Book Image

Blockchain Developer's Guide

By : Brenn Hill, Samanyu Chopra, Paul Valencourt, Narayan Prusty
Book Image

Blockchain Developer's Guide

By: Brenn Hill, Samanyu Chopra, Paul Valencourt, Narayan Prusty

Overview of this book

Blockchain applications provide a single-shared ledger to eliminate trust issues involving multiple stakeholders. It is the main technical innovation of Bitcoin, where it serves as the public ledger for Bitcoin transactions. Blockchain Developer's Guide takes you through the electrifying world of blockchain technology. It begins with the basic design of a blockchain and elaborates concepts, such as Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), tokens, smart contracts, and other related terminologies. You will then explore the components of Ethereum, such as Ether tokens, transactions, and smart contracts that you need to build simple DApps. Blockchain Developer's Guide also explains why you must specifically use Solidity for Ethereum-based projects and lets you explore different blockchains with easy-to-follow examples. You will learn a wide range of concepts - beginning with cryptography in cryptocurrencies and including ether security, mining, and smart contracts. You will learn how to use web sockets and various API services for Ethereum. By the end of this Learning Path, you will be able to build efficient decentralized applications. This Learning Path includes content from the following Packt products: • Blockchain Quick Reference by Brenn Hill, Samanyu Chopra, Paul Valencourt • Building Blockchain Projects by Narayan Prusty
Table of Contents (37 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Why Bitcoin is volatile


When we say Bitcoin is volatile, we mean the price of Bitcoin is volatile. The spot rate of Bitcoin at various exchanges changes every moment and, moreover, it functions 24/7. Hence, any user or community member of Bitcoin is perturbed by the regularly changing price of Bitcoin. The following chart shows the price fluctuation of Bitcoin over the last financial year:

The volatility of Bitcoin is the most discussed topic and has been a concern for investors, miners, and supporters of Bitcoin since the exchanges of Bitcoin came up. Some prime reasons for this as follows:

  • Security breaches: This has been a major issue in the price fluctuation of Bitcoin in the past; whenever news of security flaws at an exchange's end comes up, the price of Bitcoin takes a hit, since this makes the investors start to doubt a certain exchange or the Bitcoin network.
  • Legal issues: There have been many doubts by global lawmakers who make predictions on Bitcoin's price or even try to label Bitcoin...