Programming Bitcoin: Learn How to Program Bitcoin from Scratch

Excellent, in-depth, technical overview of how bitcoin works under the hood. This book is a hands-on project book that will take you through building a proof-of-concept bitcoin library, step-by-step. The library you'll build can parse and validate transactions, verify blocks, interact with other nodes on the bitcoin network and more.Like other reviews mentioned, this is an advance level book. It's not a book for folks new to bitcoin or folks without programming experience. I also agree that reading Mastering Bitcoin first will make this book a much better experience because you'll know where each of the modules you're building fits in the bigger picture.The author has set up the hands-on project as Jupyter Notebooks which makes it really nice to code along the text. In addition, he goes into more details on the math behind elliptic curve cryptography which I appreciated. Overall, highly recommended for people that want to remove the veil and see how bitcoin works to the smallest detail.

I took Jimmy's "Programming Blockchain" bootcamp and witnessed first hand how much Jimmy prepared for his teaching material. His material is amazingly in-depth and comprehensive. From finite fields math to elliptic curves to how wallets and transactions are created, to the different types of transaction formats and how to create them yourself, to more advanced topics like SegWit and Lightning. This book is the result of Jimmy's many hours of teaching. I can't recommend this book enough to anyone who seriously wants to get their hands on Bitcoin scripting or learn how Bitcoin works under the hood.Be warned, it is not a light reading and it's best to work out all the exercises yourself (there are plenty, enough for you to be able to create your own Bitcoin wallet software at the end). IMO this book is the equivalent of one maybe two graduate level courses if it's taught in universities. Well worth the investment.

I was coming from a background in php and javascript and didn't know any python. Learned some rudimentary python just so I could go through the book. Just enough to understand the syntax and the inner workings of python.Not good enough at programming to have taken full advantage of the book but it really helped me a lot in understanding the math behind Bitcoin. From the very basics of cryptography to understanding address generation, Script, transaction validation, block validation, and even some networking.A must read for anyone interested in understanding Bitcoin at a more technical level, rather than just taking the word of developers. For me it was great first step towards financial Bitcoin sovereignty.

While the book's cost was surprisingly high compared to the excellent volumes by Andreas and Safedean, the facts that (1) color is used extensively and very tastefully and (2) the paper quality is superior in this text justifies the additional cost for me.

An amazing book. If you really want to understand Bitcoin, read Mastering Bitcoin first, then work your way through this book. Although Jimmy recommends intermediate level Python programming skills, if you have any coding background, you should be able to zip through a quick Python primer (like SoloLearn's) and be pretty well prepped to dig in (this is what I did, and was fine).Highest recommendation

Great book, easy to navigate for a beginner, I would definitely recommend this to someone getting into bitcoin as a good first book.

This book covers everything that you need to know about creating Bitcoin from scratch. However, this book tends to be a long read and it's best for someone who is already a pretty decent computer programmer. It's not for the novice or someone who just got started.

TL;DR Buy the paperback, it’s very helpful to have a physical book in front of you to reference as you’re looking at your computer screen trying to write code.Jimmy introduces the reader to Bitcoin by way of its most foundational building blocks: math and cryptography (both surprisingly accessible, not much fancy math at all). Along with example Python code throughout the book, he also gives code exercises to reinforce your learning (as well as their answers, which are helpful when you’re stuck). The code is also pretty accessible for non-coders (it definitely helps to have some working knowledge of programming though). Also, the Python library is on his GitHub for quick reference purposes (trust me, you’ll want to use this).I spent quite a bit of time digging into each chapter’s content, but for many topics you can choose to go as deep as you want (although some chapters are crucial to the ones that follow it, like the transactions chapter). I was quite impressed with how intuitive most of his analogies and explanations were, so they lend themselves to a lighter read if you want to explore a few select chapters without reading the book from cover to cover.Now, the unexpected and massive benefits of having the physical paperback in from of you as you look at the code on your computer:- At certain points you’ll probably have a few browser tabs open simultaneously for referencing the codebase on Jimmy’s GitHub. I did this often, and having the paperback in front of me was especially helpful for the topics that combined concepts from different chapters with code from different files. It’s much easier to keep track of everything if the book is in front of you.- You can write notes directly in the book (I took notes on a Trello board, and you can do both for quick reference)- Your eyes will thank you for not staring uninterrupted at the computer screen.The content is dense and I struggled through a lot of it, but understanding the elegantly designed system of Bitcoin is now something I’ll always have a deep appreciation for.