended recipients. Anyone else who somehow gets hold of this piece of information should not be able to understand it.
There are different techniques used to encrypt a plaintext, with symmetric encryption, asymmetric encryption, blockchain and digital signatures being the most important encryption techniques. They are often used in combination with other cyber security measures. With almost everything being digitized, security has come to the forefront. Because even the most critical information is now stored online.

Hackers target smaller businesses instead of corporate companies. Because most of them don't allocate a lot of resources and manpower to cybersecurity operations. So if you want to keep your business or yourself safe in the digital environment, you definitely need proper encryption and encryption applications to protect your data, business communications and so on from malicious attackers.

[satscraper]

Cryptography is branch of modern mathematics that defines dependencies  between specific symbols. The knowledge of those dependencies is crucial factor  for developers who work in the field of cryptocurrency rather than  a requirement for ordinary people who want to deal with digital money.   Nine times out of ten ordinary people  need to focus on wallets, keeping them secure and private, IMHO.

Geeks like to fiddle with cryptography just because..... because they are geeks  

Cryptography For Dummies downloadable  pdf

[jvanname]

The main cryptographic functions for Bitcoin are the cryptographic hash functions, the one way compression functions, and digital signature algorithms.

You can compute SHA-256 hashes here to see what cryptographic hash functions do.

https://xorbin.com/tools/sha256-hash-calculator

One way compression functions are very similar to hash functions as one can use the Merkle-Damgard construction to promote any one way compression function to a cryptographic hash function. The more complicated/conceptual cryptographic algorithm in Bitcoin is the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm. Perhaps the easiest digital signature algorithm to understand is the Merkle-Lamport digital signature algorithm (this will be easy if you already know about compression functions and hash functions).


If you want to understand how elliptic curves work, you will need a mathematical background. It is best to first look at elliptic curves over the field of complex numbers since complex elliptic curves are motivated as the sets of the form (f(z),f'(z)) where f(z) is a doubly periodic function where the poles form an integer lattice and where the poles are of the form 1/z^2. From this construction, it is clear that elliptic curves are just toruses with addition. The book on complex analysis by Ahlfors covers double periodic functions and it shows that they satisfy the differential equation f'(z)^2=4f(z)^3-ag(z)-b. And things that work over the field of complex numbers typically also work over finite fields (due to Los theorem since the field of complex numbers is isomorphic to the ultraproducts of the algebraic closures of finite fields).

Unfortunately, the people here have such a poor appreciation of cryptography that they do not even know that Bitcoin has a mining algorithm that was never designed to advance science. We need to be critical about what can be improved with cryptocurrency technologies.

-Joseph Van Name Ph.D.

[Zaguru12]

Those are definitely heavy readings. I am really not sure if OP should start with them. I was thinking little less sophisticated or basic stuff before they could start on detailed studies. Though these books will start with basic information but sometimes they tend to pick the technical data quickly and start talking about it. I did this with one book that I bought from Amazon. Initially I thought I would start reading it swiftly adding more nice chapters in my brain but it seems that book failed to teach me. OP you can actually start with general outline, the Merkel tree, the history of cryptography that’s where it all started to be frank. Going for modern blockchain can complicate you immediately based on your understanding and inspeldde of programming.

The reason why BHC poured out all those materials is because OP didn’t specify maybe he was a total newbie but rather that he’s been studying and as such one wouldn’t know his depth of knowledge. But If OP is a total newbie to coding or programming, or anything related to it, I will advise he doesn’t goes into reading some to those programming books yet. The one link there that actually explains this to a started in a simple way is the Learnmeabitcoin.com site, after then the OP can pick any of the other books.

[Text]

Cryptography is indeed a fundamental component and aspect of Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies. It plays a role in functionality, securing transactions (It prevents coin duplicate spending and enables all of this to take place without the need for a centralized authority (like a bank or government) to regulate the system.) and ensuring the privacy and integrity of the network (It ensures that only the intended recipient can comprehend what is being sent). The cryptographic methods used to generate and manage these keys are what make Bitcoin secure (This is what allows a user to authorize a transaction on the network. Your public key is the only piece of information someone needs to send you Bitcoin, so you may freely share it.)

[COBRAS]

most important part of cryptograohy  now, it is a cryptocurrency ' s.

Crypto mow, had mone money then all banks in the world

[Nechiequ]

As far as I know, cryptography is the science and art of securing communications by changing text or data so that it can only be read by parties who have the appropriate decryption key. It involves the use of mathematical techniques and algorithms to secure information, prevent unauthorized access, and maintain data confidentiality.

[ecdsa123]

Cryptography, as a branch of mathematics, has a huge impact on shaping space technology. Curves used in cryptography are often used in astronomy to model the orbits of celestial bodies such as planets, stars, and even galaxies.

An example of such a curve in astronomy could be the orbit of a comet, which is usually determined based on observations of its position in the sky compared to other celestial bodies. This curve represents the equation of the comet's movement in space, and its shape depends on the mass of the main body (e.g. the Sun) around which the comet orbits, as well as its speed and direction of movement.

Another example of the use of curves like these in astronomy could be to model the shapes of interstellar gas and dust clouds. These clouds play a very important role in the formation of stars, and curves like these can accurately determine their shapes and sizes.

Finally, curves of the form y*y = x*x*x + b are also used in cosmological research to model the distribution of matter in the universe. They enable a precise determination of the density and structure of matter, which provides insight into the processes of galaxy and cluster formation.

Changes in cryptography, solving equations, elliptic or spherical curves, as well as shortcuts such as sha256 -> solving such possibilities - think of it as navigating between galaxies, planets, searching for "shorter time", it's all cryptography.

and more...

[Jinx9975]

cryptography is what enables secure and private information exchange in the digital world. As connectivity and data generation continues to accelerate, cryptographic approaches become increasingly mission critical. Our reliance on encryption, hashes, and signatures will only intensify in the future across practically all industries.