{"id":1213,"date":"2019-02-15T10:32:01","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T10:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kusuaks7\/?p=818"},"modified":"2023-07-19T10:16:17","modified_gmt":"2023-07-19T10:16:17","slug":"getting-started-with-bitcoin-blockchains-and-cryptoassets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/fintech\/getting-started-with-bitcoin-blockchains-and-cryptoassets\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting started with Bitcoin, blockchains, and cryptoassets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ready to learn Blockchain?\u00a0Browse courses<\/a>\u00a0like\u00a0Blockchain for Finance Professionals<\/a> developed by industry thought leaders and Experfy in Harvard Innovation Lab.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Friends and family often ask me where to begin learning about Bitcoin and blockchains. With the recent rise in prices, these requests are amplifying in lockstep. I imagine many of you have had a similar experience.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m always happy to respond because it\u2019s important for people to become educated before investing, but these responses take time and time is scarce. I started compiling a list so that I could respond efficiently.<\/p>\n

This list is not meant to be comprehensive, it\u2019s curated. That means I\u2019m leaving out a ton of important content. I\u2019m doing so because newcomers often report feeling initially overwhelmed by the volume of information in this space. I\u2019ve tried to lay it out in a step-by-step format to make it more approachable. It\u2019s a recipe for a base-level foundation of knowledge, from which you can continue to build.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what I would have done to get started if I were to do it over again\u2026<\/p>\n

>>If you have less than one hour\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Watch this video:\u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4<\/a>\u00a0(26 minutes)<\/p>\n

Read this post to understand blockchain technology at a slightly more technical level. (16 minutes):\u00a0https:\/\/hackernoon.com\/wtf-is-the-blockchain-1da89ba19348<\/a><\/p>\n

>>Next three hours<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Start with the \u201cBeginner\u2019s Guides\u201d on CoinDesk. There are 43 different topics, but they\u2019re short, <5 minutes each. If you\u2019ve completed the two items above then you can get through these quickly. Read all of them, particularly those from \u201cWhat is Blockchain Technology?\u201d to the bottom. (2 hours)
\nhttp:\/\/www.coindesk.com\/information\/<\/p>\n

Watch\u00a0Banking on Bitcoin\u00a0on Netflix to get some historical context.(1 hour)<\/p>\n

>>Next ten hours: Podcasts<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Hashpower<\/a>, by Patrick O\u2019Shaughnessy, is a three segment podcast that contains a wealth of information. It is the highest density podcast on this topic that I have have found and features some of the most knowledgeable people in the space. It is a masterpiece. Listen to all of them. If you have time, listen to them twice. (3 hours)<\/p>\n

Listen to this Tim Ferriss podcast. Nick Szabo and Naval Ravikant are two of my favorite thinkers:\u00a0http:\/\/tim.blog\/2017\/06\/04\/nick-szabo\/<\/a>\u00a0(1.5 hours)<\/p>\n

Subscribe to\u00a0Unchained<\/a>, a podcast by Laura Shin, and listen to some past episodes. I listened to all of them, and learned something from every single episode. It\u2019s almost impossible to choose a \u201cbest of\u201d list, but here are a few that were particularly memorable: (5.5 hours)<\/p>\n

Jerry Brito and Peter Van Valkenburgh<\/a>\u00a0(Coin Center)<\/p>\n

Emin Gun Sirer<\/a>\u00a0(Cornell)<\/p>\n

Brock Pierce<\/a>\u00a0(Blockchain Capital)<\/p>\n

Olaf Carlson-Wee<\/a>\u00a0(Polychain capital, formerly 1st employee at Coinbase)<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Rossiello<\/a>\u00a0(BitPesa)<\/p>\n

Chris Burniske<\/a>\u00a0(Placeholder Ventures)<\/p>\n

>>Next ten hours<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

It\u2019s time to read Satoshi Nakamoto\u2019s seminal\u00a0whitepaper<\/a>. (1 hour)<\/p>\n

Introduction to forks. The\u00a0Ethereum Classic fork<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Bitcoin Cash fork<\/a>\u00a0are examples. (1 hour)<\/p>\n

If you wish to purchase bitcoin or ether, open an account at an exchange like\u00a0Coinbase<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Gemini<\/a>. A couple notes: i)\u00a0This is not investment advice<\/strong>, invest only what you can afford to lose entirely. ii) Setup two-factor authentication immediately.\u00a0Do not use text message as the authentication method<\/strong><\/a>, apps like Google Authenticator or Authy are safer. By the way, you should really set up 2FA on your Google account too. iii) If you have a meaningful proportion of your wealth invested, you will want to look into a\u00a0hardware wallet<\/a>, but that is beyond the scope of this beginners guide. (1 hour)<\/p>\n

There are thousands of other blockchain tokens beyond bitcoin. Dive into tokens with Brave New Coin\u2019s\u00a0gentle introduction<\/a>. Then, go to\u00a0Smith + Crown<\/a>(a token research firm), pick out a couple recent token sales and read the S+C analysis. (2 hours)<\/p>\n

Read through Linda Xie\u2019s beginner guides to several prominent projects (3 hours):<\/p>\n

