Includes bibliographical references and index.

Cover; Title Page; Copyright Page; Dedication; Contents; About the Author; Acknowledgments; Foreword; Prologue; Preface; PART ONE: INTRODUCTION AND ECONOMICS; CHAPTER 1 Foundations; 1.1 Decentralized; 1.2 Open Source; 1.3 Public Asset Ledger; 1.4 It's Not Only the Currency, It's the Technology; CHAPTER 2 Technology (Introduction); 2.1 Centralized Database; 2.2 Addresses, Transactions; 2.3 Distributed Database, the Blockchain; 2.4 Wallets; 2.5 The Different Meanings of Bitcoin; CHAPTER 3 Economics; 3.1 Medium of Exchange; 3.1.1 Pros; 3.1.2 Cons; 3.2 Store of Value; 3.2.1 Bitcoin as Investment.

3.2.2 Pros3.2.3 Cons; 3.3 Unit of Account; 3.4 Deflation; 3.5 Volatility; 3.6 Effect on the Financial Industry and Monetary Policy; 3.7 Regulation; CHAPTER 4 Business Applications; 4.1 Money Transfer; 4.2 Exchanges; 4.3 Payment Processors; 4.4 Web Wallets; 4.5 Multisignature Escrow Services; 4.6 Mining; 4.7 ATMs; PART TWO: BITCOIN TECHNOLOGY; CHAPTER 5 Public Key Cryptography; 5.1 Public Key Encryption; 5.2 Digital Signatures; 5.3 RSA; 5.4 Elliptic Curve Cryptography; 5.4.1 Elliptic Curve Summary; 5.4.2 Elliptic Curve Theory; 5.5 Other Cryptographic Primitives; 5.5.1 Blind Signatures.

5.5.2 Shamir Secret Sharing5.6 Bitcoin Addresses; CHAPTER 6 Transactions; 6.1 Transaction Scripts; 6.2 Pay-to-address and Pay-to-public-key Transactions; 6.3 Multisignature (m-of-n) Transactions; 6.4 Other Transaction Types; 6.5 Transaction Signature; 6.6 Pay-to-script-hash (P2SH); 6.7 Standard Transactions; CHAPTER 7 The Blockchain; 7.1 Hash Functions; 7.2 Time-stamp; 7.3 Proof-of-work; 7.4 The Blockchain; 7.5 Double-spend and Other Attacks; 7.5.1 Race Attack; 7.5.2 Finney Attack; 7.5.3 Transaction Spamming; 7.6 Merkle Trees; 7.6.1 Transaction Malleability; 7.7 Scalability; CHAPTER 8 Wallets.

8.1 Symmetric-key Cryptography8.2 Offline Wallets; 8.2.1 External Storage Media; 8.2.2 Paper Wallets; 8.2.3 Offline Devices; 8.2.4 Hardware Wallets; 8.3 Web Wallets; 8.4 Brain Wallets; 8.5 Deterministic Wallets; 8.5.1 Message Authentication Code (MAC); 8.5.2 Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets; 8.6 Multisignature Wallets; 8.7 Vanity addresses; 8.8 Simplified Payment Verification (SPV); 8.9 The "Payment Protocol" (BIP 70); CHAPTER 9 Mining; 9.1 Mining Technology; 9.2 Pooled Mining; 9.3 Transaction Fees; 9.4 Selfish Mining; PART THREE: THE CRYPTOCURRENCIES LANDSCAPE.

CHAPTER 10 The Origins of Bitcoin10.1 David Chaum's Ecash; 10.2 Adam Back's Hashcash; 10.3 Nick Szabo's bit gold and Wei Dai's b-money; 10.4 Sander and Ta-Shma's Auditable, Anonymous Electronic Cash; 10.5 Hal Finney's RPOW; 10.6 Satoshi Nakamoto; CHAPTER 11 Alt(ernative) Coins; 11.1 Litecoin; 11.2 Peercoin; 11.3 Namecoin; 11.4 Auroracoin; 11.5 Primecoin; 11.6 Dogecoin; 11.7 Freicoin; 11.8 Other Alt-coins; 11.9 The Case For/Against Alt-coins; CHAPTER 12 Contracts (the Internet of Money or Cryptocurrencies 2.0); 12.1 Digital Assets; 12.2 Smart Property; 12.3 Micropayments.

Discover Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that has the finance world buzzing Bitcoin is arguably one of the biggest developments in finance since the advent of fiat currency. With Understanding Bitcoin, expert author Pedro Franco provides finance professionals with a complete technical guide and resource to the cryptography, engineering and economic development of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This comprehensive, yet accessible work fully explores the supporting economic realities and technological advances of Bitcoin, and presents positive and negative arguments from various economic schools.