start guide
Where do I start?
Pick the route that fits you. Each route runs in three stages through the right lesson series, ordered, free and sourced. Your progress stays in your own browser; no account needed.
Start with money itself, then what bitcoin changes about it, and finish with the first practical steps. After this route you can follow any conversation about Bitcoin without nodding along.
14 lessons · 3 stages · ±108 min · 0/14 done
Start with lesson 1Barter and coordination
1 · Money first
0/5Understand what money is and why the current system works the way it does.
- 1.1Barter and coordinationBefore money, trade depended on both sides wanting exactly what the other had. That constraint shaped how large an economy could grow.7m
- 1.2Gold as historical moneyGold dominated as money for millennia because it is scarce and durable, but it is heavy, hard to verify, and slow to move, problems that shaped banking itself.8m
- 1.3Banks and digital balancesMost money today is not cash, it is a number in a commercial bank's database, created mainly when banks issue loans.8m
- 1.4Inflation and monetary supplyInflation is usually measured through consumer prices, but its causes are tied to how much money and credit exist relative to goods and services.9m
- 1.5The problem Bitcoin attempted to solveDigital cash faced a specific technical problem: preventing the same unit from being spent twice without a trusted intermediary. The 2008 whitepaper proposed a way to solve it.8m
2 · What bitcoin is
0/5The core idea, the units, the 21 million limit, and how bitcoin differs from 'crypto'.
- 2.1Peer-to-peer electronic cashThe subtitle of Bitcoin's whitepaper describes exactly what problem it solves: paying someone directly, online, without a trusted middleman.8m
- 2.2What is a satoshi?One bitcoin splits into 100,000,000 satoshis, the smallest unit, and often a clearer way to think about small amounts.6m
- 2.3Why 21 millionThe limit is not a slogan. It falls out of two constants: a starting subsidy of 50 BTC and a halving every 210,000 blocks.8m
- 2.4Bitcoin versus the broader crypto marketBitcoin is one specific network with fixed, hard-to-change rules; "crypto" is a broad label covering thousands of very different projects.8m
- 2.5What decentralisation actually meansDecentralisation is about who verifies the rules and who can change them, and it is honestly uneven across different parts of Bitcoin's ecosystem.9m
3 · First practical steps
0/4How people actually obtain, receive and protect small amounts, carefully.
- 3.1Buying BitcoinExchanges, brokers and peer-to-peer trades each work differently. Identity checks, spreads and fees all affect what you actually end up with.8m
- 3.2Exchange account versus walletAn exchange balance is a claim against a company's ledger. A wallet holds the keys that let you spend directly on Bitcoin's own ledger.7m
- 3.3Receiving BitcoinReceiving is just sharing an address. Understanding what happens after that, confirmations, change, address reuse, avoids most confusion.6m
- 3.4Common scamsMost Bitcoin theft has nothing to do with breaking cryptography, it relies on tricking a person into handing over access willingly.8m
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