Beginner\u2019s guide series on cryptoassets
\nI put together a list of beginner\u2019s guides that I\u2019ve written on cryptoassets.medium.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Coinbase trades three cryptoassets: bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), and litecoin (LTC). If you wish to expand beyond these three you can open an account on an exchange like Poloniex<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Bittrex<\/a>\u00a0to trade many others, but they don\u2019t accept fiat currency like USD, so you have to buy BTC or ETH at an exchange like Coinbase first, and then transfer it to your other account. You\u2019re probably also going to want to download\u00a0Blockfolio<\/a>\u00a0at this point to keep track of everything. (Disclaimer: (i)\u00a0This is not investment advice<\/strong>, (ii) I am\u00a0not endorsing<\/strong>\u00a0these exchanges, just using them as examples, here is\u00a0a longer list by volume<\/a>. (iii)\u00a0Never invest more than you are willing to lose in totality<\/strong>) (1 hour)<\/p>\n

Spend some time investigating various data sources:\u00a0OnChainFx<\/a>,\u00a0CoinMarketCap<\/a>,\u00a0CryptoCompare<\/a>,\u00a0Brave New Coin<\/a>,\u00a0TokenData.io<\/a>,\u00a0CoinGecko<\/a>,\u00a0Bitcoin Block Explorer<\/a>. (1 hour)<\/p>\n

>Hours 24\u201350<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

For a deeper dive, enroll in this MOOC taught by Andreas Antonopoulos and Antonis Polemitis (12 hours):\u00a0https:\/\/digitalcurrency.unic.ac.cy\/free-introductory-mooc\/<\/a><\/p>\n

There are several other free courses such as\u00a0this one at coursera<\/a>, another one at\u00a0coursera<\/a>, and\u00a0this one at udemy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The regulatory environment is complex and evolving.\u00a0Coin Center<\/a>\u00a0is the master on this topic, read as much of their work as possible. If you have tax questions,\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0is a place to start that inquiry.<\/p>\n

Work through\u00a0Nick Tomaino\u2019s reading list<\/a>, especially Nick Szabo\u2019s articles. Dan Romero also has a nice list\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0that is not too technical.<\/p>\n

Read these two books:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Cryptoassets<\/a>\u00a0by Burniske and Tatar. The book works through cryptoassets from an investor\u2019s perspective and provides some historical perspective.<\/li>\n
  2. The Internet of Money<\/a>\u00a0by Antonopoulos<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    >Bonus section: Academic research<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

    I\u2019d be remiss to conclude without a few cites to academic work in economics on this topic:<\/p>\n

    Catalini, Christian, and Joshua S. Gans. \u201cSome simple economics of the blockchain.\u201d No. w22952. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016.<\/a><\/p>\n

    Wang, Sha, and Jean-Philippe Vergne. \u201cBuzz Factor or Innovation Potential: What Explains Cryptocurrencies\u2019 Returns?\u201d PloS one 12, 2017.<\/a><\/p>\n

    Yermack, David. \u201cCorporate governance and blockchains.\u201d Review of Finance 21.1 (2017): 7\u201331.<\/a><\/p>\n

    You\u2019ve only just begun, grasshopper.<\/strong>\u00a0For a more comprehensive list of resources, check out\u00a0Jameson Lopp\u2019s page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Staying up to\u00a0date<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    After completing everything above, you will know more than the vast majority of the general public, but your information will quickly become stale if you don\u2019t stay current. Here\u2019s a subset of what I follow:<\/p>\n

    Twitter.<\/strong>\u00a0Crypto twitter is very active. Some signal, some noise. Here are a few accounts to start following. Keeping this list short was the most difficult part of the entire post because it omits many important people, I\u2019m doing so for brevity. To see a more comprehensive list, go through\u00a0my follows<\/a>. Once you start tracking these accounts you\u2019ll see who else is active and can branch out from there: see the links here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Slack.<\/strong>\u00a0Join the CoinFund slack channel and subscribe to a few of the subchannels that look interesting to you. It\u2019s a repository of dialogue on numerous cryptoassets.\u00a0https:\/\/coinfund.slack.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

    Many token projects maintain their own slack channels. The best way to find them is to simply google \u201c[project name] slack\u201d like\u00a0this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Newsletters.<\/strong>\u00a0Delivered straight to your inbox. Here are my favorites:<\/p>\n

    Token Economy,\u00a0Week in Ethereum<\/a>,\u00a0Multicoin Capital<\/a>,\u00a0CoinDesk,\u00a0DAR<\/a><\/p>\n

    Reddit.<\/strong>\u00a0So many subreddits that I won\u2019t even try to list them all. Just start here:\u00a0https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/Bitcoin\/<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    I\u2019ll update this post with new content occasionally.<\/p>\n

    Enjoy your trip down the rabbit hole!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Ready to learn Blockchain?\u00a0Browse courses\u00a0like\u00a0Blockchain for Finance Professionals developed by industry thought leaders and Experfy in Harvard Innovation Lab. Friends and family often ask me where to begin learning about Bitcoin and blockchains. With the recent rise in prices, these requests are amplifying in lockstep. I imagine many of you have had a similar experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":2527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[98],"ppma_author":[2668],"class_list":["post-1213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fintech","tag-blockchain"],"authors":[{"term_id":2668,"user_id":144,"is_guest":0,"slug":"stephen-mckeon","display_name":"Stephen McKeon","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","user_url":"","last_name":"McKeon","first_name":"Stephen","job_title":"","description":"Stephen McKeon is an Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Oregon, where he focuses on cryptoassets, security issuance, and M&A. His work has been published in top finance journals, and widely quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and NY Times. His professional experience includes six years as a chief financial officer and involvement with several venture backed start-up firms as an employee, co-founder, and board director.  Prof. McKeon teaches valuation, FinTech, and venture capital at U Oregon and blockchain regulation at UC Berkeley.\n\n "}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1213"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29353,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213\/revisions\/29353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1213"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}