Basics of Blockchain: A guide for building literacy in the economics, technology, and business of blockchain

It is hard to balance at what depth that one should go into when discussing a topic as complex as Blockchain, however this book was able to walk that fine line. Albeit, this book probably not not the subject matter experts and/or experienced Blockchain developers

I found this a great book to obtain a better understanding of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency.

The content is good. Very detailed and well explained. But the quality of the printing is not good. It looks like a xerox copy.

A great book that explains the technical design of blockchain in an easy-to-consume manner. From blocks to applied scenrios, it is a great read. Would be ideal for a class on blockchain!

Easy to use. Helped me learn blockchain.

When I first picked it up, I was expecting an authoritative view of blockchain from some of the early pioneers. It does not disappoint on that front. However, it surprised me to find the authors have designed a thoughtful learning framework for helping the reader unpack, navigate and create understanding of this new technology. Particularly important, they have stressed the importance of 'unlearning' in this area so as to leave behind false and unhelpful pulp assumptions common within the field. At the end, it leaves the reader with a cumulative mental framework for understanding what will come next.This first edition of the text is well organized and creates an accessible bridge between those readers looking to understand what the heck blockchain is and the super dorks who want to get into the nitty gritty details. It utilizes plenty of historical context, use cases, technical tutorials, glossaries of new terms, and concise summation – All of the things needed for a successful textbook. It never gets overly academic and instead conveys a real-world entrepreneurial hunger that feels almost like a handbook for someone ready to just do. It presents a level-set view of potential opportunities for blockchain technology but spends just as much energy on the major challenge’s past, present and future. Particularly helpful was the historical perspective, learning the evolution of the technology, its connectedness to other fields, and the focus on lexicon which for me resulted in a sort of mental ‘capture the flag’ between what I thought I knew and what I was now learning. The authors have also done a good job interdigitating the business case for blockchain technology with the technical execution via walkthroughs. I have to admit that reading the chapter headers in the table of contents did make me wonder if I had the technical savvy to succeed with the text. Thankfully the writing style and narrative focus on time and people woven throughout made the more technical aspects very accessible for a novice like me. There are some tutorials that allow the more technologically astute to close the know-do gap.My one area of critique is that the graphics and illustrations could use an upgrade in terms of their design and purposeful inclusion as key instructional parts of the text. In works like this, visuals often create more meaning than words. The graphics in this edition feel secondary to the words and not up to the task of conveying important concepts. Hopefully, future additions will rely on design more for knowledge transfer.Regardless, this is the definitive resource for those looking to both know and do within blockchain. A must read.

Anyone reading recent economic and business news knows that the growth of a decentralized economy is well underway. But what does that actually mean? In The Basics of Blockchain, Bettina Warburg and Tom Serres, of the tech and business consultancy Animal Ventures, and Bill Wagner, give readers the lay of the land in clear language and with colorful case studies, beginning with the very history of commerce and how transactions take place at all. They lead us into the distributed ledger technology of blockchain and how it is, across many sectors, scaling the peer-to-peer marketplace model — importantly, as business-to-business transactions — wherein “anyone can trade goods and services efficiently with anyone" (as it was before the days of fiat currency), without the need for intermediaries that support buyers and sellers through a completed and trusted transaction. Because of blockchain’s distributed, encrypted structures of trust and guaranteed provenance, it is removing the need for third parties who profit from verification (banks, brokers, and notaries, for example), thereby increasing the speed, ease, and clarity of trade and the amount of liquid assets that firms have available to deploy for further use. The Basics of Blockchain — with its thorough explanations of the origins of trade, cyberphunks, digital cash, distributed ledger technologies, Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc., along with explanations of the digital code that lies behind blockchain — also notes how global supply chains are leveraging these technologies and those of AI, IoT, and additive manufacturing to have a penetrating effect on the very underpinnings of the industrial economy. The implications of this shift are simply massive, and Warburg, Wagner, and Serres masterfully explain how and why it is occurring, and what we need to know to understand it more clearly. Highly recommended.

This Basics of Blockchain book is perfect for Undergraduate, Graduate students or just anyone interested! Rather than complete a PhD, I decided it was worth the time to read "Basics of Blockchain," and it was one of the best introductory books, I have ever read. It explained the decentralized database concept and coordinating agreement on an append-only history of transactions across a peer-to-peer network. The nature of a decentralized database with no central authority. The DLT or (distributed ledger technology) running on a peer-to-peer network, so that all peers hold the database locally. The entire community verifies accuracy. There is “one truth” using consensus protocols!It was a great introduction to the complexity of the Blockchain concept, but in a magnificently simple and easy to understand book. I thoroughly enjoyed “BASICS OF BLOCKCHAIN” 5 stars for me!