Book Image

Learn Bitcoin and Blockchain

By : Kirankalyan Kulkarni
Book Image

Learn Bitcoin and Blockchain

By: Kirankalyan Kulkarni

Overview of this book

Blockchain is a distributed database that enables permanent, transparent, and secure storage of data. Blockchain technology uses cryptography to keep data secure. Learn Bitcoin and Blockchain is the perfect entry point to the world of decentralized databases. This book will take you on a journey through the blockchain database, followed by advanced implementations of the blockchain concept. You will learn about Bitcoin basics and their technical operations. As you make your way through the book, you will gain insight into this leading technology and its implementation in the real world. You will also cover the technical foundation of blockchain and understand the fundamentals of cryptography and how they keep data secure. In the concluding chapters, you’ll get to grips with the mechanisms behind cryptocurrencies. By the end of this book, you will have learned about decentralized digital money, advanced blockchain concepts, and Bitcoin and blockchain security.
Table of Contents (6 chapters)

Key privacy challenges of the blockchain

Let's take a look at some general challenges regarding privacy in blockchain and the solutions to overcome those challenges. Eric Hughes, cofounder of the Cyberpunk Movement, UC Berkeley, and a well-known mathematician, said in 1993 that privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction systems. Until now, cash has been the primary system. An anonymous system empowers individuals to reveal their identity when desired, and only when desired. But, is this the case with Bitcoin and public blockchain? There is a popular delusion that Bitcoin is anonymous and untraceable. It's an understandable mistake, given Bitcoin's popular use case, which was the infamous Silk Road we covered in earlier chapters.

The FBI was able to trace and expose people involved in this case with the help of immutability in the Bitcoin blockchain...