The Best 3 Books to Teach You Blockchain Technology

Blockchain technology is not exactly new - it’s been around for as long as bitcoin has, but it’s only been in the last two years that people have started to appreciate it and its technological implications for society. What the trading 101 graduate in you needs to know is that blockchain is a way to structure data that allows a network of computers to share a ledger without the need for a central unit. It obviously got popular due to its famous application to bitcoin, enabling the cryptocurrency craze of 2017. There are plenty of resources on the internet, where the idea of crypto and blockchain was born in the first place, but if you’re looking for something more put-together, here are three great books that you can sink your teeth into to understand blockchain better.

The Book of Satoshi by Phil Campagne.

This is a great first book to start with in order to understand more about blockchain. Why? Because it’s not very technical and doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s rather entertaining and offers what appear to be the writings of Satoshi Nakamoto, the man who allegedly invented the blockchain technology in the first place. Very little is known about Nakamoto, and he seems to exist entirely online - explaining the early uses of bitcoin through some of his writings. It is currently unknown whether Satoshi Nakamoto is a persona purely created to be the person to introduce bitcoin to the world or if there’s a real person behind it, but this book collects all the essential things published by Nakamoto on the internet. It also has copies of the papers outlining the idea bitcoin as well as the first explanation of how the bitcoin cryptocurrency was intended to work, through a series of forum posts and emails.

Blockchain by Melanie Swan.

The reason this book is listed as the second is because it’s quite a bit more technical, but also a great setup for the last book on the list. Swan is the founder of the Institute for Blockchain Studies. As implied in the name, the institute studies the technology behind blockchain and its practical implications for the real world. It’s a great read for those who want a deeper understanding of how the technology works and what some potentially great uses are for its application. Swan explores the long-term implications of fully implementing blockchain technology across other sectors and its power to automate more processes among many other things. She also examines cryptocurrency in detail which is as relevant as ever - and she does it in a way that the average Joe without any financial background can follow too. For traders with financial background, this is an expansion of knowledge into a brand new market - researching these kinds of things is what trading 101 is all about.

Blockchain Revolution by Dan and Alex Tapscott.

This book is written by a father and son team. It explores how the nature of blockchain will help us continually grow and reinvent the power of the internet. The pair talks about how blockchain will be at the center of innovation and how it will help us reinvent what we can do online, who can be online and more importantly, the way we do things online. Also an interesting topic to pursue further is how this book explores the impact of blockchain on money, transactions and business as a whole. The authors do a great job of illustrating where blockchain is right now in its developmental stage and how it’s being used beyond crypto, but also highlights the various array of possibilities it offers to other sectors in the future if it keeps growing at the same pace it’s been blowing up recently.