Bitcoin Explained by Kahn Academy

What is Bitcoin?

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Bitcoin Overview

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Bitcoin's Cryptographic Hash Functions

The cryptographic hash functions used for Bitcoin has the following inter-related properties (characteristics):

• computational efficient
• the generated digests are collision resistant
• hide input information
• the generated digests look random

The cryptographic hash function is applied to original message to generate a fixed length digest, and the digest is then further signed into a digital signature as explained in the next video.

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Bitcoin Digital Signatures

In a digital signing scheme:

• The original message is first cryptographically hashed into a fixed length digest.
• Signer applies his/her private key to the digest to a generate the corresponding digital signature. This digital signature differs from one input message to another, even the messages are signed by the same private key.
• The verification process takes the inputs of the original message, digital signature, and the public key to generate a yes/no result.

Bitcoin Transaction Records

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Bitcoin Proof of Work Protocol

Given a challenge string, find a proof string so that the concatenation of challenge string and proof string will be hashed to generate a string with 40 bits of preceding 0's. Once the proof string is found, it is very easy to ver

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Bitcoin Transaction Block Chains

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Bitcoin Money Supply

At most 21 million bitcoin (BTC) will ever be generated. The incentive for miners will be the transaction fees set by the payers.

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Bitcoin - The Security of Transaction Block Chains

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