At the moment I'm finding Bitcoin really interesting.As you can tell from the post about Cryptography for Curious Kids I'm interested in cryptography. I've read overviews and that Wikipedia article I've linked to, and the Bitcoin wiki. I find that I grasp the overall concept. Then I read into the detail and think I've grasped it at a deeper level. Then I go away and forget about the detail and have more questions which means I need to read again, and deeper. Almost every fact seems to raise more questions. It's almost like an adventure game:
Bitcoin is a peer to peer digital currency. Where do you want to go?
N: How do they get created?
E: Can you have a physical Bitcoin?
S: What does it mean to have a quantity of them?
W: How do you exchange them for other currencies?
>S
You have chosen S. The way that you have a Bitcoin is that everyone taking part in Bitcoin has a record of all the transactions that have taken place since they started being used, so everyone agrees that you have a certain number in your wallet.(OK not everyone taking part, but a lot of people.)
N: What is a wallet?
E: How does this information get synced between everyone?
S: What's to stop people falsifying the information?
W: How can you have fractional parts of a Bitcoin?
And so it goes on: mining, pooling, the blockchain, public/private keys, speculation about deflation, bubbles, anonymity, hashes, really big numbers.What's not to like?
Articles by my favourite bloggers (linking doesn't mean I agree)
I sold some Bitcoins by Tim Bray
Why I want Bitcoin to die in a fire by Charlie Stross
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