Blockchain: Ultimate guide to understanding blockchain, bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, smart contracts and the future of money. (Ultimate Cryptocurrency Book 1)

by Mark Gates

Ethereum platform and smart contracts.

every half an hour the Bitcoin network uses the same amount of electricity as the average US household does in an entire year.

Blockchain technology is just a new way of storing and managing data. It isn’t the answer to all the world’s problems, so don’t believe all the hype.

R3 is a distributed database technology that has several high-profile developers from bitcoin core, cryptography and the tech industry working on it.

Companies like Storj have created decentralized, cloud storage that is less vulnerable to attacks and hacking. Cloud storage is distributed across unused storage space on computers connected to the network, it is encrypted and can only be accessed by the owner.

Augur will be a decentralized platform for forecasting the probability of any event occurring.

Ethereum is the next step in the future of blockchain technology. It is built from the same foundation technologies as the Bitcoin blockchain however it takes the possibilities of blockchain technology to another level.

The Ethereum network uses the cryptocurrency “Ether” that acts as currency on the network.

if you purchase an item using Bitcoin, after making the payment there is no guarantee you will receive the goods purchased.

Ripple is one of the most well-known blockchain projects and currently the third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and one of the largest blockchain network.

The hash generated is always the same length. It doesn’t matter whether you put one word or an entire book, you will still get a hash of the same length for any amount of data entered.

This is the entire play of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” containing over 20,000 words: e807d23c1ff8e4ba4aa4542d35082e28f9f580407ca6031a34bc1eff424fd37a

The Bitcoin network is over 10,000 times more powerful than the world’s top 500 supercomputers combined, yet most of that computing power is directed towards the purpose of generating random numbers.

A computer algorithm which takes any length or amount of input data and produces a fixed length output, known as the data’s “hash.”

Nonce Stands for "number used once". A number in a block header which is continually changed to find a nonce that creates a valid hash during a search for proof-of-work. Each time the nonce is changed, the hash of the block header is recalculated.

Proof-of-stake goes on the assumption the people with a stake in the cryptocurrency will not want to devalue their holdings so will act in their best interests of the network while saving computing power and resources.