Today I’m launching Introduction to Cryptocurrency, an online course teaching the basics of programming cryptocurrencies. The first two modules are already released, and the remainder of the course will be coming out over the next few months. Introduction to Cryptocurrency is a multidisciplinary exploration of cryptocurrencies from the ground up, spanning computer science, history, cryptography, and economics. The course has nine modules in total: History: money, the cypherpunks, and Satoshi...
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By Haseeb Qureshi and Leland Lee After the DAO hack of 2016, the Ethereum community was faced with an existential quandary: should the community roll back the chain to revert the DAO hack, or let the hacker get away? Those who said yes forked away to what is now called Ethereum. But those who said no, who didn’t roll back, they are now known as Ethereum Classic. This is a classic...
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How do you govern a blockchain? That might sound like a strange question. In theory, blockchains aren’t supposed to be governed at all—they’re supposed to be “permissionless decentralized ledgers.” But a blockchain is more than just a ledger. It’s also an ecosystem of software, an economy of merchants, companies, and exchanges, and beneath all that, a community of developers, miners, and users. At the end of the day, blockchains must...
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A useful currency should be a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. Cryptocurrencies excel at the first, but as a store of value or unit of account, they’re pretty bad. You cannot be an effective store of value if your price fluctuates by 20% on a normal day. This is where stablecoins come in. Stablecoins are price-stable cryptocurrencies, meaning the market price of a...
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Cryptocurrencies, ICOs, magic internet money—it’s all so damn exciting, and you, the eager developer, want to get in on the madness. Where do you start? I’m glad you’re excited about this space. I am too. But you’ll probably find it’s unclear where to begin. Blockchain is moving at breakneck speed, but there’s no clear onramp to learning this stuff. Since I left Airbnb to work full-time on blockchain, many people...
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Cryptocurrencies have a trust problem. Blockchain evangelists claim that with the advent of Bitcoin, centralized authorities and financial institutions will soon become obsolete. Blockchain technology will run the world and corruption will be engineered out of existence. Society will become “trustless.” Ironically, the vast majority of people still don’t trust cryptocurrencies. [video] The evangelists claim those people don’t understand the technical innovations behind blockchains. (As though a lecture on consensus...
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It wasn’t too long ago that Silicon Valley scoffed at cryptocurrencies. All over coffee shops in Mountain View and Menlo Park, you heard the same conversation: “Sure, it’s cool technology, but when are we going to see the killer app”? A few merchants dipped their toes into accepting Bitcoin in 2014. But adoption largely backed off. I remember seeing a few Bitcoin ATMs in Austin, and then they disappeared. Bitcoin...
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Yesterday, a hacker pulled off the second biggest heist in the history of digital currencies. Around 12:00 PST, an unknown attacker exploited a critical flaw in the Parity multi-signature wallet on the Ethereum network, draining three massive wallets of over $31,000,000 worth of Ether in a matter of minutes. Given a couple more hours, the hacker could’ve made off with over $180,000,000 from vulnerable wallets. But someone stopped them. Having...
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Imagine you didn’t need to trust a stranger to make a deal with them. Imagine you didn’t need to trust your bank to deposit your money there. Imagine you didn’t need to trust your government to know it was being just and fair. What would happen? It would change the world. This is precisely the promise of blockchains. Cryptocurrencies, which are built on blockchains, are all over the press these...
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I have no self-control. Luckily, I know this about myself. This allows me to consciously engineer my life so that despite having the emotional maturity of a heroin-addicted lab rat, I’m occasionally able to get things done. Mm, a waste of time! I waste a lot of time on Reddit. If I want to procrastinate on something, I’ll often open a new tab and dive down a Reddit-hole. But sometimes...
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Six months ago I decided I wanted to become a software developer. I had almost no coding background whatsoever, but screw it, I decided to take the leap. I applied to all of the coding bootcamps in San Francisco, and went into a cave to teach myself nothing but code. I ended up getting into my top choice, App Academy. I was crushing the program as the top student in...
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It’s been two weeks now since I began the coding bootcamp at App Academy. The material has been blasted at us at a breakneck pace, and I’ve been learning a ton. Among the things I’ve learned: what “90 hours a week” feels like. The past 5 days, I’ve been at App Academy from 10AM till midnight, every single day. It’s strange; it feels like just a few days ago that...
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