A review by erikars
Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies: A Comprehensive Introduction by Edward Felten, Arvind Narayanan, Joseph Bonneau
5.0
This textbook contains an in depth technical discussion of how bitcoin, and blockchains in general, work. It also covers the non-technical challenges associated with cryptocurrency and bitcoin in particular. While introduction to bitcoin articles give some idea of how bitcoin works, it took a deeper treatment like this to feel like I understood the details.
As someone who is mainly interested in blockchain as a technology rather than bitcoin in particular, the discussion of how the incentives for mining interact with the blockchain technology was particularly interesting because a non-currency blockchain is going to necessarily have a different incentive structure than a currency where the blockchain can generate and transfer value to reward mining.
By the way, a draft PDF of the book, which is what I read, is available from the authors: http://bitcoinbook.cs.princeton.edu/
As someone who is mainly interested in blockchain as a technology rather than bitcoin in particular, the discussion of how the incentives for mining interact with the blockchain technology was particularly interesting because a non-currency blockchain is going to necessarily have a different incentive structure than a currency where the blockchain can generate and transfer value to reward mining.
By the way, a draft PDF of the book, which is what I read, is available from the authors: http://bitcoinbook.cs.princeton.edu/